Member-to-Member

Social Media Digest #5

Recent links of interest to those monitoring the social media phenomenon. Comments and link suggestions welcome.

Blogging in the Long Tail - Part One: Quality vs. Quantity

"Should we write a blog?"

Whenever I introduce myself as a social media strategy consultant, this is very likely to be the first question I'm asked. My answer is always, "Maybe." I qualify my answer because blogging is a commitment of resources and doing it poorly is bad marketing, but many organizations in B2B or other specialty markets are wary for other reasons; they're used to marketing in the Long Tail economy where success isn't always a quantity game and they assume the main reason to blog is to go viral. A sign of this concern is when they say "but no one would post us to their Facebook." When they tell me this, I am always quick to assure them that no matter how arcane their subject is, if it matters to their customers then blogging on those subjects can be a powerful strategy for unearthing buried marketing treasure. Long Tail blogging means that high volume traffic numbers and viral appeal don't tell the most important part of the story and what matters is whether your blog positions you well with your most important audiences.

It's easy to get caught up in the stats, and we DO want to see the stats grow in any web communications effort, but Long Tail blogging is less about being the next viral phenom on Facebook or YouTube and more about leveraging existing web content and staff brainpower to reach a well-defined core audience in a way that more effectively positions the organization to that particular niche. This approach applies no matter how far down the tail you are. For this reason blogging in the Long Tail is a particularly powerful B2B marketing strategy in specialty areas with defined - even if narrow - audiences (e.g., chemicals processing or OEM equipment manufacturing).

Social Media Link Digest - #4

Recent stuff of interest to those monitoring the social media phenomenon. Comments and link suggestions welcome.

Insights & Opinions

• BLOGGER RELATIONS: ... from the other end. Power blogger Josh Bernhoff looks at his PR solicitations. Interesting insights.

• BRANDING IN THE AGE OF SOCIAL MEDIA: Great insights in here about how social media is shifting our understanding of branding.

• SOCIAL MEDIA BASICS: My latest blog post - why step #1 of your social media plan should be your web site.

• B2B IT SOCIAL PROFILE: Forrester's @jbernhoff highlights their report on how B2B IT buyers are highly engaged .

Web Sites Need Strategic Plans Too

I recently ran across a list serve request for a "Web Site Strategic Plan." I was happy to see the words "strategic" and "web" strung together like that so I pounced on it. My modified response below. I think this applies to any technology initiative regardless of the technologies it leverages, social or otherwise. Hope you find it useful. Note: this was for an association, so many of the examples are too.

Having written and implemented any number of web site plans for a wide variety of organizations, programs and products, I can tell you that your web site's strategic plan should be as unique as your organization. I agree strongly with [someone else's] recommendation to align your web plan with your organization's plan very closely and to put yourself through the rigor of a "business case" analysis which defines as precisely as possible what benefits (financial and otherwise) your effort will produce at what cost. There are two reasons to do this:

• you will be able to get executive and peer support more easily if you show them how their financial and personal support will help them accomplish their primary business objectives through a successful web initiative; and
• you will have more confidence in your own efforts and better understand how to make priority decisions about functionality, changing technology choices, budget etc., because you know your end game.

The place where I see web strategies often go wrong is in the imprecise statement of their objectives. It's easy to allow objectives to be too many and too broad. Of course we want to "serve our members" and "grow the membership base", but this gives little meaningful guidance to designers and marketers and results in expensive iterations of everything from coding to design. More precise objectives like "provide the membership with better networking opportunities" and "attract new members graduating from college and graduate school" are much more likely to produce effective web sites.

Here is a high-level Strategic Plan outline to get you started. Make it your own and you'll succeed.