Guest blog by Andrew Jedlicka 
Marketing Professional & Adjunct Professor
More and more companies are aligning social media with their marketing and communications plans; therefore, the need to create a social media strategy is becoming more imperative than ever!
Organizations need to take a deeper look at their industry, market trends, competitors, and most importantly…their customers. They can do so by being more S-O-C-I-A-L”:
S — Strategize and plan your short-term and long-term goals as an organization, thus focusing on how social media trends in the marketplace can add value to your overall objectives.
O — Optimize and take full advantage of these trends such as utilizing blogs, video and photo sites, social bookmarking, and other forms of social media and marketing techniques.
C — Create and communicate your strategy internally to your employees once determined. No matter how small or large your organization is; it is important that your employees understand your social media strategy to provide optimal value to the organization and its end-users. Create your plan by identifying and segmenting your target market.
I — Identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats by creating a specific SWOT analysis as it relates to your social strategy.
A — Align your SWOT-based strategy to make any necessary adjustments and edits to your strategy.
L – Launch your strategy, first as a test and then for real, and continue to measure, track, and evaluate!
According to the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report; marketers want to learn more about blogging. 58% of marketers are blogging, 62% want to learn more about it and 66% plan on increasing blogging activities. A significant 86% of marketers also said that “social media was important to their businesses.”
As marketers increase their knowledge of social media, there is a growing opportunity to create an effective strategy!
Great article by a very intelligent guy. Had the Pleasure of working with Andrew, he is the REAL deal.
Social media is a practical way to advertise. It makes sense for marketers to use social media, because it grants easy access to the public. All new companies should take advantage of this medium in order to gain public acknowledgement.
Being involved with social media would be beneficial to any company. Using social media sites can make companies recognized and known world wide. As most people use social media daily, it provides an inexpensive and easy way to market and communicate with consumers.
I have used social media quite a bit in my previous jobs. However, they were all business to consumer companies. I was recently asked about how to use social media, especially Facebook, Tumblr, and more site such as these for Business to Business companies. Twitter has been easier to figure out, but I am curious how the above would change for a B2B company. It seems that companies do not really use social media in their b2b dealings. I guess I am interested in ideas of how to optimize this type of social media use in your opinion.