Posts from — March 2010

It’s as if BrandMIND was reading my mind.  Yesterday I spoke at the annual College News Association of the Carolinas (CNAC) annual meeting in Charlotte; my topic, How Web 2.0 is changing the face of university relations.  The presentation will be posted soon on the CNAC Web site; cnacnet.org so check it out.  In reading this post from BrandMIND I realize I’m not alone in my thinking.

The first decision regarding the use of social-media is making the decision to proceed.  Some might ask, “do you embrace the madness.”  If you do — and I believe you must –  where do you go next? How do you get started integrating social-media into your marketing mix?  Well, you might follow the 8-step process for Strategic Social Media Integration outlined by the company.  Those steps are:

1. Listen and educate internal stakeholders
   • Invest some time and energy in learning about social media.  Listen to the social web for sentiment about your company, and also learn from competitors and other categories.
2. Understand your audience and how they currently interact with social media
   • Using simple techniques and tools, learn which topics are important to your customers.  Find out how your customers are engaging with other companies.
3. Determine social marketing objectives
   • What do you hope to achieve with social media?  Are you interested in using it for customer service? To create a closed customer-feedback loop?  To provide product information?  To promote your products?  To build your brand?  Make sure that internal stakeholders agree on objectives and how to measure against them. [Read more →]