Keeping the Feather Afloat

Being an online community manager is sometimes a bit like keeping a feather aloft in the air. It floats along nicely but every once in a while it needs a blast of energy to boost it higher and keep it from veering off course.

Definitive Guide to Social Media Strategy Before Tactics

I think for most people tactics are fun and strategy is boring. That’s the only way I can think to explain why so many people go straight for the shiny new objects (tactical tools) and then back into the strategy to explain it. You on the other hand, being the smart marketer that you are (you’re reading this, right?) know that it’s just smart business to come up with a strategy and a goal and THEN figure out what to use to get there.

I was excited to see Lee Odden’s post that bears the title above. What Lee did was ask over 40 of his A-list friends about the issue and then post their responses. BUT WAIT! Before you go running off (and I really do want you to read it) please look through a few of my favorite quotes from the piece, which include Guy Kawasaki’s contrarian advice: “Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy. . .”

So read through this, bookmark it, share with a friend and then leave a comment to tell me what you think. I’d love to create my own post of MY A-Listers – YOU!

Jessica Smith – JessicaNow
VP Digital and Global Co-Chair WOM Fleishman-Hillard
What it comes down to is asking the question ‘How do you define success?’. Tactics don’t answer that question. Strategy does.

Toby Bloomberg, Diva Marketing Blog
Strategy First helps you identify which are the best opportunities to put into play to achieve your goals. You do have goals? Oh, that’s another conversation.

Aaron Kahlow – Online Marketing Connect
CEO, Online Marketing Connect : Online Marketing Summit & Institute
Strategy before tactics on Social Media is equivalent to diving into a pool before looking to see if there is water let alone the depth to handle such.

Jay Baer
Founder, Convince & Convert
A “strategy” that is based on tactical execution isn’t a strategy at all, it’s a recipe for playing a constant game of catch up. The trick is to focus on how you’re going to be social, not where you’re going to do social media.

Julie Roehm
Marketing Strategy Consultant
Social media without strategy is like cooking without a recipe. Sometimes it works but sometimes its disaster.

David Alston – Community Instinct
VP Marketing & Community, Radian6
The C-Suite talks strategy, not tactics. And you are going to need their support if you even want ’social’ to take root in the soul of the enterprise.

Guy Kawasaki – Blog – Alltop Social Media
Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while. That’s all you need to know about strategy right now.

Three Part Series on Social Media Strategy

First, let me credit and thank Charlene Li and Jeremiah Owyang from the Altimeter Group for putting this together. Charlene and Jeremiah are two of the great thought leaders in this space so if you aren’t familiar with them take time to review their work. This is an Open Research project so please share with others.

If you have seen any of my presentations or read my posts and articles you know that I’m emphatic about creating an effective marketing strategy based on business objectives not the newest, hottest technology.  That’s why I think this is a valuable series for those who want to fine tune their social media strategy AND for those looking to create their first one.

Please leave comments for me after viewing and let me know what you think? Are there any questions that these bring up but don’t answer? What else needs to be included in this discussion?

The Social Strategy Trilogy

You can watch the hour-long recorded presentation with audio below.

Part 2: Developing a Social Strategy

Developing A Social Strategy Webinar

You can watch the hour-long recorded presentation with audio below.

Part 3: Getting Your Company Ready

Excellent presentation of how to utilize and identify your customers by recognizing certain social behaviors.

Above: Download the slides from slideshare and use as you see fit. The “crises plan” is a slide that can be customized for your needs, just provide attribution.

Social Strategy: Getting Your Company Ready, by Altimeter Group on Vimeo.

Above: Listen to the recording, including the presentation and attendees Q&A

How to Create An Effective Social Media Plan

I’ve had a lot of requests for the presentation I gave in February to the American Marketing Association in Birmingham, AL. I wanted to provide some practical advice on what steps you should take and what issues you should think about as you put together a strategy for your social media program. This barely scratches the surface of what is involved in creating a comprehensive, successful social media presence. Over time I will be creating more detailed guides so check back or follow me on Twitter: @ScottSchablow .  Please leave a comment, provide me with feedback or ask a question. Thanks!

WordPress Foundation Says “Hello World” With New Site

The official word on the official birth of The WordPress Foundation came in the wee hours of January 22, 2010 (there’s still a few minutes left of January 21 in my time zone). It reads simply: Hello, world. The moment we’ve all been waiting for: the WordPress Foundation is now public. As they say, slow cookin’ makes good eatin’.

So what’s this all about? WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg explains:

“The WordPress Foundation is a charitable organization founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software.

The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the projects we support. People and businesses may come and go, so it is important to ensure that the source code for these projects will survive beyond the current contributor base, that we may create a stable platform for web publishing for generations to come. ”

The move is an effort to further gather broad community support to make sure that the freely accessible software project remain that way.  When you look at the numbers you realize just how important WordPress has become:

• WordPress is available in 23 languages and has been downloaded about 18,000,000 times in 2009
• The more-than 1,100 free WordPress Themes have received over 11,000,000 downloads
• The 8,000 WordPress plugins  have received over 71,000,000 downloads

So, whether you are a WordPress user / fan or not, head on over to http://wordpressfoundation.org/ and have a look around on this momentous occasion.

(Hat tip to @acnatta for pointing this out on Twitter)