Social Media Strategies

Basic Steps of Implementing a Social Media Action Plan

The SIDA Principle 

Earlier, we explained what kind of Social Media Channels there are out there. In this posting you will get a whole bunch of information about how to use them and how to implement a social Media Action Plan.

The Implementation of your Social Media Action Plan basically follows the SIDA (Study – Identify – Define- Assess) Rule:

STUDY

Learn as much as you can about new media! There is no way around it; you absolutely have to understand what you are dealing with. There is tons of content on the web, thousands of books and if you are ready to invest a little money, attend a workshop or a webinar.

IDENTIFY

- Check out who you’re up against and identify your competitions weaknesses, in what area they’re not yet (fully) present, what niches you can fit in and so on.

- Identify the business needs of your different departments – PR, Marketing, Sales etc.

- Make a record of targets you want to tackle with your campaign.

DEFINE

- Define what would be the best Social Media Tools for your individual Business needs.

- Make a SMART plan (Set Measurable And Realistic Targets).

- If you choose not to implement the campaign by yourself, work on a favorable Service Level Agreement with your Social Media partner.

ASSESS

- Measure the number of generated leads, amount of traffic and increase in sales (or interested customers) regularly

- Evaluate your strategy in regular intervals and adapt or update it if necessary.

Sounds not too hard, doesn’t it? But don’t underestimate the complexity – Never forget that you are dealing with people and not just with numbers or some virtual abstractum.