I’m working with an editorial-based property to help develop its social media strategy and have put together the following outline to kick off our conversation on the topic. I thought it would be interesting to post it here and I’d greatly appreciate any and all feedback. Please note that this is still a work in progress and that there is no budget for social media so this just covers the basics.

BEGIN OUTLINE

Social Media Outline

Our 3 goals for social media should be the following (in no particular order):

1. Drive traffic

• Make site content more shareable
  • Implement OAuth and Facebook Connect for user sign in
  • Implement sharing platform (AddThis, ShareThis, etc.) and optimize sharing flow for users
  • Allow for sharing of user comments into social media streams and optimize flow
• Cultivate and grow fan and follower bases 
  • Promote links to social media accounts (both brand and editors) prominently on site
  • Follow influential people and promote curated lists (staff, critics, industry experts, bloggers we like, etc.)
  • Reach out to those in social media discussing topics relevant to brand
  • Monitor and respond promptly to any questions or concerns directed specifically at brand and editors
  • Retweet and call out interesting posts and followers to engender goodwill
  • Run sweepstakes and contests specifically for fans and followers
• Immediately publish new content into social media streams
  • Publish all new posts into brand streams
  • Strongly urge editors to publish their posts into personal streams

2.  Build brand

• Involve editors with brand’s social media accounts to create personality for the brand’s social media presences
  • Have editors post informal thoughts/comments on behalf of the brand into its social media streams
  • Have editors respond to comments and social media mentions on behalf of the brand
• Urge editors to post into their personal streams work anecdotes, photos, etc that are in line with the spirit of the brand

3.  Get more involved

• Strongly urge every editor to create personal social media presences
• Suggest that they network via social media with key players in the field to become more influential, knowledgable and up to date about trends and happenings

Once these actions are implemented and progress towards the goals have been made, measurement will be key. Specifically, we will need to understand how users are reacting/responding and use A/B testing to refine the messaging and interactions. It will also be important to learn how much traffic social media can drive and implement the appropriate tools to make the publishing and analytics process much more streamlined and formalized.

END OUTLINE

I would greatly appreciate thoughts/additions/edits from those of you who read this. I also need help with the following Twitter vs. Facebook question. Should we use the two platforms differently or push the same content through both?

I tend to believe that they are unique networks and should be leveraged in different ways. More specifically, I lean towards putting more temperal content on Twitter and engaging in shorter conversations with followers on that platform. On Facebook, I think you can have more engaging and deeper connections with fans and thus think it is appropriate to have more intimate content like candid photos in the office that give a good taste of the personality of the people that work at the company.

Thanks so much for reading and please do no be shy to leave comments. I would very much appreciate any help and thoughts you have on this topic.