A social media strategy is about thinking how the business wants to be. Offline. Then the support comes in with social media and other forms of marketing. And all tools and techniques notwithstanding, it is still the human creativity and 'knowing your audience' that makes the difference in getting people from curious to connected to committed to engaged, the stages James mentioned in his presentation last week.
Our class discussion to determine a social media strategy for the case study
Jaigris shared had some aha moments for me. For instance, hearing examples of situations where Facebook may hurt rather than help. While that was an example of target community members being intimidated by aggressive opposition, this was conceptually good to keep in mind regarding other possibly harmful side-effects. For instance, in the professional world, if an organization is building credibility and one of its members' personal/ Facebook life receives negative press, the organization itself is affected. It holds for
British intelligence executives as well as
school teachers. Another great thought was tapping unusual sources like the perspectives of criminals (or ex-criminals) affected by firearm ownership laws.
During my presentation on a social media strategy for
Grace Educational Trust, the questions and suggestions offered by the class were really helpful (and it was so neat to see the class recognizing and supporting colleagues' ideas!) Through the questions I was able to see where more information could have been provided or clarified - such as specifics about the organization's resources, structure, ages of children, etc. (where was that button again when all assumptions are automatically understood?) The suggestions helped identify areas to potentially strengthen some strategy points, such as commenting on the overall site content organization, looking for strategic partnerships with schools involving children who may be involved with similar activities (hat-tip
Laura), exploring
open-source education (hat-tip Jaigris) and freely available
educational resources, or ensuring that any online contributions (such as comments on blogs) do not inadvertently mirror any overused selling technique. I also learned about sites like the
KhanAcademy (hat-tip
David) and videos of
Schoolhouse Rock (hat-tip Jaigris).
As I work to refine the strategy and articulate it concisely within the 10-page paper, I'm looking forward to the other case studies being presented next week.
