Why a Social Media Framework is Essential for Focus

I like shiny things. This can be a bit of an issue when it comes to Social Media – where there are infinite amounts of shiny things, glinting in the light and tempting us with novelty.

The speed of development of new social media sites, new apps to tag onto those sites, and new software that will help you manage your activity on those sites and with those apps, what started out as a few tweets can soon escalate out of control.

Without a Social Media Framework to slot our activities into, there is a real risk of losing focus and impact, losing ourselves in a deep pile of lovely stuff but not driving our own agenda.

Are we all essentially magpies at heart? How much more dull in comparison to add shine to something that already exists, to excel at a few things that will make a business impact rather than trying to cover all bases thinly. But how much more important to determine what will work best for you, and then work within that framework to ensure you are the one that shines when executing against that plan for your business.

There are three main phases to go through when thinking about how to manage and maintain your social media activity:

1. A discovery phase: This is where you need to understand your audience, who and where they are, and what issues of theirs can be addressed by your social media activity. With this understanding, you can work to articulate your goals and your capacity to achieve them. The last part of this phase is to understand what governance you will need, and any policies you will need to implement.


2. A strategy phase: Next you need to decide which sites and what activity will reach your target audience and prompt most response from them. What content do you have to share, what is your strategy for sharing and how can you tailor this to what your audience is asking for in an impactful way.


3. An implementation phase: Manage and track your activity against your strategy and objectives to make sure you are on the way to achieving your objectives. This is a continuous process and will lead to amendments to your strategy over time. In such a fast-moving environment this will continue to be essential.

With a ‘living’ Social Media Framework in place, at least when the next new shiny thing comes along you will have a framework of measured activity against which to weigh up whether you should get stuck in straight away or at all.

How do you keep on top of your social media activity? Are new things a concern or a temptation to you? I would love to hear more, please leave a comment below.