How to develop a social media strategy that makes sense

There are many valid reasons for a business to integrate social media into its' digital strategy. It does not make sense to do so, however, if the reason is "everyone is doing it." As with any content planned for a digital platform, research should be conducted to understand the likely and relevant social behaviors of target end-users. Additionally, the business should identify how social media advances it’s' objectives. The following describes some appropriate motivations for a business to plan for social media integration:

1. Increase Engagement on a Digital Platform with a "Hyper Social" End-User Community - If behavioral research uncovers highly social behavior in target end-user segments, it may be appropriate to incorporate tactics that enable interaction, discussion and sharing of digital content. Providing these "calls-to-action," for this type of audience, facilitate natural behaviors and tasks of a highly "socially connected" user base.

2. Provide Relevant Content Recommendations - Content recommendations are relevant on digital shopping experiences, broadband video experiences, as well as any digital experience where exploration of content is encouraged. Much effort is generally put into developing relevancy algorithms to understand what type of content is relevant for specific end-users based on their previous shopping and/or viewing patterns on the experience. In general, and there are exceptions, people get recommendations for "what to buy" and "what to watch" from their friends. Therefore, it may be easier to understand how to elevate "friends' recommendations" for these types of digital experiences rather than developing a complex, behavior-based, logic for content recommendations.

3. Reduce Friction in End-User Registration and Authentication - Digital consumers have likely created profiles with popular social networks such as Facebook. Rather than have them re-create their profiles, which could be a barrier to adoption, businesses may decide to enable end-users to link their existing profiles for the explicit purpose of making it easier for them to register or sign-in to their digital experience. Additionally, services which enable these connections sometimes provide access to stored preference data as well as the end-users' friends. The additional information about end-users, gleaned from linked social networks, may help to fill gaps in existing customer profiles.

4. Enable Viral Promotion of Digital Content - Making content portable, via RSS/XML feeds, and shareable, via email, add to Facebook, like, and tweet buttons, is the first step to increasing the likelihood that content will be promoted by "word of mouth." These tools are relatively easy to integrate into an existing digital experience, and provide a highly social end-user segment a logical "next step" after consuming digital content.

There are many other "community-oriented" tactics to explore include facilitating connections amongst end-users and providing a platform for "taste-makers" to review and recommend content, but the point is to understand what the business and end-user goals are prior to defining the right social media strategy for a specific business.