Strategic best practices
A number of best practices for social media marketing initiatives have already emerged, particularly in terms of planning the social media approach, and these tactics should be integrated into your overall marketing and communications strategy. The preparation stage is complex, but absolutely critical to success. There are a number of key factors to consider before beginning:

• The audience
  Like any marketing or communication initiative, target audience analysis can help you identify the best platforms for the most effective communication. It also helps you identify key influencers in your market, whether that is analysts or even competitors.
• Survey the social landscape
  What is your current status with regard to social media? Who participates and how? And what target audiences are priorities? Taking a look around can help benchmark future activities.
• Define your goals
  By prioritizing target audiences, you can create objectives for each. What do you want from each? And perhaps more importantly, what do they want from you?
• Identify your team
  Who in your organization is best placed to help with social media initiatives? This may include individuals in marketing, management, customer support, sales or IT. Your selection depends on the overall goals for the initiative and influences participation.
• Choose your platform carefully
  Prioritizing tactics can highlight how to spend the most time and effort. For example, blogging can be highly effective but it often requires more commitment and effort, while social networking may be less effective but involve a greater time commitment. Considering the strengths and weaknesses of different platforms can help you make a better match when linking your tactics with your target audiences and goals.

One of the quickest ways to begin is to make connectivity with social networks and communities easy. For example, just adding ‘Share This’ links and widgets to a website can give audiences an array of ways to not only interact but to share your content with their networks.

Social media marketing metrics
Finally, in these harsh economic times, measurement is crucial. It could take the form of any or all of the following:

• Activity: both what we and others say and do. For example, number of posts, number of tweets;
• Reach: the number of connections, followers, mentions of brand and audience reached;
• Actual interactions: replies, comments, likes, re-tweets, click-throughs and lead generation.

Measurements are important because they will justify and gauge your social media marketing initiative’s effectiveness and, to some degree, demonstrate your return on investment (a critical requirement at board level). But most importantly, the metrics you employ should signpost the way to improvement by clearly showing which social media tactics and approaches have worked best, and for which target audiences and platforms. You should therefore begin by establishing how your competition already participates in social media. What do they say, and what do customers and prospects say about them? This analysis may help to identify your unique selling points (USPs) as well as ways in which you can differentiate your message, approach, and brand. Listen carefully to and share information gathered from the prime influencers, as they can sometimes change the tune at the snap of a finger (at the click of a mouse, at least). In addition, starting a dialogue with a key influencer can provide invaluable interaction and exposure among their peers and followers.