I came across an interesting podcast interview with Podtech’s director of corporate media strategy, Jeremiah Owyang. Within the interview, Jeremiah outlines his five-step process to integrate corporate marketing strategies into the blogosphere, and methods to develop prospect/customer trust and credibility.
According to Jeremiah, the five steps to implementing a corporate social media strategy are:
- Awareness and Education – Understand the social medium and the different tools that are available like blogs, forums, wikis, podcasts etc.
- Listen to the Marketplace – Social media interaction is on a peer to peer basis, so listen to what people are saying about your company and your competitors. Use tools like Google alerts and Technorati tags to keep up to date with your marketplace.
- Experiment – Before launching a corporate social media strategy, experiment with tools like blogs and wikis internally before rolling them out to the general public.
- Engage your Audience – Roll out your social media tools and start engaging your target audience. One good point here that Jeremiah made was that companies do not create communities online, they join communities. That is a very important distinction as it changes how you interact within a community.
- Listen and Measure – at some point you need to measure the impact that your social media strategy is having on your business.
Overall the podcast is a good introduction for people wondering how to implement a social media strategy.
