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Developing a social media strategy
When developing a social media strategy there seems to be a tendency for managers to turn
straight to the tools they’ll be using – should we start with Twitter or Facebook, or should
we create a blog? This is the worst possible way to develop strategy; indeed, it’s not strategy,
it’s tactics! Strategy development for social media should be informed by demand analysis of
customer channel adoption and the commercial potential of the approach.
Customer adoption of social media tools will vary according to customer segments and mar-
kets. So it’s important to start by completing a marketplace analysis (as described in Chapter 2),
to see which social tools and engagement techniques are most effective for the target audience.
Next, the commercial benefits of social media need to be reviewed and goals defined.
Some marketers will see social media primarily as a way of gaining new customers through
the viral effect of social media as existing customers or contacts discuss or recommend your
content or products. For others, the benefits may be centred more on how recommenda-
tions, reviews and ratings can increase conversion rate. Public relations specialists will want
to listen to the conversations for positive and negative sentiment about brand and then seek
to manage this by increasing the positives and managing the negatives. Finally, social media
can be viewed as a customer engagement and retention tool. Here social media are used to
deliver customer service or are used as alternative channels to email marketing to inform
customers about new product launches or promotions.
Mini Case Study 9.3
Best Buy is a multinational retailer of technology and entertainment products operating in the United States,
Canada, Europe, China and Mexico. The Best Buy family of brands and partnerships collectively generates
more than $45 billion in annual revenue and includes brands such as Best Buy; Audiovisions; The Carphone
Warehouse; Future Shop; Geek Squad, Jiangsu Five Star; Magnolia Audio Video; Napster; Pacific Sales; The
Phone House; and Speakeasy. Providing quality customer service is a large part of the customer experi‑
ence. Best Buy explains:
Approximately 155,000 employees apply their talents to help bring the benefits of these brands to life for
customers through retail locations, multiple call centers and websites, in-home solutions, product delivery
and activities in our communities.
Figure 9.11 shows the customer support page for Bestbuy.com. You can see that there are a wide range
of choices of customer service including:
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The Twelpforce (http://twitter.com/twelpforce). Immediate Twitter response followed by around
30,000 customers.
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Geek Squad Online Support. ‘A live agent can fix your PC now! Prices starting at $49.99’.
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Discussion in communities.
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Standard email and Click To Call options.
Video explanation: www.bby.com/about/.
Best Buy offers, listens and responds in multiple channels
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Part 2 Strategy and applications
POST is a useful framework for businesses to apply to help them develop a social media
strategy, as summarised by Forrester (2007). POST is a simplified version of the SOSTAC
framework introduced at the start of this chapter:
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People. Understanding the adoption of social media within an audience is an essential
starting- point. The Forrester social media profiling tool shows how usage varies for differ-
ent demographic groups:
www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_ tool.html.
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Objectives. Set different goals for different options to engage customers across different
aspects of the customer life cycle from customer acquisition to conversion to retention.
Josh Bernoff of Forrester recommends: ‘decide on your objective before you decide on a
technology. Then figure out how you will measure it.’
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Strategy. How to achieve your goals. Bernoff suggests that because social media are a dis-
ruptive approach you should imagine how social media will support change. He says:
Figure 9.11
Best Buy customer service
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