Beyond Reputation Management

Creating an Integrated Social Media Strategy Across All Business Channels

(March 2010 OCIABC program)

Kevin Murphy, Digital Experience Director at Waggener Edstrom, led us through the steps to developing an integrated social media strategy across multiple channels, including internal communications, PR, marketing, sales, and customer service.

Many functional groups in an organization participate in – and contribute to – a social media strategy. However, he said, public relations and other communications professionals have an advantage because they understand how to listen to an ongoing conversation – and how and when to engage in it to add value.

His advice: don’t try to be on every social media site – look at where your audience is and build a strategy  based on who they are, where the conversation occurs, and who the influencers are.

One study showed that 80 percent of the visitors to social media sites understand that corporate marketing professionals are monitoring the site – and they expect a response from the company during  a crisis.

The key: assess where you can tell the story directly and where you’ll need to package elements of the story so that others can help tell it (for example, in blogs or on Twitter).

View the slides from the presentation , and see Kevin Murphy’s Twitter feed, @KevMurphy