How To Develop a Social Media Plan in Five Easy Steps

Flickr photo by Terry Bain
Terry / aXis / You Are a Dog / the book / the blog // We Are the Cat / the blog

I found Mashable's How To Develop a Social Media Plan in Five Easy Steps Via Britt Bravo who forwarded me this link.  I was searching for the perfect illustration for "five" in flickr and since you all know how much I like dogs, I couldn't resist this photo. 

Last week, we explored questions about how nonprofits go about planning their social media efforts and various resources are summarized here.   I found 3 really good planning templates. Two had an organizational lens and the other was adapted from some more traditional communications planning questions.

We used a map metaphor, inspired by and adapted a post by Chris Brogan.  We created a worksheet with more detailed questions adapted and remixed from CCTV's wiki. (The original worksheet was developed from recommendations from the Spin Project and the "Smart Chart" developed by Spitfire Strategies.) Amy Sample Ward contributed a workshop group exercise based on Forrester's POST method.

I like the framework that How To Develop a Social Media Plan by Mashable presents.   It is good for a project lens - after you've thought through the organizational capacity and outcomes questions.

Step 1: Listen

This is the best practice for the first step.  If you attend any presentation on social media - you'll hear as the first step - listen.    I like the suggestion of using alltop to find blogs to read - really easy and streamlined.

Step 2: Prepare

These steps are about figuring out who in organization is going to have the conversations.   In many nonprofit communications plans we call this the messenger.  I'm thinking the "discussant" or there's probably some better terms - evangelist?  The section on strategy points over the some for-profit slides, but I might point people here

• Find people
• Set rules of engagement
• Determine your strategy

Step 3:  Engage

Yep, that is the fun part.

Step 4:  Go Offline

This is a really important step.   Does anyone know of good posts that elaborate on this point and are written from a nonprofit perspective?

Step 5:  Measure Success

What I like best about this section is that the focus isn't on numbers only - these are reflective questions related to learning.  The action - feed -reflection process is very important.  I've tweaked the questions so they are more nonprofit friendly. 

– Did we learn something about our stakeholders that we didn’t know before?
– Did our stakeholders learn something about us?
– Were we able to engage our stakeholders in new conversations?
– Does our staff have an effective new tool for external feedback and reputation management?

In summary, The Mashable How To Develop a Social Media Plan is a simplified, step-by-step approach that's really practical and useful for nonprofit organizations.  I would love to see an example of a nonprofit's social media plan.  Anyone have something share?

Comments

[Nina Simon]

With regard to step 4, some museums are now experimenting with hosting meetups for various online communities, from knitters to Yelpers. The Ontario Science Centre, a leader in production of online video about science, is hosting a big YouTube meetup this August. For them, it's an opportunity to provide a non-commercial, friendly space for a social meeting--and by hosting these folks, they are inviting them to create thousands of videos set at the Science Centre.

The Science Museum of Minnesota also has wonderful stories of people who chat with their staff online on their ScienceBuzz site and then come to the real museum and are thrilled to meet the staff member behind the online username.

To me, this is a natural for museums and libraries since we have great physical spaces for offline and can really tie our onsite and online activities in this way.