8 steps to a Social Media strategy from Salesforce

Thought this was a good resource for CRM managers looking at developing a Social Media strategy and the integration path.

To be successful, it’s vital to have a plan. Here are the steps to take to make sure social media fits your business and your business plan:

1. Create a community manager role - The community manager will serve as your point person for all social media and collaboration activities, including evangelizing your product or business. This person will also serve as your company’s official voice on social media sites and be tasked with staying on top of new capabilities and tools.
2. Create a social media steering committee - In addition to the community manager, define other stakeholders in your social media strategy to create a cross-functional steering committee that includes public relations, product management, customer support, and marketing. This committee should drive your social media initiatives.
3. Define objectives - What do you hope to achieve with your social media campaign? Each tool offers different benefits. For example, if your objective is to reduce case volume for your support team, consider extending your self-service offers by using Twitter and the knowledge and answers capabilities of Salesforce. Other objectives might include increasing qualified leads or building customer loyalty or awareness. Define very specific objectives and then choose the tools that can help get you there.
4. Decide on success metrics - The true impact of social media can be hard to measure. Social media tends to be word of mouth or “viral,” which is challenging to measure quantitatively.  However, many social media sites offer fairly robust analytics. For example, YouTube lets you track video views by number and geographic region. And counting the amount of activity on your Twitter feeds or Facebook posts gives you a good idea how those programs perform. As part of your plan, decide what metrics are important, set your goals, and determine how to track results.
5. Set up social media guidelines - In most cases, you want to encourage many employees to participate in your social media campaigns. Be sure to establish guidelines that specify the “do’s and don’ts” of participating in online communities. Information shared through social media sites is public. Before employees start interacting with customers and prospects, be sure everyone knows that financial statements and private information are off limits for your community sites.
6. Create easy-to-remember URLs - To encourage customers and prospects to participate in your communities, make it easy to access your links. With most social media tools, you can select a personalized URL. When setting up your Facebook or Twitter accounts, make sure the URLs are a natural extension of your businesses Web site and that they’ll work in emails and marketing collateral. For example, Salesforce users and customers can access our Facebook page with the URL www.salesforce.com/facebook.
7. Be active - The volume of customer interaction through both external and internal tools is an important success indicator for your social strategy. To build and keep followers, update content—including comments, status, and tweets—regularly to keep it fresh and to interact with your users. Not responding to posted messages has the potential to not just damage your social media programs, but your company as well. Check out the Salesforce CRM workflow tools to make sure the right person gets every message.
8. Be flexible - Social media and strategy are moving targets; new functionality and new tools are introduced all the time. Review and revise your social media plan regularly to keep up with—and make the most of—those changes. To keep up with news from salesforce.com, bookmark the Salesforce blog for social media.