website

What’s the Plan, Stan?

We encourage every business, every campaign and every cause to have some kind of online strategy. That means an online presence with a purpose. What we see time and time again is one of two things: no real online presence at all, or a spray & pray type of online presence where every online tool imaginable is engaged but…poorly.

Some people say you should just dive right in and try social media, which we support. What we don’t support is opening multiple Facebook Pages, Twitter accounts, blogs, Flickr accounts, and even websites – having them falter and then abandoning them. Abandoning them but not *removing* them. It’s a bit like getting a goldfish, not feeding it, and then never throwing it away.

Something else we see a lot are companies opening a social media account, and then someone else within that same company, opening one as well. And then a repeat of those actions by someone else a few months later – or on another coast – or in another department. Suddenly one company has 3 Facebook Pages and 4 Twitter accounts. The profiles are active – but each has a different fan base with different messaging. Talk about diffusing your online potential and confusing your online audience.

These are signs of diving in without a plan. It smells of “We should be online. Let’s make it so.”. Yes. Do make it so. But do it strategically. Do your homework. We promote the idea of doing an online assessment first to understand what you should do online and how you should do it. Then comes a strategy to get it done right.

Tags: assessment, audience, facebook, strategy, Twitter, website