At its core, The Brainzooming Group helps organizations become more successful by rapidly expanding the range of strategic options they consider. We then help them prioritize and plan for implementing the strongest alternative. Since many organizations are challenged right now in determining what social networking means for them, we're doing lots of work on social media strategy.
We apply our strategy development methodology to social media to help clients get a quick handle on smart moves into social business. How quick? One client, after a full-day, multi-organization planning session said, "What we did today would have taken us six months on our own."
That's what we want to hear!
Adapting the Brainzooming methodology more specifically to social media strategy has triggered a lot of development and writing in this area. To make our strategic thinking more accessible and valuable to you, here are 50 Brainzooming articles on multiple aspects of social media strategy. These posts will help you better address it from a broad, organizational perspective.
You won't find an article on "How Do I Set up a Facebook Page" for my business.
What you will discover are very adaptable principles on how social media can work (or work harder and better) for your organization and its audiences. If you'd like to discuss specifics on what these ideas mean for your organization, let us know. We'd love to work with you! – Mike Brown
Core Strategy
- The Two Biggest Mistakes in Social Media - Avoid them both at all costs.
- 3 Crippling Disconnects in Social Media Strategy - A plea for a holistic, integrated perspective.
- Social Media Strategic Planning with a LARGE Group - A video highlight of how The Brainzooming Group does strategy planning.
- A Completely Different Type of Social Media Presentation - The basic foundation we use for our strategy engagements.
- There’s No Place like Home for the Holidays (or for a Successful Social Media Strategy) - Get your home page right first.
- See Me, Feel Me, Criticize Me - A way to better self-assess your online presence.
- Brand Transparency in a Connected, Socially Networked World - Perspectives on online trends from Matt Anthony, the head of leading interactive agency, VML.
- 3 Must-Haves for Driving Social Media - What skill sets are important for successful social media participants.
- Expanding Social Media Expertise When Your Employer Isn’t Interested - Strategic ways to introduce a reluctant organization to social media.
Social Media Metrics and ROI
- 6 Social Media Metrics You Should Be Tracking - Our whole brain approach to metric tracking.
- “The Social Media Crash of 2011″ with Author Jamie Turner (@60SecondTweets) - Jamie Turner on the importance of measurement.
- Is Blogging Worth It? - ROI comes in a variety of forms, especially when you're an individual involved in social media.
Social Media Listening
- @MallofAmerica Is All Over Social Media Listening - Yes, you can actively engage customers. Yes, you have to work at it. Yea, the Mall of America does it really well.
- Five Columns to Get More from Twitter - Some simple Twitter-based techniques to listen better.
Building Relationships with an Audience
- 26 Pieces of Advice for Dating and Social Media Success - Social media and networking start with relationships, and there are clearly right and wrong ways to go about developing them.
- Whenever I Call You Friend - Who your friends are SHOULD look different now than it did five years ago.
- 16 Social Media Tactics for Building an Audience - Advice for taking a strategic approach to developing and interacting with an online audience.
- 6 Strategies to Avoid with Your Social Network – Ideas from #SMCKC - No reason to make it harder than it has to be for your audience to interact with your brand online.
- Building Brand Familiarity through Twitter - Yes, even an emerging brand can start building awareness through social media.
- Are You Retweeting in Real Life? - There are a lot of people not active on social networking platforms, so you need to think about how you can bridge the gap to interact with them.
- Don’t I Know You? - What can you do to stay close to an audience whose size is large and whose needs are diverse?
Content Marketing
- Creating Intriguing Social Media Content – 3 Fundamental Steps - The basics of being a stronger content creator.
- Social Media Content Ideation: Think – Know – Do - Get a group of people, use this technique, and generate 10 topic ideas per minute.
- 25 Creative Blog Post Ideas You Could Write Today - Nearly a month's worth of post ideas in one list.
- What to Blog about When You’re Stuck Creatively - Anything can be a blog topic. Trust me.
- Social Media Content – Space It Out Over Time - There's no need to share all your content all at once. Give your readers and yourself a break and spread it out.
Improving the Productivity and Impact of Your Social Media Implementation
- 10 Ways to Make Your Social Media Strategy Come Alive - A short list of questions to activate your presence.
- 15 Ideas to Make Your DIY Social Media More Successful - If you're working with an informal team, these ideas will increase your impact.
- 20 Strategies for Making Your Solo Social Media Effort More Successful - Ways for a solopreneur to get (or keep) going on social media more successfully.
- Social Media Productivity – 13 Tips to Maximize Your Time - Ways to get more out of every tactic you use in managing your time investment.
- 2 Easy Strategies for Tackling Social Media – One App at a Time - Keep learning at a manageable pace.
- 9 Strategies to Curb Social Media Information Overload - It can all definitely get to be too much. Here's permission and advice on where to pull back.
Customer Interaction in the Age of Social Media
- 5 Ways to Prepare for a Brand Kidnapping through Social Media - My take on the Kevin Smith vs. Southwest Airlines hubbub and how to avoid it for your brand.
- Social Media and IRL Lessons from Chris Brogan - Passing on some wisdom from the original "Trust Agent."
- Innovative Strategy for Online Social Communities – Five Takeaways - Recapping a detailed presentation on what works and doesn't in managing online communities.
- Are Your Service Recovery Efforts Broadcast Worthy? - BP had 16 live underwater cameras on its service recovery effort. How many might you have when trying to fix a screw-up?
- A Smart “In Real Life” Interactive Brand Strategy - Chick-fil-A is one of my favorite brands. Here's how it integrated online and IRL interactive strategy in a way that made sense.
- 5 Strategic Reasons for Blog Writers and Blog Readers to Meet in Real Life - Why I really enjoy meeting blog readers...and you would too.
Social Media Policy and Guidelines
- The World’s Simplest Social Media Policy - A guest post on nateriggs.com offering a policy nearly any organization can use to get started right away.
- Social Media Policy – Whats and Whens Behind Your Guidelines - Situations your guidelines should address.
Using Social Media to Drive Innovation
- 30 Ideas for Using Social Networks to Help You Be More Innovative - This guest post on Blogging Innovation explores how social media can help you get innovation going in your organization.
- Catalyzing Innovation Strategy with Social Networking – 10 More Ideas - 10 more ideas for social media drive your innovation strategy and implementation.
Incorporating Social Media into Event Marketing
- 8 Ways Social Media Benefits Events - Why it makes sense for event organizers to support social media, formally and informally, at their events.
- Is There a “Press Pass” for Live Event Tweeters and Bloggers? - A plea to be able to get a seat (okay and maybe a power outlet) for those creating content at live events.
- Live Event Social Media Strategy – BMA Engage Conference - Recapping the content effort we produced at the 2010 Business Marketing Association national conference.
Rants - Don't Believe the Social Media Hype
- Apathy or Simply Pathetic? Social Media Rock Star Angst - Could social media rock stars please quit complaining for a minute?
- A Life Strategy without the Fireworks - Slightly veiled frustration that I didn't come up with @ShitMyDadSays.
- Getting Nothing but Social Media Static - Social media isn't all wonderful. We surrender a lot in the way of quality communication.
- Interactive Strategy That’s Stupid - Don't send me to your website for no good reason.
- Social Media Strategy for Those of Us in the Crowd - Everybody may be broadcasting, but not everybody has a big audience.
The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ve developed integrated social media strategy for other brands and can do the same for yours.
