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Just 22 days ago, on the 8th of June, the minds over
at Mashable.com decided we needed Social Media Day, a special day on the
Gregorian calendar celebrating social dialogue and the tools and platforms
enabling the “revolution” (Mashable’s word, not mine). And they decided that
day would be today. While I’m all for raising awareness of social media, it
seems to me that the vast majority of businesses would be better off
celebrating Social Media Strategy Day.

As Tac Anderson of Waggener Edstrom points out in The 3
Types of Social Media Strategy, what’s missing from most social media strategy
is the actual strategy part. That’s a bingo! In my experience, far too many
companies launch themselves into the web’s socially enabled ecosystem with nary
a clue as to how their efforts relate to business strategy and ultimately, the
bottom line.

We all know of businesses that have a Facebook Business Page or Twitter account, give it the old college try for the first month or so,
and by day 90–when they’ve either become sidetracked by other areas of the
business or don’t see a social media-related impact on the bottom line–throw
their hands up in the air and arrogantly proclaim that social media marketing
doesn’t work.

Well, duh. If you don’t have a business-aligned strategy
to guide your efforts in the first place, social media marketing
isn’t going to work for your business. In fact, according to the folks at
Digital Brand Expressions, nearly 60 percent of businesses today don’t have a
strategic media communications plan to guide their social media efforts. With
numbers like those, it’s no wonder so many company blogs, Facebook business
pages and business-related Twitter accounts either sit dormant for
weeks on end, or contain little more than ill-advised advertisements
or “deal of the day” posts.

If your business has a social media presence and you
operate without a business-aligned social media strategy, you’re going in through
a series of heavily trafficked and fast closing “out” doors . . . wearing a
blindfold. Do yourself a favor (and not just because today is supposedly
Social Media Day), address exactly how word-of-mouth, social media, and social
networking relates to your businesses top line goals. Decide who or what
department in the organization “owns” the effort (versus who serves as a
“vendor”). And then determine how all of this shows up in your communications
strategy. In the meantime, save the celebrations until you’ve worked out and adopted a viable social media strategy (and, in case you’re wondering, “my strategy is to have no strategy,” doesn’t count).
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