Credit: CartoonStock.com

There is a dizzying array of social media platforms, enough to make your average communicator’s head spin. What channels should you use, when, why and how? It’s like someone trying to build a house without a blueprint or awareness of what the various tools do.

When speaking to business groups I often point out the social media industry is following a well-worn path insofar as emerging industries go. Most new industries start with many competitors and eventually shrink to a few. For example, there used to be a plethora of North American railways, pulp mills, steel producers, automobile manufacturers; heck, even newspapers — now there are few.

In other words, it’s messy at the start of an industry and then consolidation occurs.

The trick right now is to cherry-pick the few valuable platforms and actions from a cornucopia
of choice. And that comes down to demographics, size and type of community you are trying
to build, objectives, and so on. In other words, the plan. Before the plan comes the pre-flight
checklist, something I call “the social media BUMPP”.

BUMPP is a mnemonic I’ve devised to help my old sieve of a memory properly safeguard
a client before engagement on the social web. The acronym stands for Brand, Understand,
Monitor, Policy, and then Participate.

Even if a company is not planning to use social media at all, it behooves them to reserve
and protect their brand. Just for fun, head on over to http://namechk.com, put your company
name into the search box, and see if it has been stolen. Brand-jacking, as the kidnapping of
corporate or brand names is called, is all too common, reminiscent of the dot com gold rush
of the late 90s. I know several large organizations that had to plead and cajole to get their
names back on Twitter or YouTube. Even if the squatter is not cooperative there are some
remedies to retrieve your company name, but it must be clear this is a legitimate trademark.

One of my clients has a name that means something else in another language, so they
can’t claim exclusive rights to the word, thus that form of the name is lost to a squatter.
Adding “Inc”, “Corp”, or “Ltd” can sometimes resolve that kind of impasse, but it is an
inelegant solution to an intractable problem.

Once your company name (including variants) is reserved, your organization needs to
understand social media, even if it is just to choose to ignore it. Dismissing it out of hand is
unwise no matter how dim the prospects may be of future use. A few inexpensive seminars
and discovery sessions can go a long way to making an educated decision regarding the pros
and cons of social media.

It is said in social media you should listen first, talk later. This is equally true whether referring
to one-on-one conversations or web chatter as a whole. The best way to find the communities
and conversations you may wish to participate in is to set up your radar to find them – and
that means social media monitoring. Google just enhanced their real time search this week so
that’s a good orientation, but, as I’ve written in this space before, many organizations will find
commercial, professional tools like Radian6, Sysomos, Jive and Meltwater Buzz to be more
functional and comprehensive solutions.

So now your name is reserved, you understand the lay of the social media land, you have
been listening carefully to the conversations – it must be time to Tweet, no?

Not without a policy you don’t!

In my view the best social media policy is one that doesn’t really exist. Think about it, you
probably don’t have a phone policy, do you? However you likely will have an Acceptable Use
Policy, a Disclosure Policy, a Employee Conduct Policy and so on. Upgrading those policies
to be broad enough to include social media and whatever comes next is a more sustainable
way to introduce social media policy into a large organization.

Train your staff, leave them with a one or two page guideline document (available on the
intranet), and everyone will be clear how to play safe on the social web.

With the above in place, the real fun begins, building your strategy. To return to the home
building metaphor, you have a blueprint, you still need to pour cement, frame the house, add
plumbing/electrical/HVAC, and so on.

These are the building blocks of social media participation. Not as sexy as diving right in, but
it tends to stand up over time.

As usual, send me your feedback on Twitter at @dblacombe or via e-mail
doug@communicatto.com.

Doug Lacombe is president of Calgary social media agency communicatto.

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