Archived Post from the We Are Media Workshop

Original Blog Post Feb. 2009 as part of the We Are Media Workshop from NTEN

"Key Points of your Social Media Strategy"

Objective:
Engage volunteers, supporters and donors in spreading the word and raising funds for Operation Smile.

Personally, my strategy/goal is to create as large of a "legion of Smiles" meaning supporters, fans, followers and interested people so that when we do large scale campaigns they can be mobilized to not only open their wallets but to really make an impact on the funds raised and events held.

Target Audience:
Quite broad as we currently have many medical professionals blogging and participating in social media sites like twitter. We also have students and young people participating in Facebook and MySpace as well as others. So we have different target audiences for different elements of our objective.

Integration:
Once I have done analysis on what we currently have in place, where our holes are, where our opportunities and greatest needs are I will be able to meet with our Direct Response Marketing team (and web team) to figure out the best way of integrating with our current traditional marketing strategy.

In terms of Integrating with our Internet Strategy, again that will depend on what i learn from "listening" and when I learn in more detail the current web plan. Our web-team has already invested in web optimization, search engine etc.

My philosophy as stated before is to use New Media as a means to build supporters that will then be further inspired through the other forms of marketing.


Culture Change:
Again, there is a large army of folks already communicating about our organization on social media, it is my job to find them, refine where needed and use them to help encourage more viral communication. I will also be creating parameters, how-to's and best practice forms forms to encourage more staff and volunteers to get active online. I am fortunate in that our organization is fully supportive and excited about using social media.