We’re often asked to put together content and social media strategies for our clients, and then to make them as practical as possible – to develop a social media playbook (although I hate that term)
So what does a good social media playbook involve?
Obviously it varies dependent on individual clients and objectives, but in practice there are a number of themes which are fairly consistent. I thought it would be useful to share the 11 common themes of the best social media playbooks, based on our own communications strategy methodology and approach.
- Define objectives (based on business objectives, but with more than a nod to communications objectives)
- Identify target audiences
- Audit existing channels against objectives and target audiences
- Refresh or write social media policy
- Develop and agree content themes, and % of created v curated content
- Define roles, responsibilities and set up teams/tools/processes for listening, content-creation, engagement, escalation and reporting
- Develop tone of voice guidelines, and copywriting/technical guidelines for each of your social channels
- Create a process to produce and regularly update and approve content plans
- Establish a triage and response methodology, including classification of content and individuals who engage with you, workflows, response timelines and approval processes, and associated KPIs
- Create an evaluation methodology which recognises the right mix of ROI and other business objectives
- Refresh escalation and crisis communications processes (or start them from scratch)
This is clearly just a framework, but I figured it’s worth sharing, particularly as I think it sits very comfortably with social media playbooks from the likes of GDS, Cisco, and Salesforce [registration required].
I’m sure there are other really good playbooks around – if I should link to any more, let me know. Ditto if you’re looking for any social media training or support.