Sometimes in the rush to get to the next insight, the next revelation, study, blog post or whatever, we forget some of the basics.

Contributors and creators are going to be your best bet for becoming influencers or evangelists. Make sure you are taking care of these folks in your community strategy. Treating all of your audience equally is a strategy failure. Know what each of these groups is trying to accomplish on your site, and make sure you simplify the path to THEIR goal, which is not always the same as YOUR goal. But that’s the social part. A conversation not an advertisement.

Notice that much of the world does not speak English or use Facebook. While it’s the number one destination site in the US, China’s QQ dwarfs the participation levels of Facebook.

In case you don’t have a strategic plan, let us offer a great one to you from the Church of the Customer.

social media strategic plan – church of the customer

Get your ideas down on paper and communicate them to others. While brainstorming is a great process, it is worthless if the insights generated are left on the whiteboard.

Here are a few great examples of visual notes from some smartie pants. More can be found on Brian Massey’s Conversion Scientist blog.

Gillian Muessig, SEOmoz

And Brad Geddes, bgTheory.com

I was trying to wrap this all in to a coherent post, but instead I leave it open for interpretation. The details are for you to fill in using these examples as launching pads for your strategy and sharing.

That’s the thing, SHARING. If you are keeping it all to yourself you are depriving the rest of us from your brilliant thinking. And after all that’s why I follow you on Twitter, to make sure I don’t miss any important strategic ideas.

@jmacofearth

permalink: https://uber.la/2011/11/basics-of-social-media/

Check out the Strategist’s Notebook page and these other posts about online marketing:

• Workin Facebook < all the Facebook Posts in one place
• uber.la quickies < a streamlined takeaway from today’s best marketing sources
• Social Media University < 2 minute educational videos
• Social Business MBA < the reading list
• Becoming a Social Media Rockstar: The Quick Path < um… let’s discuss

Let me help you jumpstart your social marketing:

FluentSocial (Social Media Marketing)

FluentSearch (SEO, Google Adwords)