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		November 2009, Issue 69

Featured Article The Social Media Task Force: A (Mostly) Painless Path to a Social Media Strategy By Amy Bills, Director of Field Marketing, Bulldog Solutions   Never a Dull Post Join the Bulldog Ministry of Culture on Facebook. Become a fan. A SiriusDecisions analyst recently made a half-joke about the Community Manager position at companies that are trying to develop social media strategies. Never accept the title of "Community Manager," he said. It's always the first to get cut. I laughed and winced at the same time. The corporate Pollyanna in me says nobody should be punished for trying to break new ground. During the time I heard this half-joke, our team here at Bulldog Solutions was working on institutionalizing a social media strategy. As an online marketing company located in digitally progressive Austin, Texas, we were engaged as individuals in activities, from LinkedIn and Twitter to our corporate blog. Yet we lacked a cohesive strategy. We had not set any goals or made anyone accountable for social media initiatives. We were hesitant to assign responsibility for all social media activity to one person, as that seems antithetical to the idea of social media and frankly, nobody in our organization has bandwidth to be the official guru. Our solution: the Social Media Task Force. A Task Force Is Born One of the best pieces of advice I've heard and given about developing social media strategy is the idea of harnessing the advocates in an organization. Every company has people that are into social media in their personal and professional lives. You'll find them in many departments, at many levels. They're often, but not always, part of the younger crowd. (Be careful about this: Don't assume someone in their 20s is savvy about social media, and don't assume someone in their 50s is not.) They may not have the time or inclination for a brand new, untested role, but these advocates are likely to be willing to participate in a social media team where they share knowledge, brainstorm ideas and accept some tasks to help forward a social media agenda. With this recruiting strategy in mind, we formed our Social Media Task Force, pulling advocates from marcom, design, marketing, media planning and rich media. We also tapped the specific experience of employees who are not permanent members of the task force, but "consult" with us on issues such as search marketing. The marketing department "owns" the team and ensures the activities dovetail with company goals and messages. But the agenda is collaborative, the brainstorming is real and the credit (and blame) is shared. Goal Setting Once our team was in place and a series of biweekly meetings established, we set goals. We were mindful of the difficulty of showing ROI from social media in traditional ways, but also intent on setting some kind of measurement for ourselves. We established our primary objectives as building Bulldog Solutions brand awareness (measured by metrics such as Web site traffic and mentions in the blogosphere) and doing "R&D" on social media for our clients. Bulldog's marketing department typically acts as a laboratory for marketing tactics and the development of strategy, and the Social Media Task Force was part of this mission. The Social Media Task Force's jurisdiction includes: Activity on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other networking sites. Development of our Bulldog blog. This included an internal "So You Think You Can Blog" campaign designed to recruit bloggers from within the company to add multiple perspectives to our blog. Paid and organic search efforts. Organic search seemed like a good fit; and including paid search helped us justify some more "traditional" ROI methods. Sure, we stacked the deck a little bit. Sue me. Local activities, including participation in Tweetups, social media clubs and SXSW Interactive. Challenges The down side to being inclusive in marketing activities is that few people in an organization generally make good on their pleas for inclusion. The number of people who say they want to participate is never, ever the same number as those who actually do. Thus, only a few of the team members who expressed enthusiasm about blogging have actually contributed posts. On the other hand, Facebook and Twitter activity, which require much less forethought, has been very inclusive. There's also the ongoing challenge of measurement. Nobody has really cracked that "social media ROI" code yet. We set appropriate expectations, knowing that we’d be adjusting as we learned. Results By definition, the Social Media Task Force is a work in progress. But we have several encouraging trends to report: Our activity and mutual inspiration on the task force has helped several members of our team contribute to major client social media initiatives, including successful programs for Nortel and Intel Health's Healthcaregoesmobile.com. This "R&D" component was one of the key objectives of the task force, and it was gratifying to see some impact so quickly. We're within reach of 200 members on the Ministry of Culture fan page on Facebook. The fan page allows us to showcase the Bulldog Solutions culture. For example, we used it to promote our annual Halloween party—which is an important branding and recruiting tool for us—and it's not a coincidence that we broke our RSVP record this year. We've embraced the beta test of CoTweet, a Twitter functionality that allows several assigned members of our team to participate in our Twitter activity. This lessens the burden on just one person and adds range to the Twitter activity, since the three main CoTweet members come from three different departments. We've established a strong voice; increased our followed (413 at this writing) and followers (521 at this writing); and generated positive activity, such as recent comments about the MarketingSherpa session presented by our senior director of strategic planning. On the agenda for 2010: Ramped-up paid search activity with partner 360 Partners (also featured in this newsletter) and a debate over whether we need a written social media policy. Return to MWJ Home Amy Bills is director of Field Marketing at Bulldog Solutions, the lead-generation optimization and management company. Visit www.bulldogsolutions.com to learn more. Marketing Watchdog Journal is a monthly newsletter from Bulldog Solutions, a lead optimization and lead management company dedicated to helping our clients generate more, better leads and turn them into revenue. We welcome your feedback on this newsletter's content and design, and encourage you to share your ideas for topics you would like us to cover in future issues. Please send your comments or questions about Bulldog Solutions to Amy Bills, director of Field Marketing.

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