With the annual showpiece event of the European football calendar upon us, and a very welcome German invasion into our capital, the regular football season is almost officially over.
For many clubs, like mine, the season officially ended before the start of May (it could be argued that it actually ended around February) and the pre-season schedule is already looking like a long stretch.
Most teams will be formulating their plans for next season; planning, budgeting, releasing players, buying players. Indeed, negotiations are already well underway, with many players fighting for the space in ever decreasing squad lists (well, if you are down in the lower divisions anyway).
In football terms, the planning of resources for next year’s ‘results’ is underway now, even though the ultimate result won’t be known until this time next year. Hopping back to the two teams in the Champions League final, German football has been working to produce the types of players that will feature prominently on Saturday for 13 years, since an extremely disappointing Euro 2000. So disappointing in fact even England beat them.
Planning isn’t often the first thought when new and shiny toys or big resources appear (I’m looking at you QPR!), and it is why so many marketing campaigns really fail to fire.
As I’ve travelled around the country delivering social media training and campaigns the most frequent failing for social media activity I’m asked to look at is a lack of planning.
Failing to plan social media activity isn’t an unusual phenomenon. Indeed, due to the nature of social media and the way we use it in our own lives the reactive nature of the medium often gives the whole area an organic feel. There’s a feel that it’s down to luck, timing and clever black magic that gets results especially in a B2B social media environment. It really isn’t.
Just with the more traditional marketing disciplines, planning remains the key to success with B2B social media. Tweeting and hoping just won’t wash, and we aren’t just talking about creating a nice little conversational calendar either.
Proper social media planning really starts and ends with your business objectives. What are you trying to achieve as a business, and how can the social media channel be best utilised. Of course as part of this exercise you will have to assess each of your audiences, your company ‘voice’, your internal requirements, your resources and your campaigns.
It really isn’t as complex as negotiating the flavour of dressing to put on the prawn sandwiches at Wembley this weekend. In fact there are 5 key questions you can set yourself to help develop a social media strategy:
1. Why do you want to incorporate social media into your business?
2. Do you want to use specific individuals in your organisation for outbound communication with your external community?
3. Do you know what platform you intend to use to broadcast your efforts?
4. Have you defined your desired results and timescales to achieve your goals?
5. Have you assessed our 10 Tips to transform your Social Media strategy before you launch your plan?
Ok, these questions aren’t going to solve all your issues with planning your social media activity, but they are great questions you can use to create a structure. They get to the heart of the thinking that is required to bring your social media strategies together.
Let’s face it, if the often basket-case business logic of football is already planning for next year, then perhaps now would be a good time for us all to do our own planning.
Simon Brooke is a Director at Happy Creative, a strategic marketing and creative branding agency based in Blackpool, Lancashire. To learn more or contact us please go to www.happy-creative.co.uk or @Happy_Creative
