18 Questions You Should Answer Before Starting a Social Media Campaign

by Brian Solis on January 8, 2009

by Bernadette Balla

Yes, they are many reasons why a social media campaign can be a great resource to reach your consumers on the Internet. But how many of you actually thought about executing your campaign before starting one? Companies such as Wal-Mart, failed twice on their social media outreach. Why do companies fail when executing a campaign?

I created a list of questions every company should ask themselves before they plan to use social media as part of their strategy. In no particular order of importance; here is the list. I will answer for some of these questions in a follow up post soon.

1 – Why do we need to execute a social media campaign?

2 – Do we understand the landscape of social media?

3 – Who are our primary consumers/ stakeholders?

4 – Do we have support from upper management/ marketing department and engineering departments?

5 – Have we done our research on best and bad practices?

6 – How do we measure social media ROI?

7 – How do we want to execute a campaign? Do we want to create a viral video on YouTube or sponsor a page on Facebook? Do we want to create our on social network via Ning?

8 – Who should we appoint to manage our community? Should we hire a social media agency, an independent contractor or do we use the resources we have in the company.

9 – Can we create enough new content to keep the community engaged over the course of time?

10 – Are we ready to communicate openly with our consumers and more importantly our critiques?

11 – Are we rewarding our consumers for participating in the community and giving us feedback? If so, how do we reward them?

12 – Do we know enough about our target audience? Which community sites do they frequent? What keeps them engaged?

13 – What is our budget?

14 – Are we prepared to face the consequences if we fail?

15 – Are we ready to embrace that most content developed will be shared across different platforms on the internet and that we will have no control over it?

16 – Do we want to run an honest campaign or do we cheat? (Some companies are buying up Digg votes and MySpace friends to increase their popularity).

17 – Why now?

18 – When do we want to start the campaign? Do we have enough time to plan ahead?

If you manage to answer all of these questions, congratulations you are ready to start your social media campaign. If not, I advise you not to start your campaign yet. Look through the questions and really reflect if a social media campaign is the best way to go for now.

If you have other suggestions, feel free to add on the comments below. You can contact Bernadette at bernadetteballa [at] gmail [dot] com or follow her on Twitter.