Five ways to adapt your social media marketing plan

Hello Quora, Jumo, and whatever’s new with Facebook. You’re teaching reminding us that change is the only constant.

You’re reminding us that social media technology will continue to change even faster as the real-time web develops, essentially giving you more instant feedback for more social media tool development. A six-million dollar man that can make himself better, faster.

TV and print media, virtually unchanged for decades, is rapidly being replaced by social media. But the way we plan marketing strategies hasn’t changed to deal with the weekly onslaught of new media. Darwin would bet his theory of evolution on the demise of the 50-slide strategic marketing plan.

Five ways to adapt your social media marketing plan

1. Stay Informed – How does your organization learn about new media? Is there a single person who is responsible, or do you have systemic way of learning? Do you have a compound eye like the housefly, or are do you have a patch over a single eye?
2. Respond Quickly – Can your organization respond quickly to news and events with social media? Instead of running everything by an executive board or legal council, how can decision-making be more decentralized? For example, give your online community manager complete authority over how comments are responded to on your blog, your Facebook Page, and especially Twitter (based on guidelines, of course).
3. Shorten Time-lines – Focus on plans for events or campaigns instead of quarters or years.
4. Act Sooner – How willing is your organization to act with incomplete plans? Waiting for info on best practices should be mixed with higher levels of risk taking. This way, you get results sooner which can then help you fine-tune your strategy.
5. Distribute Decisions – Using a social media playbook throughout your organization allows staff to be highly tuned to listen and act in response to mentions about your organization. Check out this post on creating a social media playbook.

How has your plan adapted?