"I am the Lizard King. I can do anything." ~ Jim Morrison
I like the phrase "Content is King". I like the idea that the things we come up with creatively can drive the success of our projects and that the need for creative thinking has been duly noted this year because of wild successes like the Old Spice Guy and sites like Modern Mom that provide great content every day. Truly, content is a huge, huge part of success in social media but I think that content has gotten a big head.
I am finding myself asking all the time "what about strategy?".
Since I'm a strategist, this is obviously an area that I think is important but it's also an area that's a little misunderstood. In the rush to start your online presence 'yesterday', strategy is often generated in an hour meeting or overlooked entirely. A great Facebook Fan page or a video that was viewed 200,000 times isn't really a success unless you know where that success fits into your strategy. Here are some strategy basics.
1) There's a difference between strategy and tactic. This is where a lot of the confusion lies. A tactic is blogger outreach. A strategy is to develop lasting relationships online in the food industry for brand x. Most brands are using only tactical ideas to promote themselves online. The problem with this? It's difficult to build on previous campaigns if the campaign before was 'blogger outreach' or 'Facebook fan Page'. Once a tactic is completed, you are left saying "now what?"
2) Strategy should lead back to your brand, not a product, feature, or piece of content. For example, I will often get into meetings where a brand will want me to develop a strategy for a new feature on their site. They want people to talk about the feature and pass it onto their friends and spend a ton of time finding people to talk about it and inevitably wrap the press into a report and done. That's not horrible, it's just not a full strategy. The brand doesn't benefit as much as it could from a plan like this. 
3) Don't Rush. Strategy that's created in 3 days shows. There are loads of online projects going on that wouldn't be if the brand had done some homework. For example, Ford had a strategy before the crazy successful Ford Fiesta blogger program. It was similar to a forum and it was not successful at all and building it probably wasn't cheap. By doing a little digging on it I was able to save a client from building one just like it. You might not want to wait 3 weeks to get your online program started but it will help if you know if your strategy has been used before, and how it turned out.
4) When you are coming up with online strategy, use your mission statement. Thinking long term about the brand will help drive strategy so it does make sense to think about your brand's 5 year goals when managing your Facebook Fan Page believe it or not. If you are gathering fans online you are saying you want to talk to them today, tomorrow, and in a year. Make sure you aren't just talking features since those will be old news in a year.
