Week 1: A Conversation with Clint Schaff by Lisa Zamosky
By UCLA X469.21 Student Lisa Zamosky
Setting a Plan is Essential for Social Media Success
Clint Schaff was a farm kid from North Dakota who credits his success in media with an early love of hip hop, which sparked his lifelong interest in understanding people with lives different from his own. He shared these and other details about himself — such as working early in his career with the New York Yankees (go Bombers!) and David Bowie – to engage the class in an exercise about the interactive nature of social media. He encouraged the group to see his introduction as interactive and asked that we call out “next” when we wanted him to move on to another topic.
Engaging in social media should be the online equivalent of attending a cocktail party, Clint said. Sure, you need to tell the folks who you are and share a bit about yourself, but if you run on and on without asking a question or seeking engagement from your fellow party guests, you aren’t likely to get a second invitation. In other words, don’t just talk, engage. That was lesson one of Clint’s presentation.
Three other lessons he spoke about during his presentation stood out:
1. Make a plan
By its nature, social media depends in part on the ability to respond quickly and appropriately to the conversations taking place online. Yet, the person handling social media posts and responses for most businesses tends to be the most junior and inexperienced member of their staff.
A social media playbook allows staff to operate online safely but opportunistically. A playbook should outline the rules of the road, such as the volume of posts for each social media channel, the hierarchy of content types and topics to highlight or avoid. A playbook can help to ensure that the content shared on social channels aligns with and furthers corporate strategy.
“A plan is the best way to encourage improvisation,” Clint said.
2. Know and find your audience
The ability to identify and find your target audience is essential to creating an effective social media plan. Develop personas for the different types of audience members you want to reach and keep them top-of-mind as you develop content for each social media channel.
And stay focused. You can’t serve everyone, Clint said, so focus on developing no more than three audience personas.
3. Keep your eye on ROI
Social media – like every other business activity – must be closely tied to, and show performance against, an organization’s goals and objectives. Whatever your goals – whether you want to drive traffic to your company’s website, increase membership or sales, or improve brand perception –you will want to develop social media strategies and tactics that support those goals. Everything needs to be measurable, and you must be able to tie your social media efforts to bottom-line results.
