Why do I need a social media assessment?

Every great business achievement has a starting place. Before we help you chart your path or build a social media profile, we must first understand where you are at. This includes analyzing your current use of social media (if any), setting specific goals and establishing criteria for success.

These questions and processes are based upon the knowledge base gathered from working with dozens of clients in multiple industries and business growth stages. Many of the best practices were also identified while writing and researching for Sociable! and Guerrilla Social Media Marketing.

This is a process I developed working with my clients and at Socialized! we have now formalized the process. It takes an inventory of the following:

1. Your existing website: Is it socialized with a blog, integrated with the major social networks and well optimized for search engines? (MP3 Audio on this process)
2. Your social profiles: Are you maximizing the use of the major social sites that are relevant to your audience. This entails not just creating content but having relevant conversations and engaging?
3. Social Media Policy: Do you have a personal or corporate social media policy that fosters a social culture and creates accountability?
4. Social Media Plan: Do you have a strategic plan for launching and sustaining focused social media communications.
5. Trained staff: Is your team trained in the rules of engagement and in the technical aspects of the tools they will use?
6. Integration: Silo? Online/Offline? Bi-directional?: What best describes your social media use. If only one person or one department is using it then you will be faced with bottlenecks and a one dimensional communications strategy.
7. Metrics, Monitoring and Measurement?: Are you using social media monitoring tools like Twitter Search, Post Rank, Google Alerts etc. to find business intelligence, identify stakeholders and get involved in the conversation.

At the end of this process you will have a complete inventory of your current assets, liability and cultural readiness to become a truly social brand. You can start without this assessment, but somewhere in process we must take a look at where we are at and what we need to do to take our social media marketing efforts to the next level.