Yesterday Olivier Amar and Branko Rihtman came over with their families for a fun day of food and kid mayhem. This in itself is not worth a blog post – but during the day Branko mentioned the post Twitter Is Not a Social Media Strategy by Sarah Goodwin. Apparently he liked this post so much he tweeted it (and made the off-handed comment that it was perhaps the only social media post he’s ever tweeted). Olivier liked it so much he re-tweeted it.
In short – I had to read this post.
And later last night I did. It’s a good post, makes sense and I generally agree with it – until I got to the last line: “Lyndoman recently blogged that it’s not about the conversation, and I agree, for me it’s about the strategy.”
That’s when she lost me. Which in fact isn’t such a bad time to lose someone, I mean, it would be much worse had she lost me in the beginning or middle – but I digress…
It can’t just be about the strategy. A strategy that a company can’t implement is useless. I’ve been reading “Major Accounts Sales Strategy” by Rackman and there’s a fantastic quote which sums it up beautifully: “…unless strategy can be readily translated into specific actions within individual accounts, then it’s just empty jargon.” Now this book is specifically about selling – but this relates to every strategy at the end of the day. So it can’t just be about the strategy. Tactics matter – they are the cookie shell that keeps the creamy center strategy together.
One can not be above the other, nor can one exist without the other. Implementing tactics without a strategy is like shooting blind. You may end up hitting your mark, but most likely you won’t – and goodness knows what you will hit in the process. Announcing a strategy that you have no idea how to implement (or can’t be implemented) is just as bad. Here you leave your people flailing for direction grabbing for those random tactics (which often results in shooting blind).
Management needs to work with their team on strategic decisions – discussing the implications of the strategy for the long and short term and making sure all understand the difficulties which will be encountered when implementing a new strategy.
In the case of a social media strategy:
- What is your goal? (Build loyalty? Get feedback on new products? Blast information to 30k more people? Increase sales by 10%?)
- Who is your market? (Geeks? Moms? News junkies? Fashionistas?)
- Where does your market go online? (Facebook? Twitter? MySpace? Bebo? Flickr?)
- How do you want to get their attention? (Fan page? Application? Posts?)
- What is the message you want to relay?
- How much do you want to engage?
- What is your complaint procedure? (If you’re The Gap you have none – which is why they don’t actually reply to anyones messages. This will never cease to confuse me because they have such awesome customer service in their stores.)
My point is this: Just like Oreo cookies, strategy and tactics forever go together in the classic combination. (And taste the best with milk… )
“A strategy that a company can’t implement is useless.”
I agree with this statement, who wouldn’t. But I think you are missing the point, implementation is part of the strategy.
It may be down to how the term “strategy” is interpreted as I am aware that not everyone agrees on the same usage. My thinking is that strategy is the overall action that allows you to reach the required objectives and of course implementation is a crucial part of this.
So I don’t think anyone is arguing that it is not.
In most companies the people who decide the strategy are not the ones who implement the tactics to achieve the goal that the strategy hopes to reach. As such implementation should be part of the strategy (which is my point) but often isn’t.
Strategy is the quantitative time related goal. Tactics are the actions which achieve that goal.
I interpret the phrase “It’s not about the conversation” as a divorce of strategy and tactics. It is about the conversation, it is also about the goal, message and method of said conversation.