Back in December of 2007 Forrester published a method for creating a Social Media Strategy called the POST Method. It was revolutionary at the time because as most who marketers were beginning to experiment with Social Media fell into the trap of implementing the latest “shiny object” which naturally over-focused them on the technology rather than finding the right audience (or P for People), identifying your objectives (O), creating a strategy to reach them (S) and then finding what technology would work best (T).
But I would argue having worked on several social media strategies now that this approach no longer holds.
The problem is the (P) in the POST method.
It dawned on me when the CMO of Avaya asked me to show her how we would reach certain audiences, like pospects and business partners etc., with our Social Media efforts. it was hard to find a “pure” grouping of these out on the socialsphere. What you typically find is a “Conversation” and in that conversation you have a few prospects, maybe an existing customer, a business partner, a few employees and even a competitor or two.
The goal of your social media strategy is not to find the P for People it’s to find the C for Conversations!
If you can effectively listen and monitor to find the conversations where the people are talking about topics you want to participate in then you are 90% of the way to a successful social media strategy. And if you play your cards right to generating leads with your social media strategy.
But that would infer that the POST Method should really be the COST Method for creating a Social Media strategy and that just doesn’t sound very good!
What do you think of POST vs. COST?
Related posts:
- Forget Audience Segmentation – Segment by Conversation!
- Is This the Day the Conversation Died?
- This Word Conversation, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means
- Social Media and the Three-Sided Conversation
- Social Networking: Changing Conversation, Not Friendship
Tags: Social Media
You need them both – social is all about interaction, so conversations are critical, but they serve little purpose if they’re not engaging the people that matter to you.
POST (and COST) are also very brand-centric; in normal conversation, you need to add something to the discussion before you’ll be welcomed by the other participants, and it’s no different in social media.
We (marketers) have to stop thinking that people are interested in what our brands have to say; they’re not, they’re only interested in what we can add to their lives.
In other words, it’s all about them, not you – more on that here: http://eskimon.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/think-outside-yourself/
@ eskimon – I totally agree the tide has shifted perhaps forever toward the the customer and not the brand – if you want to get people to be interested in you – be interesting!
Audience is probably the most important aspect of SEO.if you pull in the wrong audience what good is all that traffic?
This of course is the problem with cute methodology acronyms like “POST,” especially when they originate from nonpractitioners like Forrester.
I agree with other commenters so far that you still need the “P” for people. Your Avaya situation is a perfect example. Yes, different parties came together for one conversation, but it’s really doubtful it was the specific VAR who could help the specific employee who could help the specific prospect (readers would have to understand go-to-market for IT to get what i mean here – too long to explain).
The good news is you’ve drawn in a great crowd to the convo – now the challenge is to develop a way to draw each in his/her own lane further toward Avaya…according to their specific needs. Not as easy as it sounds. And marketing consultants everywhere are thankful for that.
@ Nick – I am not debating SEO – its more SMO than SEO