Milton Bradley Game Stratego via Wikipedia
I had to take a moment to comment on a great blog post that has spurred a good conversation about social media strategy. Shannon Paul, a friend in Seattle, is a communications manager and social media strategist at Peak 6 Online. Her post, “The Missing Ingredient in Most Social Media Strategies“, is worth the read and touches on something I want to share with those of you who are putting together a social media strategy for your nonprofit or cause organization.
Strategy as a concept comes with what some would call military overtones. Wikipedia defines strategy simply as:
“A strategy is a plan of action designed to achieve a particular goal.”
Wikipedia identifies the two important concepts as the plan, and the goal. I think that nonprofits can use social media as a part of their strategy to achieve lesser goals – such as improving search rankings, increasing exposure, building community, improving communication, etc. To achieve your big picture goal, you need to have a singular focus on your mission – i.e., saving the whales, the greening of corporate America, or whatever ultimate goal is at the top of your pyramid.
A social media strategy can be created for the smaller goals – or “battles”; and the larger, ultimate goal – the “war”. Ultimately, I think your strategy is your game plan. Are you putting all the right pieces into place for the right reason? Does the surprise of the unforeseen factor into the game? As I asked in another post, do you have a list of your assets? All of these questions, plus a number of others need to be asked and answered to develop the ultimate plan of action of meet your end goal. I think my Grandmother has that old Stratego game in a closet somewhere, and I might just have to have her pull that out for me.
