Social Media Analysis in Six Steps

Whether you're a seasoned social media user or a beginner, you can benefit from this three-part series focusing on social media planning, broken down into the following parts:

1.Social media analysis
2.Social media strategy
3.Social media plan
Asocial media analysis should define an organization's online goals and target market as well as the existing resources it has to apply to social media efforts.

A social media strategy should include how an organization can improve social media optimization for its existing website as well as recommendations of other social media tools and how an organization can leverage them.

For each tool recommended in the social media strategy, the social media plan should include an overall strategy for applying the tool specifically to an organization's needs and tactics for managing and optimizing the tool. The resulting plan should reflect the needs and resources outlined in the social media analysis and strategy.

6 steps for completing a social media analysis
1 Perform a SWOT analysis in addition to the items below.
The Canadian site SEO Wizardry has a nice example of social media SWOT analysis.

2 Define the organization's target market.

• Here is a good article by Success Designs on how to do define your target market (they have some other good resources here, too).
• And another by Blog Case about marketing to your target audience

3 Define the organization's online goals.

What, specifically, does the organization want to accomplish with social media?:

• Get the word out about their brand.
• Offer a platform for getting a specific message out.
• Target new customers.
• Sell more products.

4 Assess the resources available to the organization.

• Outline the resources the organization has on hand to facilitate social media efforts.
• Estimate how many hours a day the organization can afford to expend on social media efforts based on this outline.

5 Analyze the organization's existing website:

• Is the organization's existing Website social media optimized?
• Does it offer ways for visitors to interact, share or collaborate?

6 Analyze the organization's existing social media efforts.

• If the organization already has some social media accounts in place, are they optimized?
• Does it seem they are offering content relevant to their target market and goals?

more to come soon....;)