In my first post on Starting from Scratch I covered the objectives that my mom and I defined for her social media strategy. Settling on the objectives first gives us clear goals and a clear understanding of what we’re doing and why we’re doing any of this. Being able to answer the what and the why before getting started is a crucial first step to ensuring that our foray into this world with her small business will be a success.

Now that we outlined the objectives, it’s time to address the how. How we’re going to achieve these goals, which for reference were:

• To create awareness of her company and visibility on and offline by demonstrating expertise in marketing/communications placement services.
• To position her company as a personnel firm that “gets” how new/emerging technologies fit within traditional marketing/communication roles and has the know-how to find the right people to meet these needs.
• To communicate with companies and hiring personnel who are looking for new talent via social media that her company has the people they are looking for.
• To connect with Connecticut/Massachusetts-based job seekers utilizing social media tools to find jobs that her company can help them find the job they’ll love
• To leverage social media as a cost-effective distribution platform for recruiting for open positions.
• To leverage social media as a cost-effective way to engage and build relationships with potential new clients.

Figuring out the how gives us a f ramework for how the technologies and tactics will fit together to deliver the end results that we’re looking for in the objectives part of the exercise.  Without providing some cohesive direction for our activities we’ll be unable to measure what is working and what isn’t, and we won’t have a consistent approach to our efforts.  We’ll be unable to refine what we’re doing and won’t have a good understanding of why something is working better than something else.  Setting strategy gives us the opportunity to take our best guess at what we think is our best shot at achieving our goals.  If something doesn’t work we simply course-correct along the way.

With that in mind here are some of the strategies we identified:

• Leverage Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Friendfeed to create a social media presence for her company
• Use the above properties to promote her company as a thought leader and trusted resource in the marketing/communications space
• Leverage the downturn in the economy to promote her company as a vital part of the hiring process for recruiters (you can’t be wrong in today’s market) and for job seekers (there’s too much competition to go it on your own)
• Promote job openings, best-practice tips, salary guides, services, etc.
• Connect and build relationships with HR managers, hiring managers and other key decision makers from local-area businesses to drive new placement opportunities
• Connect with thought-leaders in new media and marketing online to drive awareness of her company in the CT/MA marketing ecosystem
• Listen and find relevant conversations and become involved in a supportive and helpful way.

As you can see we are working to a few broad initiatives:

• Build regional awareness of her company with key influencers
• Establish digital beach heads for her company
• Listen and find the relevant conversations that will benefit both the participants and her business
• Generate new business by creating value for her key audiences

The challenges for me in the strategies are the following:

• My mom doesn’t have a lot of time or experience in using these tools
• Her business is very regional. How do we reach people that are in her area?
• Where are the people she wants to reach?  The hiring and HR folks at companies, not the job seekers?

Answering those questions will be the key to all of this.  The success will be not only on the ability of her efforts to impact people on the Web, but primarily the right people in her area.

So what do you think of these strategies?  Are they the right approach?  What would you do differently?

The next piece is the tactics.  This is where the rubber meets the road.  Stay tuned…