The life cycle of a social media  project from a marketer’s perspective would read as under :

• Study the client requirements
• Help clients define their idea of success
• Help clients with custom defined metrics for ROI evaluation.
• Help clients create the necessary online presence
• Help clients create a marketing strategy that can be implemented across the social media
• Help clients implement the marketing strategy effectively
• Help clients implement social media aggregators and management tools for maintaining, updating existing marketing strategies and launching new marketing strategies.

The life cycle process

Client requirement studies invariably begin with surveys. These surveys could be directed at customers with an aim to gauge customer attitudes to the product or service. It could be directed towards employees to evaluate employee willingness to commit time and resources to the effort. It may be directed at the management to estimate whether they are just making an attempt to throw money at a problem or are genuinely interested in promoting the business at a personal level.

The results of these surveys will give the consultant a clear idea of whether the organization is willing to “engage” in this activity. Social media cannot be sustained if the management is not interested or the genuine interest or passion is just not there. Thereafter, the consultant will walk the client through the nuances of online interaction and communication and this process will vary from client to client. This is the most unforgiving bit of the process!

Most clients are very vague about what they want to achieve with social media. They need to be helped to define their “idea of success” and also the metrics for ROI evaluation.

To this end, the consultant will have to recruit and train individuals from within the client organization to recognize and articulate the organization’s “idea of success” and the metrics of evaluation. The team could be composed of individuals who are genuinely interested; influencers on board; front line workers who could impact PR and so on. The type of team and the numbers in a team will vary from one client to another.

However, the core of the team will be the media participant. He will have to be identified and trained by the consultant. He will be the person who actually implements the strategy.  If the client cannot field a candidate from within the organization, they should be advised to budget for someone to be hired for the purpose. This person will be guided by the team that has been trained by the consultant to oversee the implementation of the strategy as defined at the outset. He should be expressive, open, honest and absolutely “human” in the sense that “human” has been defined in Cluetrain!

As a first step in a marketing strategy, social media consultants will advise businesses to hook up with communities that the audience and clients are familiar with and are excited about.  They will help them find the social networks where they congregate and interact and help the organization get ready to launch promotional campaigns that go beyond blog posts and advertisements. The media participant will join the group on the online stomping ground with predefined marketing content that blends into the scenario and subtly performs the allocated task.  The marketing feeler may be something as simple as sending a congratulatory message to a client who has received a specific honor or it could be as blatant as an invitation to the clients to join the organization at an Expo where a stall has been put up!

When clients are going great with the social media, the consultant will turn to the next phase of consultancy. He will set up a management plan that will help the client update, maintain existing social media sites and marketing campaigns or launch new marketing campaigns on the existing or new social media sites. He will set up tools like ping.fm or Hotsuite.com that will allow users manage one or more social media sites from a central location.

Thereafter, he can either exit the account (the client having been fully trained) or can continue to support and advise the client on future course of action.