Managing Social Media with a Channel Map

John Follett

By Jerry Rackley

Social media channel map (1)

Social Media is a mainstream, marketing communications channel for most companies. Social media once meant Facebook, but now companies are trying to manage a presence on a blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, SlideShare, Youtube – the list goes on and on.

There are some excellent tools available to help automate the posting of content to social media sites, as well as some great monitoring tools. The technology to manage social media is evolving about as quickly as the media itself. Sometimes, though, social media managers get so caught up in the details, it becomes hard to remember what the social media forest looks like, because there are so many trees in the way.

It’s important to keep the big picture for social media right in front of you for these reasons:

  • The social media landscape continues to evolve and become more complex. With hundreds, if not thousands of active social media networks, it is increasingly difficult to remember what your section of the social media turf looks like.
  • Social media is a wonderful communications servant, but without keeping it in the proper perspective, it’s easy to become its slave. Without clear objectives for its use and the proper tools to manage social media, it can own you.

An excellent tool for capturing your social media “big picture” is the Demand Metric Social Media Channel Map.

This tool has two components, which will help your company ensure that its social media efforts match its objectives. The first is a diagram that depicts all social media networks in use, categorized by the types listed here:

  • Social networks: Facebook, LinkedIn or Google+
  • Social bookmarks: StumbleUpon or Google Reader
  • Presentation sharing: SlideShare or Scribd
  • Blogging platforms: Wordpress or eBlogger
  • Video/Photo sharing: Instagram, Flickr, YouTube or Pinterest
  • Micro Blogs: Twitter or tumblr

The second component of the Social Media Channel Map is a table that gives you one place to record your goals for each social media channel, as well as who is responsible for each channel and a list of Key Performance Metrics (KPIs).

The Social Media Channel Map is a simple yet powerful tool that will help you keep a firm grip on your organization’s social media rudder.