Many managers share the same questions and concerns when it comes to social media – usually issues of crisis communication/message control, privacy and time management. In my experience, there are three first steps you can take to help alleviate social media skittishness in an organization:

1.) Conduct a staff wide “Intro to Social Media” Training
Social media “power users” sometimes assume that the basics of Facebook, Twitter, etc are common knowledge; conducting an intro to social media training can get your staff on the same page and speaking the same language before you move into developing a social media strategy for your company.

At this training you can not only cover basic definitions and descriptions of social media tools and tactics, but also address some of the concerns that staff members may have about issue of privacy, managing negative feedback and professional vs. personal use of social media sites.

Depending on the size and culture of your organization, you may have to conduct this training more than once. Especially if you are a newer staff member, you may be eager to “blow some minds” with all the great possibilities of social media, but for many companies, the two-way approach of communications that social media thrives on is very different from they’ve historically communicated with their customers/supporters. Be patient, and put yourself in the role of educator for your staff.

2.) Develop internal and external social media policy/guidelines for your company
Once your initial training is complete and most staff members are speaking the same social media language (or at least trying to,) you can start to approach the challenging task of setting up internal and external policies for social media use. Having such guidelines are an effective way to set your company’s social media rules of engagement to help guide your staff, and are also an effective response to any pushback you may recieve from staff members concerned about issues of crisis management and negative feedback.

You’ll want to get buy-in from your highest ranking staff member on these guidelines; without top down support such guidelines are difficult to maintain and uphold. Also you’ll want the input of staff members from multiple departments, not just communications and marketing, since any or all staff members may be called upon to engage with customers via social media, you’ll want everyone’s concerns and needs addressed.

Intel’s social media guidelines are a great template for any organization.

3.)Organize a social media working group that meets regularly to share ideas and resources

This is especially effective for large organizations that may have multiple departments initiating social media strategies. My current employer adopts this approach and the monthly meetings are a great way to keep the other 50+ members for our group in the loop; it opens up points of opportunity to collaborate on social media projects and share news and findings. There’s so much going on in the social media world that it’s impossible for any one person to keep up with it all, so regular working group meetings can keep staff members up to date with new tech/legal/social changes with Facebook or Twitter, and also any internal changes to social media policy that may affect the work of other departments.

These are three ideas that have helped me as a social media staff member in different organizations; what approaches have worked for you?

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Before you start sourcing web designers and developers, let’s talk nuts and bolts. And yes, I’d recommend hiring BOTH a designer and a developer. They are experts in different, yet overlapping fields. It takes almost genius-level intelligence to do both as one person. The design process is rich and content-driven. And web development technology changes at light speed, is multi-faceted and extremely precise. (We’ll talk more about hiring vendors in another post.)

So where do you start?

First, think about why you came to this decision to redesign. Did your developer leave you high and dry with no access to update files? Is the design outdated? Have you switched markets or audiences? Keep these answers in the back of your brain throughout the whole process. They help to keep your scope in check.

Step ONE: Do some user testing to establish a baseline

Conduct user testing to find out what is and isn’t working on your current site. What you think is obvious might not be so obvious to your users. Use the results to guide the redesign process: new content, new structure, new design elements, new workflows, new wireframes.

User testing entails: figuring out what you want to learn; determining your own organizational goals; writing tasks, scenarios and questions for specific segments of your audience; letting them attempt the tasks; asking questions; gathering and interpreting that data. Hopefully someone can take that data and interpret it visually. That’s a big talent.

You don’t have to test hundreds of people. Six people per task is just fine.

What you get back from user tests:

• video, which is golden because it not only shows you what people are doing, but their body language and physical actions. Sometimes what users say the do is not what they actually do.
• a data about what they did, didn’t or couldn’t do
• and answers to your written questions.

Why should you hire a professional to do this?

Firstly, an outside professional is going to be a monumentally more objective listener than anyone in your organization could be. Your website is your baby. To us, your website is someone else’s baby who we want to clean up and return.

Secondly, professional user testers not only know the best questions to ask, but they know how to extract and interpret data. And as a super bonus, The Web Farm offers visual reports, like revised wireframes and page designs.

Thirdly, professional user testers have years of experience and have most likely dappled in all kinds of websites. They know what’s best. They can make recommendations. It’s their job to know what works.

But if you are going to try to do it yourself, here’s where to start:

After you’ve figured out what your goals are and what you want to measure, create a persona your testers need to assume. So: you are a journalist looking for information about our group/organization/business. Then, write some good questions. Make sure you not only have a few easy yes/no questions, but also some good open-ended questions that aren’t leading. Then you can start asking away.

5 Quick Questions to Ask Users:

1. At first glance, what is this site about?

2. Can you find where you need to go?

3. Can you quickly find where to contact a human being?

4. Are there too many links or buttons? Too few?

5. What can you tell about the people behind the site?

Write as many as you’d like, but don’t overwhelm your users. Questions should be tailored to what you want to learn but open-ended question will reveal surprising insights.

Then:

Doing more user testing after you have a few home page designs hammered out is also a good idea. No sense designing a whole site around something that isn’t quite reaching your goals and audience, right?

COMING SOON:

PART TWO: Use and interpret your analytics

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Here’s a slideshow from the presentation I gave – an introduction to strategic thinking for online marketing.
– Keidra

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