Description
The purpose of the Social Channel Footprint framework is to establish the goals, roles, and relationships among different social channels managed by a brand. Often, marketing teams do not have a clear or strategic view of all of their social media platforms. Many have built out a large number of platforms over the years and devote a great deal of energy and resources towards keeping them up and running. Challenges arise as new platforms are adopted, existing platforms evolve, and audiences move. Further, the goals, budgets, and internal resources for social media can change over time. This framework helps align teams to ensure the same content is not posted everywhere.
Questions
The Social Channel Footprint framework helps to answer marketing questions like:
Where should we post this message or piece of content?
What is the purpose of this particular social platform?
What social platforms are the highest priority for our brand?
Steps
Identify all of the official social media accounts that your brand manages, including the associated handle or URL. You may also include social media platforms that you are considering launching.
List all of the objectives that social media may contribute to for your brand, for examples sales or service. Evaluate the contribution of each platform for each objective using a 0-to-5 point scale.
Identify the social media related tactics and activities that support your objectives, and indicate which platform will be used for each. Include relationships between platforms in the ‘Used With’ column.
Identify the relative priority, posting frequency, and media investment for each of the social media platforms. Ballpark ranges are fine, as this is not to be used as a content calendar or media plan.
Analyze the results of the completed framework. Are the roles of each platform clear and distinctive? Does the level of investment match the priority of each platform? Do you have the right platform mix?
Considerations
Always complete the framework from left-to-right to ensure that you are leading with marketing objectives
Revisit the framework over time as platforms and internal priorities change over time, it is a living document
This framework can be reformatted to include more detail, consider this version a summary view