Improving your company’s online presence doesn’t need to be difficult. By following a few best practices, you can create a valuable online resource for all of your company’s stakeholders.

1. Set goals. Before getting started, you should set goals for what the program should achieve. Online communication includes more than just Web sites and blogs. The technology has evolved rapidly, and with it the complexity and depth of communication potential in these channels. It may be intimidating at first, but having a solid set of goals in mind before you get started will help guide the rest of the process.

2. Audit. Regardless of the scale, all audits can essentially be broken down into two basic pieces–what and who. What is the company doing now? What is being said? What part of the online space is most active in your company’s focus area? Who is talking about you? Who are the people who are influential in the communities that you want to be talking about you? Who are you trying to reach? Conducting research in these areas can give you new ideas as well as help you identify and avoid the mistakes others have made.

3. Plan. Creation of an overall strategy reduces cost, increases effectiveness and allows you to tie these efforts into traditional outreach, marketing and communication efforts. When creating this plan, consider whether you have adequate knowledge internally or whether you need to bring in outside expertise, how long you would like the campaign to run and who on your staff will oversee the rollout and ongoing care and feeding. There are other considerations that affect the answers to these questions, such as the scope, budget and staff, and, as a result, it is often valuable to conduct this planning as part of a yearly business planning exercise.

4. Execute. Moving forward with a social media campaign is best done in stages. Determining how many resources (staffing and financial) need to be allocated for each component of the plan that you have put together will help to inform the timeline and more clearly outline the efforts required by the staff designated in managing the effort.

5. Train, empower and encourage. Some existing staff members are already participating in social media. While it is not likely that they focus on your business, industry or related issues, it is important to know that there is some communication being done about your company by your employees. This is not usually a reason to fear– while there are instances where these activities have landed the company or employee in hot water, a large majority of these online conversations are neutral or positive about your organization.

Source: PR News, September 28, 2009