10 tensions in social strategy

There are no universal answers! That said sometimes I find the apparent simplicity of models helpful :)

So I created this ’10 tensions’ model after percolating a while on recurrent themes or ‘tensions’ that we and our clients bump up against when designing plans and strategies to make sense of the social web.

The same tensions seem to come up time and time again.

And the interesting thing to me is that there is no right or wrong answer, which is why I describe them as ‘tensions’ – each end of each spectrum has very clear strengths and weaknesses.

You may also be able to operate at both ends of a spectrum (and often our work will try to), but my experience is that usually something will be compromised in doing so.

So I designed the model just to raise my own awareness of these oft-present forks in the planning road.

Click on the image for a bigger viewpoint!

A quick guide to the 10 tensions:

1. Mass social spaces vs Niche social spaces – will we try and engage with vast crowds of people in a generic social spaces (where ‘everybody’ is) or will we try to identify the significant clusters of niches that together make up a big ol’ bunch of the people we want to interact with?
2. Platform-oriented vs Tribe oriented – will we define our strategy by the social platforms where we believe our potential community hang out, or by a more people-centred definition and then try to find where they are? Is the plan about ‘parents’ or about ‘Twitter’?
3. Centralised vs Decentralised – one of the biggest tensions and probably the first I became aware of as a recurrent theme. Firstly, do we attempt to manage and co-ordinate this strategy centrally, and possibly therefore top down, or do we try to empower the organisation within a set of reasonable boundaries? Secondly, is our presence and personality in social spaces ‘the singular brand entity’ or do we have the inherent strengths and risks of having many personalities, presences and identities? A biggy that I may return to another time!
4. Externally focused vs. Internally focused – is this strategy concentrating on relationships between our organisation and the rest of the world, or is it centred around bringing our organisation together to understand, address and evolve with the social web? Our work oftens starts with the former but quickly moves to address both – but where is the emphasis and what is the stated overall goal?
5. Transaction topics vs Passion points – is the scope of the strategy a topic that the target audience can only ever feel a transactional relationship with or is this a genuine passion point for the people we wish to interact with? Kinda matters to how the strategy will be shaped!
6. Short-term or Long-term – pretty obvious really, but what is the term of plan – how long do we have, how explicit can we be about that, what are the expectations and investments we reasonably plan for? (Most strategies will of course go for both, but my feeling is that even so there is usually an emphasis.)
7. Campaigns vs Communities – another biggy, and probably well covered elsewhere on great blogs by clever people, but still worth including – does the strategy plan to launch a series of focuses on stuff or a sustained effort on developing relationships with communities?
8. Gaming vs Growing – at a recent search conference I was reminded on the ingenuity of the search community to make sense of new web developments and then ‘game’ them in very powerful and tangible ways; I guess this tension is a bit more colourful, and its tries to capture the question of ‘do we game and exploit social media for what it can do for us or do we  somehow contribute to it and both benefit from it and give to it in order to add something and therefore grow it’ kinda thing!
9. Distributing vs. Conversing – is our intent to harness the social web as a conduit for our messages or are we resourcing and committing to the conversations, feedback and work generated that may well come back?
10. Relevance vs Resonance – are we engineering a strategy that carefully matches content to people and being present in the logical spaces or are we seeking to create relationships and tell stories that resonate more deeply, and if so how?

If I do find the time, I may well explore some of the tensions I feel have rich nuances to tease out in future blog posts.

And this is very incomplete. I haven’t even tested the model and terminology of trusted clever colleague. So please – I would love your feedback, but work with me – it’s a work in progress! Thanks.