It’s important to take inventory first. It’s equally important to keep your client in full view and understand opportunities. We also help you define them. These are the beginning steps for the Business Social Strategy phase.

We don’t just analyze, we also help you augment, execute, and make tough decisions. Initially, it is important to find your influencers, advocates, and competitors. Analyzing the ‘online buzz’ is only part of the strategy – the question is “what are you going to do about it next?”

Crafting a Social Brand or Communications Strategy starts with defining goals and objectives – it is no different than with any other branding and communications strategy. As you observe the conversations over time, you are realizing that your clients are discussing your brand, while you are standing by. Now is the time to start crafting a message, reflective of these discussion, while developing a Social Communications Platform.

One has to realize that Social Media Marketing is highly dynamic and can be highly fragmented. Hence is the importance of the Social Media Architecture, or Social Architecture for short.

Rick Liebling depicted a ‘Social Media Periodic Table’ showing all the possible elements of Social Architecture which can set the stage for the right ‘ingredient’ for success.

Social Architecture is not something theoretical – it is a practical blueprint for how you will engage with your audience in whatever Social channel you choose. You may interface to your fans differently through a Facebook page, and present a different message to your followers on Twitter, and yet create different groups and messages on LinkedIn – no matter what you do, it has to be a coordinated, well thought through effort.

And ‘Social’ doesn’t mean exclusively ‘Digital’ – a careful combination of event strategies, deployment of interactive applications, presentation of your products through videos, and talking about it through ‘identity aggregators’, such as FriendFeed, Windows Live, and others, is usually an optimal combination for success.

While Social Media Marketing is continuing to mature, Mobile Social Marketing is emerging rapidly and is beginning to bear some excellent fruit. More than one billion iPhone applications have been downloaded so far and the number of mobile users worldwide will reach 800 million by 2012 according to eMarketer.

Once you have your Social Architecture and Social Infrastructure in place, it is now important to Listen, Observe, and Engage. Your next steps will be the most crucial ones. Integration with your existing marketing efforts will be just as important. You may continue with your traditional efforts of direct mail, lead generation, advertising (although media buying  and placement strategy may be augmented), and distribution, however, you will now have an important Social component, which will have to play along.

What will matter the most is ‘what you will say and how you will say it’ - another words, your content is still the most important component of communications, distribution, and engagement. What you will say must be followed by what you will do – your community of followers, fans, and connections will expect that. Anything short of an expected action may hurt your brand, or deem your brand insignificant. It is also important to fire up your fan base with creative ideas and programs which you can implement together. Together is an important concept in Social Media Marketing – your brand doesn’t just belong to you, it belongs to everyone.

In the end, you have to know what you and your audience is doing in relation to your brand and your programs. Analysis is an important factor in Social Media Marketing and without you are navigating in dangerous waters. You need to learn more about Who is engaging your brand and through which channels. How are they engaging it? Where are they spending their time, and Why? What are they saying and doing once they engage?

All the questions above can only be answered through an integrated and well architected set of analysis tools and information available readily and dynamically.

To summarize, Social2B helps clients follow steps and execute along the way. We assist our clients and partners with sound advice, clear messaging ideas appropriate for any channel, technology and tools needed to build a Social infrastructure, and courage and discipline needed to execute. We help businesses become more Social.

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