I was talking to a friend the other night and, very impressively in my opinion, he quoted Sun Tzu:  ”strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory” but “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”

The concept is that having a strategy will ultimately bring you victory, but tactics alone won’t get you anything. You don’t have to be fighting a war to use this concept; it comes into play for every goal you have. As I drove home, I naturally started thinking about how the concept applies to social media and a quick search proved I wasn’t alone.

Strategy always comes first?
That was the consensus among the social media heavy-hitters (including our own Aaron Strout!) in a terrific blog post conducted by Lee Odden about a month ago. Here’s a quick review…

Shel Israel offered and enlightening quote from Louis Carol’s Cheshire cat: “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there.” He said you need to know WHY you want to use social media and establish specific objectives first, then use those to shape the tactics you choose.

Shannon Paul added that the real trick is defining strategy: “a strategy is not a timeline or a goal, even though these elements are often included in what people refer to as a strategy document. The actual strategy piece is the spirit with which you approach others and engage with them.” She always warned that social media evangelists in an organization need to empathize with people who don’t “get” the WHY of social media strategy intutively, and work hard to articulte strategies clearly and seperately from whatever tactic is hot at the moment.

But one of my favorite comments was from Des Walsh, who said “Tactics are fun, strategy is boring” and added the second half to Sun Tzu’s advice: “All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.” His argument was that strategies allow organizations to manage a process intelligently, measure progress, and adjust as circumstances change.

What about flexibility?
And circumstances are changing in social media. Constantly. That was Guy Kawasaki‘s argument for starting with any form of social media marketing, because it’s easy to change directions. And you have to be able to change directions, because the no one even really knows what role social media will have for the long term.

The goal is to do more business. Social-media is a means to that end…Don’t focus on some kind of high-level strategy because no one really knows how to use social media yet. Focus on tactics: Get more followers, make them happy, promote your stuff to them every once in a while,” he said, and Joseph Jaffe agreed, saying the industry is still in the “bright and shiny object syndrome” phase.

But Toby Bloomberg said the overflow of new tools and tactics every quarter actually makes stragey more important: establishing that first, she said, allows a business to focus only on those tools/tactics that fit with its broader goals. She added, “You do have goals? Oh, that’s another conversation.”

What’s your philosophy?
Unfortunately, in my opinion, most of the responders didn’t focus on the points that Debbie Weil and David Alston made: if you’re not the CEO, it’s a long road to establishing any social media strategy in the first place. Alston advocated against integrating specific goals into a strategy for companies just starting down that road, saying that the C-suite doesn’t want to hear about how popular/effective/ubiquitous any social platform is today, they want to hear a strategy. He said “…borrow one if you need to. How could you go wrong with a strategy like: make listening to the voice of our community/customers central to how we make decisions as an organization.”

Weil added: “What’s tough in the 1st step in a social strategy: adopting the social media mindset”.

So what’s the bottom line?
Social media marketing is a loop that starts with internal buy-in. That creates the opportunity for developing a specific strategy, which in turn generates a method for adopting relevant tactics. You can then measure the effectiveness of those tactics, and use data to appropriately adjust your strategy as necessary. The result is a truly effective campaign that, ultimately, increases your bottom line. And that’s something we can all agree on…