Before you break your back doing the heavy lifting of researching and planning out your social media strategy, save yourself some heartache and hassle by first doing a posture check to gauge your organization’s social media readiness. Here are 8 questions to consider as you prepare to dive into the social mediasphere.

back1. Do you have the necessary internal management buy-in for the real-time, person-to-person interactions required in social media?

There is little time in social media for legal approval of every word, phrase, paragraph or apostrophe. Further, the content that results from such scrutiny doesn’t play very well with the social media crowd when things come off as too polished and corporate-sounding. In social media, people want to interact with people, not canned messages. If your answer to question #1 is no, you can start building support for your argument with some of the strategic reasons why to consider social media as part of an overall marketing mix.

If management buy-in seems far-flung right now, consider putting in place an internal version of social media as an intermediate step. By demonstrating that social media platforms can be used strategically, effectively and productively to improve business outcomes through an internal usage test case, you may be able to pave the path for a much easier transition into the external world of social media. Yammer is an example of a Twitter-like tool that enables internal communications among employees and executives.

2. Does your company have a communications policy in place that addresses expectations for employee behavior in social media? If not, it’s probably time to put one in place to govern expectations at all levels of the organization. Jeremiah Owyang, a leading social media blogger and Forrester Research senior analyst, has some great information about what some companies have done in this area. 123 Social Media also has a great compilation of examples of social media policies from some top-notch companies.

3. Is your brand clearly defined and is it widely understood across the company at all levels? Social media is a great medium for diving deeper with your brand’s personality and company stories. Since many employees are using social media in their personal lives and therefore represent your company both directly and indirectly, it makes sense to ensure that their representations of your brand are consistent with brand ideals.

If you’re not sure of the answer to this question, it may make sense to start with an internal brand survey to gauge the pulse of the brand within your organization. It can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it, but Web-based tools like SurveyMonkey and Zoomerang, among others, are a few options to consider with very low cost implications. If you have a considerable number of employees that do not have computer stations, you may need to also push the survey out the old-fashioned way: paper.

The results of a survey can then help you determine how much more brand education and the type of education your organization might need in order to get where you want to be. Internal communication about your brand is often a life-long effort for an organization, so don’t get too frustrated by disappointing results. Just use the knowledge you gain to make strides in the right direction and supply tools to help all employees be the best brand ambassadors possible.

4. Do you have the necessary staff/resources to manage efforts effectively? Have they been given the time and tools to execute successfully? This is a pretty complicated one to check off, but before you start executing a social media plan, you’ll need to set expectations with the team and with management for how much time it will require to manage the efforts successfully.

How much budget will the efforts equate to in overhead hours? When will you begin to see return on investment? No one can answer these questions except you and your organization, based on your intended plan, resources and budget.

5. Do you have enough content to keep you going for a while in social media? Would you tell a joke if you don’t remember the punchline? Would you pitch a story to a journalist if you didn’t have all or enough of the facts to get your point across? Hopefully not.

Before diving into publishing any of your content, it makes sense to map out the progression of the story or stories you want to tell and build in room to adjust based on response, feedback, news and changes to strategy. Write your content in a way that encourages discussion and response- isn’t that why you’re using social media in the first place? Keep in mind that writing for Web-based reading is very different from writing for print. Here are some tips from cyberjournalist.net help you keep your online writing crisp.

6. Do you have access to existing multi-media assets (videos, pictures, sound bytes, internal personalities, case studies, etc.) to enhance audience experience of your brand? Social media offers nearly limitless possibilities for how your audiences can experience your brand.

The use of a variety of touchpoints in social media platforms such as Twitter, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Flickr, and blogs can enhance the user experience for a far lower budget than in traditional media such as print and broadcast media. But that doesn’t mean that all platforms are necessary or even appropriate for all brands. We’ll dive into the topic of choosing the right platforms for your brand and story in a future post.

What’s really cool about social media is that the expectations for the sophistication of the multi-media production values are far lower, as well. In fact, it’s possible for videos to be “too polished” for social media to maintain their authenticity and connect with their intended audiences. Bottomline: real is better than perfect.

7. Does your organization possess the technical infrastructure to sustain a social media presence? Do you or members of your team have access to updating your company’s Web site regularly and cost-effectively (news, blog links, new photos or videos)? Does your team possess the necessary technical know-how to manage any data security issues and IT infrastructure requirements that may pop up?

Make sure you consult with your IT team to inform them of the intended activities so they may prepare for any required changes and anticipate future needs. For example, access to certain social media sites may be blocked at your company. Permissions can and should be changed to enable access for you and your team, even if the rest of the employees are not permitted to visit those sites from work.  And if your Web updates are mostly outsourced, tt will become cumbersome and expensive very quickly if every update has to go through an external vendor.

If you don’t already use one, consider adding a CMS (content management system) to your Web site to facilitate taking those activities in-house. There are tons of off-the shelf options available and a good developer can probably customize one for your specific needs, depending on what you want to accomplish and your budget limitations.

8. Are you in a heavily regulated industry? How might that affect what you can and cannot do?

Blogger Tammy Green offers a list of 10 objections/considerations for social media in heavily regulated industries. Social media isn’t completely ruled out in highly regulated industries; USAToday recently reported on banks entering the space, using some creative approaches to customer engagement. You just have to get creative and think out of the box to find ways to connect with your audience while adhering to guidelines. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Although not an exhaustive list of everything you might need to consider, this list is intended to offer a framework of things to consider before jumping in head first. Each item can be a project unto itself, but in this case, knowledge is power. The more you know before you begin, the more able to anticipate bumps in the road you will become. Thanks for listening. What did I miss?