Reactive Social Media Plan: Is It the Way to Go?

So yesterday I spend almost the entire workday reading and thinking about how to make a social media plan for my association. It was a tough nut to crack because just about everything I can find out there (meaning in the great big internet) was about how to design a social media for your members (or customers).

To put it bluntly, our members don’t care about social media as a form of communication with each other or with the association. Maybe it’s because we are so small (33 members and three staff) That blogging to each other seems kind of over the top. These folks tend to just e-mail each other and it seems to work for them. It’s a close, personal network. Twitter might be something of interest (since our members are always on the road), but then again there isn’t a whole lot to Tweet about other than at our conference.  But no matter how I slice it or think about it, I just can’t see our members being the audience for any social media efforts (at least at this time).

I thought about maybe using social media to contact our member’s customers. But that can be a minefield of antitrust issues not to mention the question of how the association would maintain its neutrality. We don’t want to get in the middle of our members competing with each other for customers.

After spending a few hours trying to figure out how to use social media to involve our members (envision me beating myself in the head with the “square peg”). It dawned on me that the general public might be a good audience.

There are a lot of misconceptions about the products our members produce and a lot of people seem to like to talk about that (I read it in blogs, message boards, and website comments a lot).For example, there is a misconception that foodservice packaging is “clogging our landfills.” That’s not true. According to the same people who do the municiple solid waste facts and figures survey for the EPA,  foodservice packaging is part (1.3%) of municipal solid waste (which makes up only 20% of the waste stream). So we are talking about 1.3% of 20%. The problem is, people “see” foodservice packing more than other sorts of waste so it seems like more.

Do you see where I am going? This is the type of information that needs to make its way into the grand social media networks. But the quest then becomes, how?

I have a sneaking suspicion if I were to start a blog or a Facebook page and start posting this information that it won’t get much attention from the general public. People who are concerned about the environment (using my above example) probably aren’t going to go to a foodservice packaging blog. They are going to go look for social media groups that share their interests. 

And this is where my reactive plan comes into effect. Instead of making a blog and maintaining it, starting a wiki, starting a message board or sending out Tweets… how about if I watch what other people are talking about and respond. When that blog post on TreeHugger pops up and says “polystyrene can’t be recycled” I can bust that myth. Or when a group starts a grassroots campaign to require businesses to use bio-based foams for their hot drinks, I can point out that while bio-based foam can be made, it has a low melting point and wouldn’t hold a cup of coffee. Or whena wiki article says that restaurant’s paper products mean the destruction of “old growth” forests, I can correct the wiki entry and point out that foodservice packing materials are made from wood gathered from “tree farms” that are grown specifically for paper and are harvested and regrown like a field of corn.

I still have a lot of work to do on this plan. And so far it isn’t much more than responding to blogs, articles, and forums and writing for Wikipedia. I figure first I will have to pinpoint the popular, influential social media outlets that might be of concern for the foodservice packaging industry and start monitoring them. I am not sure how many should be on this list though (I am only one person, so I have to keep it reasonable to manage).  I also have define what the message and audience will be—or at least a few core messages. I will also need to figure out what my metrics will be and set some long-term goals.

I hope I am on the right track with a reactive plan to start. It seems to fit the need now and for the immediate future. If anyone has any thoughts, I’d be happy to listen.

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