Implementation tactics support the strategy and include several disparate elements. There are three processes at work in the implementation of SIM, depending on the audience addressed, the media selected, and the message.
Implementation activities for current customers involves creating a forum where you and your prospects and customers can share insights, discuss issues, provide feedback and suggestions, and, perhaps, vent grievances. In addition, this forum provides access to ongoing technical information, previews of product enhancements, tips for improving efficiency and value in the use of products, promotional announcements, and event invitations.
The primary value of this channel lies in what you gain by listening to the prospects and your customers who care enough about you and your products to communicate in the forum. Listening, identifying key issues, taking appropriate action, and reporting the results to the forum is your role.
For prospects, the primary process is the provision of “just-in time” access to the information as they progress through the decision process. Implementation activities involve creating your presence by way of a company page hosted on platforms where you and your customers can share information and insights, discuss issues, and provide feedback and suggestions. You will want to have a presence on multiple platforms (e.g., Facebook, Linkedin) because each reaches different segments of your total audiences. Ultimately, participation on these multiple platforms should drive traffic to your website, the hub or command central of your SIM activities.
Implementation also involves linking your website to these various platform pages. It involves employing best practices in designing a website that is interactive. This often means changing the format of your website to a blogsite, where the blog-page part of the site is the centerpiece (the initial landing page) and the other traditional pages of the blogsite support the blog. Using these SIM methods allows prospects to “self-identify” as potential customers.
Implementation for the purpose of attracting key influencers requires a different process. Whether these are industry bloggers, product advocates, or customers with a bent for commentary and technical deep-dives into the information, the process allows them the freedom to discuss, debate, and comment on key subjects related to your product, company and industry. Often, this will be the forum in which your thought leadership can emerge.
Implementation activities includes setting up accounts and designing platform face pages in all desired platforms, such as Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, YouTube, Wiki's, your website, and five or six other platforms that reach different audiences. Creating linkages among all these sites and your website (e.g., RSS feeds, badges, Twitter and Facebook links, ‘email to’ capabilities, “share with a colleague”, and the like). For example, implementation might address the process of posting a blog entry and having it populate in all the company’s Social Media platform pages at once, instead of having to insert the same content in each platform’s company face page.