Posted by Kevin O'Keefe: "Seth Godin's post this morning, 'When tactics drown out strategy' may as well have been directed to law firms' flawed use of social media, including blogging.
New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many of them cost nothing but time, which means you don't need as much approval and support to launch them.
As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita's candy shoppe, gazing at all the pretty opportunities.
The problem is that all of these opportunities are just tactics, not a strategy. Per Seth:
'Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best customers over time' is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience, people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy... and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that they never really embraced in the first place.
Seth also nails why law firms are all over tactics, not strategy.
Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, 'I'm going to post this.' If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)
I presented at a webinar hosted by a law firm marketing company earlier this week. I emphasized how important it was to develop a strategy before beginning to blog. Identify your goals. Identify your target audience of clients, prospective clients, referral sources and their influencers. Identify how you are going to listen to this target audience. Identify how you will engage them in a meaningful way.
A number of lawyers in the audience wanted nothing to do with strategy. 'Show us how to blog effectively by telling me how to post content on a blog.'..."
Full text and the active link are available at the source site listed below.
Source: Real Lawyers Have Blogs, 7 August 2009
