Parthenon’s FLEP model

Find
Listen
Evaluate
Participate

Find: Before your first Tweet or LinkedIn question posting, search and find out what people and groups are saying about your brand, industry, company or competitors. Are there LinkedIn and Facebook employee, member or customer groups that you are not yet monitoring? Who are the leaders in your industry and what are they tweeting about or discussing in their blogs? Google alerts and Tweetbeep can help in this area.

Listen: Once you find the people you want and need to follow, just listen. The desire to jump in and begin a conversation may be great, but for now, just listen. At Parthenon, we create Listening Post for our clients. This is a tool that aggregates the buzz about a company or association’s industry, brand, employees/members/customers, etc in a single web-based location. The listening process should take at least a few weeks.

Evaluate: Once you have a general understanding of what various audiences are saying (or not saying) about your company, brand or association, you can begin to evaluate your next steps. Are audiences saying what you want them to say about your company? Suggested alternative, more in line with the idea of evaluating next steps: Is the online chatter on your company positive and accurate? If not, how do you get the right message out? Are your audiences on any one medium more than others? How can the various social media platforms help you forward your marketing plan and business objectives? Finally, be sure to evaluate how much time you and your team can devote to social media. Tweeting, blogging and posting takes time.

Participate: Once you know where the conversations are happening and what people are saying, you can begin to engage different groups of people. Avoid the hardcore sales pitch. And, part of education is making sure that people know you are in the social media stratosphere. Be sure to advertise your Twitter name, LinkedIn profile, blog and Facebook page at every opportunity (website, email signature, eNewsletters).