Let’s start with people. Before you start, you must find out what sorts of social activities your customers engage in online. For example, younger customers tend to contribute frequently to online social content – the problem with these customers is to get their attention among all the other social applications and tools they use. Older customers are often more willing to read social content than to create it, so any effort aimed at them is more likely to succeed if a lot of the “starter” content comes from the company and people can react to it. (To get a look at participation of different age groups in different European, North American, and Asian countries, see Forrester’s online tool at (http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html).

Once you’ve analyzed your people, move on to objectives. A clear objective makes it far more likely your social application will succeed. The five main social objectives are listening (research), talking (marketing), energizing (word of mouth), supporting (customer service), and embracing (product development). Pick one, and design your application to tap into it. For example, the Sonic Foundry application we’ve described is a great energizing application.

Having analyzed people, and objectives, move on to strategy. Social applications aren’t like a marketing campaign you can launch, run, and complete. Once engaged, customers expect you to support them in their continuing social activity. Communities, blog audience, and social network sites tend to grow over time, creating a long-term asset. So what is your long-term plan for your application?

Finally, choose the right technology. Based on your plan, you might decide to wade into Xing, set up a blog, or build an online community. Starting with a technology choice is nearly always a mistake. Instead, start with people, objectives, and strategy, and your technology choice will be far easier.

Part one of article