Thank you. All of those elements are important or even essential. There are at the same time questions to be asked about such elements of planning and implementation as:
* alignment of social media strategy and business strategy
* identification of which of several possible goals the company wants to focus on – e.g. lead generation, engagement with customers, collaboration within an industry or professional grouping, recruitment… – as well as long term and short term goals
* assessment of where the company is now in terms of social web presence (or readiness to be establish a presence), and where customers, competitors and partners are
* what resources the company has inhouse to manage the social media engagement process and what resource it will need to acquire, by recruitment or outsourcing

While I am the first to talk about risk and risk management, I find that focusing *first* and primarily on risk management (not suggesting you do that but I have been in plenty of conversations where that is the preoccupation) is not a good way to motivate companies to take concerted action.

I liken the strategic process to that which I imagine is used generally by financial planners. They sell to people’s desire to have their wealth increased and as part of the explanation they explain the risk management framework. If they led the discussion with a preoccupation about risk they would surely lose potential business. 

My one liner on this for financial planners is (as they would surely say to their clients), risk can be managed (or mitigated) – with the subtext that if you want to engage with social media (or invest to have your wealth increase), risk cannot be factored out or managed out completely.

Do you agree?

Des