User:Mwolfsohn/Social Media Activity Planner (S MAP)

SMAP (often referred to in verb form as “SMAPping”) is an acronym that stands for Social Media Activity Planner. A proprietary process developed by Ignited, a marketing innovations agency located in El Segundo, California, SMAPping enables advertisers to create a useful framework for applying social media in a marketing context. The process is designed to accomplish 3 primary objectives for marketers: get all stakeholders aligned on the business objectives of the company’s social media plan; determine whether the company’s existing social media activities are congruent with those objectives; and identify areas of deficiency and over-concentration that require adjustments moving forward.

SMAP breaks down social media marketing into 5 simple applications:

LISTENING Using anything from free, basic applications like TweetDeck to robust analytics tools like eCairn and Overtone to monitor consumer opinions and activities.

INSPIRING Creating venues, tools or reasons for consumers to talk about your product, service or brand online.

JOINING Joining existing online conversations in an effort to guide conversations, seed opinions or provide valuable, relevant content.

ASKING Proactively seeking an audience to provide insight on a specific topic or set of topics.

TELLING Using social media as a content distribution channel (e.g., posting news on Twitter or a video on YouTube).

The SMAP diagnostic tool evolved from Ignited’s 2009 book titled The Marketer’s Guide to Social Media.