The Baja peninsula of Mexico is a desolate place. Communication there consists mostly of waving at people you pass on the highway, if you want to call it a highway. That was the problem I faced when asked by Jim Beam Racing and Robby Gordon Motorsports to develop a social media strategy to connect fans with Robby's efforts in last fall's Baja 1000 off-road race.

Most marketing folks think social media is a strategy. "We're going to go build a community for our brand in MySpace and have us some social media." Not quite. Social media isn't the end goal. It is the tools to help you reach the end goals of your overall communications strategy.

So communicating what was happening during the course of the Baja 1000, an 18-to-36 hour dead sprint from one end of the peninsula to the other, was the problem. What social media tools could help give fans of Robby Gordon and Jim Beam Racing race updates, something they couldn't feasibly find elsewhere, to capture their attentions during the running?

It just so happened that I use a micro-blogging software called Twitter to follow friends and thought leaders in the communications and technology industries. The premise is to answer the question, "What are you doing?" in 140 characters or less ever so often. I know, it sounds kind of dumb. But when someone big in my industry finds a cool website or "tweets" that they just found out Goggle is buying up another web 2.0 startup, I can stop what I'm doing and beat the other social media and PR bloggers to the punch discussing it on my website.

Twitter allows you to update your status from your mobile phone, too. Wait! What if Robby Gordon had a Twitter account and we were able to send text message updates from along the Baja course? That would solve the problem. Well, a few hundred dollars, six satellite phones with text capabilities and some nifty web page development to make it all look nice later and we had a quasi-real-time race reporting mechanism set for the Baja.

Our best guess is that 12,000 to 15,000 die-hard Robby Gordon fans were locked in to our Twitter feed (It appeared on at least three different websites) during the race and it was all sponsored by and branded Jim Beam and Beam Racing. One off-road racing message board devoted about an hour's worth of posts to talking about how cool and informative the feed was. The Jim Beam Baja Twitter Tracker was a success. But it wasn't a strategy. It was simply a tool to connect fans to Robby Gordon's performance during the race.

As you begin to think of community building, social networking, blogging or other social media methods to start or keep your business relevant to the modern day consumer, keep in mind your strategy doesn't change when you go online. You're only using social media to find the right tools to execute it and reach your target audience.

About The Author: Jason Falls is a public relations professional and social media explorer for Doe Anderson, a national advertising agency in Louisville, Ky.

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