The Social Media Advantage. Holly Berkley

world where communications happen in real time. Think of social media as the new cell phone. Just as each and every one of your employees and consultants has a direct cell phone number to power their everyday business and communications, social media can also be leveraged for this purpose — but contains a longer and stronger shelf-life than a single phone call. But unlike a phone call that is between a closed or private group, social media communications allow for outside input and influence, which will help your ideas and your business expand and thrive. Social media offers the ultimate “listening tool” to gain honest input from customers, feedback on your products or services and your business, as well as to discover new and more efficient ways of working.

      When social media tools are leveraged in the right community setting, whether that includes employees of an organization, a group of people with a common interest or goal or a community of residents sharing the same town or neighborhood, members are compelled to interact and share their perspectives. Listening to those conversations and ensuring that you are engaging on topics that matter most to your core audience is the essential ingredient for making full use of social media as a multi-directional communications tool.

      This new way of thinking is an opportunity for all businesses to reorganize their overall communication strategy, decision-making authority and how information flows out to the public, customers, your supply chain and employees. During your deep dive into social media, you will start interacting with customers and colleagues in a way you have never done before, and as a result you will start to build deeper relationships. Ideally, these deeper connections will be the online advocates who will carry your message further than you ever could have imagined on your own. After all, people prefer to buy from other people, not impersonal mission statements, statistics, websites and corporate logos. This new form of media is not a trend. It is the way businesses communicate.

      Where Do I Start?

      Time and intimidation were the main reasons businesses gave us for not having integrated social media into their communication strategies. Small business owners said they were so busy running their business and day to day operations that taking extra time to update a blog, find connections on LinkedIn or post a tweet was just too much. Plus, since many industries are still finding themselves on the tail end of a major recession, priorities are on selling through traditional offline methods. For many business owners, these types of traditional approaches to sales feel safer. However in this book, we’ll show you how social media can open your business up to a wider group of potential customers, and provide more reach than a single hand shake and paper business card ever could.

      Social media isn’t a stand-alone program; it should come alongside a company’s strategies and business objectives that are already in place. Once you know what you are trying to accomplish, the most important piece of advice for jumping into the social media world is this: You don’t have to be everywhere. It’s better to have a strong, influential voice on a handful of social networks where your target audience lives than to try to be everywhere at once. There are so many channels of information available; not only would trying to excel at each be overwhelming, but it is impossible. As shown in figure 1.2. Trying to be everything to everyone will not help you be effective in your social media use. In fact, it will achieve the opposite. It will dilute your overall influence in your online social circles. Focus your approach on a specific objective.

      Getting Company “Buy-In”

      Before you sign up for your first Twitter account or register a name for your blog, define what your business’s overall communication goals are. Just like any marketing and communication vehicle, you have to plan for how you will use social media and how you will measure the success of your efforts.

      Figure 1.2: Trying to excel at each channel is impossible.

      You should also recognize that there is a misconception about social media: that engagement is cheap or even free. Although the social media tools themselves are free, building solid online community profiles takes company buy-in, organization and an investment in time and resources. Your business’s social media cannot be run by your high-school aged child or some random intern. What goes out on the social networks must reflect your company’s intellect, quality, brand, mission and be aligned with your overall business goals. Therefore, the content and messaging needs to be managed by someone with a vested interest and passion for the company and the topic at hand. Social media, when used correctly, can effectively support the communications for most groups within your organization, from PR and marketing to research and development, and from knowledge management to internal communications and recruiting.

      The First Step

      Start with the end in mind. It’s essential to understand your goals and objectives. These will drive the decisions around your target audience and what you are trying to get them to do.

      If you do not know your goals, conduct a thorough analysis to set them. There are several widely published methodologies for goal setting, like the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis that can help you narrow your focus; or the SMART method—Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time sensitive—which is an acronym to help you check that your goals are result-oriented. Regardless of how you approach it, this step is essential. Before starting any communications engagement with clients — whether we are looking into social media or not — we begin with a question and answer session to get to the heart of what they want to achieve and what vehicles are best suited for their goals. See the Objective and Strategy Setting Worksheet sidebar for an outline of questions that drive these conversations and tips for setting objectives.

      Objective and Strategy Setting Worksheet

      Jumping into social media without forethought and planning is perhaps the biggest, and most common, mistake that a small business can make. Without an objective and a strategy, there is no real way to measure, test, achieve success or determine failure. We use the principles of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) combined with the information we’ve come to rely on for marketing or communications campaigns to help assess the landscape and zoom in on a good approach. This fact-finding assessment can take a general, company-wide focus or it can be specific to each market sector or service offering.

      Establish Objectives

      What is your mission statement, values and/or brand attributes?

      • What are your business goals?

      • What are your marketing goals?

      • What is the reputation that you aspire to have?

      • What parts of your business support these goals? Examples are core competencies and differentiators.

      • Who in your company is instrumental to reaching these goals in roles such as a subject matter expert or inspiring leader?

      • What has the company done and/or is currently doing to advance toward these goals?

      • Who are your clients? Who is the decision maker of these client firms and who are the influencers? What is this influencing-person’s background? What does their job entail?

      • Who are your competitors? How are they communicating? Is it effective?

      • Are there sensitive issues or topics that perhaps we need to keep in mind or avoid talking about in public?

      Establish a Strategy

      • What does success look like?

      • What assets are unique to your business? These might be research and development, image library, events, marketing programs, breakthrough projects.

      • What are your resources that can be assigned to this effort? Examples are in-house staff and outsourced resources like agencies or consultants.

      • Who are these resources and what is their background, areas of expertise, interests?