How Will You Use Social Media?

My guess is that you wouldn’t purchase a new $2,000 machine for your business without knowing exactly how it was going to help you. You’d probably have metrics and charts and ways to evaluate how it all worked before you ever brought it home. So don’t make a social media investment without identifying these same metrics. That Twitter or Facebook account may be free, but you pay with the time you’re investing. Develop a plan.

• What are you goals for social media?
• Which sites will you invest in? How will each be used?
• Who is the point person for all activity?
• What metrics will be tracked to judge ROI?
• What tools do you need to automate certain tasks and/or make it more efficient?

These are just a couple of the questions you’ll want to think about before jumping into the social media waters. If you don’t know what you’re doing there, you don’t know if you’ve reached your goal. Or if you’re just throwing away your investment.

Remove barriers to social media entry: For your business to be social, your team has to be social. That means everyone from your CEO to your newest receptionist has board the social media train. How do you get them there? By removing barriers to social media entry.

A barrier to social media may be a lack of education about tools available or it could be the fear that goes with learning a new platform. By creating educational resources you help calm their fears and remove that barrier. Another barrier may be that you expect employees to tweet after-hours, instead of while on the job. This may involve reassigning tasks to free up time or other things to help address those. But your business will never be social without knocking those walls down.

So what do you think? Give me your comments and feedback below. And, oh, by the way, don't forget to tell a friend if you like what you see! xo

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