Social Media in business is not a game. It is a serious application of sound communication and marketing techniques through a new and evolving channel.
In short. You still use established communication and marketing techniques, you just have a new channel to do them with.
You still need a plan, a goal, corporate alignment, implementation, and finally, measurement. The great thing about Social Media, is that is it highly measurable. In fact you can over measure and over analyze till your head really spins.
That being said, to successfully integrate Social Media into your existing business does take a bit of work. A basic assumption about you is that you have very limited Social Media experience and the new (& unknown) stuff you are hearing about is a bit scary. Perfect. There is nothing wrong with being scared. Count to five. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Let begin. Getting your business integrated with Social Media can take a bit of time, but first you really need to just kind of poke around a little and get familiar with your new environment. You need a FaceBook account. Now you can get anyone that has a FaceBook account to help you, but I think the best thing is to just give it a try by yourself. You did not become successful in your business by being timid. So go to www.facebook.com and sign up. It’s ok, we are going to play a bit. Just to get your feet wet.
Ok, after starting the account it asks if you want to find your friends. You can either provide some email addresses of friends or just skip the step. Next, begin your profile. Do a quick fill of a few things. You can provide more details later. Upload either a picture of you or just something nice that you have on your computer. Don’t leave this blank. Check your email and confirm your account. You are now a member of the Social Media community. Welcome.
Now this blog entry was ultra basic. Really the main purpose is to get you playing with the most popular Social Media application on the internet, FaceBook. It is extremely hard to manage what you don’t understand. You don’t need to be an expert or even proficient to have a Social Media presence for your business, BUT you need to have at least played with it a bit. And even better, look up some of your competitors and see what they are doing. You will be surprised. And you might want to even borrow some of their ideas.
It’s a whole new world out there. Again, Welcome.
(First Published 1/27/2011)