When you attend a business conference these days you’ll find the sessions on Blogging, LinkedIn, Face book, and Twitter jammed and most anything else close to empty. We now exist in a society that jumps on the next big thing, but that impulse can limit our company’s top and bottom line performance. As a consequence, we never achieve the high levels of returns we were expecting from this new buzz; hence we are seriously disappointed in the results. Some relevant questions to ask before you walk away from Social Media in search of the next best thing:
Why did your company begin to use Social Media sites?
Are your Social Media sites consistent with your company’s brand, message, and customer base?
What is your Social Media plan for 2011? (Are you measuring?)
Who is the project manager of your social media work flow? Are they knowledgeable or just have a knack for these things?
Does the senior executive group champion this project? Why or why not?
While many companies are driven by the desire to improve their growth, frustrated executives may just be keeping up with the Joneses. Social Media is a buzz that is red hot, and they didn’t want to appear “behind the competition”.
Yes, it’s important to stay “cutting edge” in one’s field. But doing so shouldn’t prevent us from doing it well, aggressively, and competently. Companies should be managing these campaigns to be the top one or two in your competitive market.
What are important solutions, old and new, to boost your Social Media ROI productivity?
- Blogs on a consistent schedule.
- Permission Email and direct marketing “high touch paper” campaigns back to the website.
- “Pay for click” targeted marketing.
- Data base capture.
- Customer and prospect data base testing and cleaning on a regular basis.
- Email auto signatures back to the official website on all employee pages.
- Website addresses on all product, collateral materials, and catalogs.
- Cross linked images on the company website to send to your Social Media sites.
- Use video on your sites via YouTube channeling (The 2nd largest search engine in use).
- Professional Social Media networking forums on “What is Working, What is Not.”
- Intranets and CRM systems for employee, supplier, and customer data views linked to your Social Media.
- Search Engine Optimization, hand held (i.e. Blackberry) formatting.
- Job posting on both job boards and relevant social media sites linked to your website, ATS capabilities for new talent sourcing.
Go for it, jump in with two feet. Your internet brand presence is how your company is initially evaluated from the outside world. Your switchboard operator and your cyber presence are your company’s first contact, are you happy with it? 2011 is the time to focus on a positive, meaningful, Social Media campaign for your company. If you are going to do it, do it right.
