In our last post about common sense customer service we were going to use the expression “not happy, Jan” but decided against it because we weren’t sure how much resonance it would have outside of Australia.

So, seeing as it is a bank holiday weekend here in the UK we thought it would be fun to share with you the source of the expression “not happy, Jan” so that when we use it in future you will know exactly what we are on about!

Enjoy this slice of classic Australian advertising from the early 2000′s.

Hope you enjoy your holiday weekend.

One of the questions that businesses frequently ask when starting on their social media journey is how to make it a day-to-day part of what they do. The answer is to think strategically.

There is an understandable temptation to say “we need to be on Twitter“, without giving it much more thought than that. Pausing first and asking a few key questions means that you can still jump on the Twitter bandwagon, but you can do it in a way that will be sustainable and deliver real value.

For example:

• Who is going to Tweet on behalf of the company?
• Are the people you want to reach actually on Twitter?
• Will they use their own name, or the company name or a combination?
• What guidelines will they operate within?
• What will they say, and how will the impact of what they say be tracked?

These are simple questions to answer, but answering them first will make your life easier.

When we work with clients we like to borrow the excellent POST methodology from the book Groundswell. The idea is simply to work through a number of steps before launching a social media campaign.

P is for People: Who do you want to reach? What is your target audience? Where do they spend their time when they are online?

O is for Objectives: Decide on your primary objective for reaching out to the target group? What do you want from them? Is raising awareness enough? How will you measure what your impact?

S is Strategy: How are you going to achieve your objective? What are you going to do for your customers/targets? What will be different after you have acted?

T is for Technology: Technology is fun because of what it allows us to do, but we should remember it is a tool and not an end in itself. Starting with the technology kinda puts the horse before the cart… so only after the three points above have good answers should we start looking at what technology we will use to meet our goals.

Hopefully you can see how a little bit of time invested up-front in social media planning can increase your chances of success, as well as making it possible to simply make social media just part of what you do.

Of course, you can make your life easier still and get us to help you!

Can social media make you money? It’s not an unreasonable question given the way that social media is capable of hyping itself up.

The answer – yes and no.

Some of the spambots, internet marketers and multi-level marketers on Twitter and the rest of the web would have you believe that it is simply a matter of gaining a truckload of followers or traffic, and suddenly money will start magically appearing in your bank account.

Well, spammers are bammers and are guilty of clogging up the web with nonsense. Money won’t magically appear in your account if you have lots of Twitter followers.

But if you use Twitter to find interesting people to follow, you engage with them in a useful, meaningful way to develop a relationship, then you might make some money.

Take the example of Mackenzie Morgan Aerospace Consultants. Managing director Malcolm Cox (full disclosure – Murray’s brother) started dipping his toe in the social media water at the start of 2009 and can point to the positive difference it’s made to his bottom line.

Malcolm took his time to learn about social media before making a splash by following interesting and relevant people in his professional world. And as one of the first aerospace consultants to embrace social media so fully, he has managed to talk to – and win business from – people he would not normally have been able to access.

But here’s the rub – social media hasn’t made him any money. Malcolm has made the money by being good at what he does. He has simply used social media as a tool to develop new relationships and offer value to his professional community in a strategic way.

At the other end of the spectrum, Dell is the cause célèbre of the social media digerati by attributing $US3m in sales to Twitter. How did they do it? Have a look: http://twitter.com/delloutlet And effectively, it boils down to offering Twitter-exclusive offers, Dell Outlet deals and Outlet-specific information. Could you do the same?