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!

Well the Wikipedia definition is comprehensive, but perhaps a little dry. And I’m not sure that it truly conveys what is at the heart of social media – people!

These new-fangled technologies are supremely cool in their own right, but they should not be the be all and end all. What they can do for us in terms of bringing people together and giving us all a voice is the be all and end all in my book.

There are two very different presentations below that attempt to answer the question – WTF is social media? – in very different ways.

The first is from Marta Kagan and she answers the question with all-American chutzpah. It’s actually an update on an earlier presentation she gave to reflect the way social media has grown and grown.

And then there’s this from Erik Qualman of Socialnomics. It’s a fast-moving, four-minute summary of all that’s good in social media with the sole intention of convincing you this is more than a passing fad.

Enjoy!

Social media is a relatively new term, but what it applies to isn’t. People have always used technology to connect and communicate, it just happens that now we have very cool and sophisticated technology to help us do that.

Before we had social media we had web2.0 – the title was supposed to indicate that the web had gotten all interactive and that the web is now all about two-way communication, as opposed to broadcast models.

But think about it… the web has always been social and interactive. The web grew out of email technology and networks that existed for scientists to talk to each other. And going back to 1998 when I first started working on the web, there was already a mind-boggling array of chat-rooms, forums and bulletin boards where I could chat to people to my heart’s content.

So why all the excitement about social media? It’s simply the fact that these tools are easier to use then ever, and that because more and more people are using them there is a growing rejection of traditional media. People are showing they want to talk to each other, rather be talked at.

Why not talk with us to see how we can help you on your social media journey?

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?