Can Social Media Help Your Business?

Well, that's the point of this blog.

I moderated a clinic last week at the Utah Technology Council on PR & Social Media. I saved the presentation I gave on Slideshare in case you want to see it. (I like Slideshare a lot, but I agree with Kevin Dugan, who says "without detailed speaker notes, SlideShare can be like watching the TV when it's on mute.")

The presentation is a good starting point, but the blog format is a great way to explore some of these concepts more in-depth. In the next several posts I'll write about how you can set up an effective social media program for your company. To start off, I'll answer a few basic questions that I hear regularly:

Who "Owns" Social Media in Your Organization?
I think it helps to designate one person at your work that "owns" social media. For our company, it made sense for it to be run by PR. At your company, it might be someone in marketing or product management, or whoever is passionate about social media. The ultimate goal is to get your whole organization to embrace social media, but you should at least begin with a social media champion. It is also important that you get at least one executive "sponsor" of social media within your company. Michael Dell was a huge proponent of engaging with customers online, and helped instill a social media culture at Dell.

It should be noted that these techniques can be used for well-established companies and emerging companies. In fact, I don't know a lot of people like me who get to spend most of their time on social media strategy at work. If you're using the right tools the right way, social media should actually help you do your job better.

Which Social Media Tools Should I Use?
It depends. You shouldn't worry about tools until you have a strategy in place. (see Josh Bernoff's POST Method)

It might not make sense to try to create a "viral video" for YouTube or to make a podcast. I've seen companies whose competitors start doing something with social media and the immediate reaction is "we need one of those too!" If the social media tool isn't aligned with your overall strategy then it probably isn't worth the time.

Where Should I Start?
Well, where are your customers and potential customers right now?

At Omniture, we first began with an audit of all the content online in the areas of Web analytics, online marketing, search marketing, etc. We tried to identify the top influencers in each category. Which bloggers are leading the discussion? Start by following the thought leaders and where they are producing content. We found that a lot of the influencers in our space are on an industry message board and blogs. In the past few months, more have begun to use Twitter to communicate short messages. We monitor everything but decided to first focus on these main areas.

Create a Blogger Relations Program
There a two categories of bloggers. The first creates much of the original content online, the other "directs traffic" by linking and pointing their readers to good content online. You should try to incorporate both types of bloggers in your outreach. Before you ever reach out to a blogger you should first read the blog and understand what they cover. It has been covered ad nauseum elsewhere, but basic PR rules apply when interacting with bloggers. Don't try to pitch a blogger something he or she doesn't cover, don't spam, etc.

This is a good stopping point. Next post I'll cover developing a framework for monitoring and responding to posts about your brand.