Many businesses are starting to realize the power of Social Media as a customer service and marketing platform. I hope that you are one of them. However, there are some companies out there who are passing off their social media initiatives to interns because they underestimate the time and talent it takes to learn and implement it. I hope your not one of these.
Just because social media is a free platform does not mean that it should be managed lightly. Social media, along with every other facet of business, should have a precise goal and strategy for its purpose within the organization. Just because one of your interns is a social media junkie does not mean they possess the knowledge needed to create, organize, and implement your social media efforts. I’m not saying that one of your interns may be the exception, but in many cases I would have to say they do not.
So what is it that you should do?
Step #1) Take the time to have your management team set goals for social media. If you are everyone else within your team lacks social media knowledge, then hire someone to assist you. There are many fine social media consultant out there, but you have to also watch for many who are not. You way want to read How To Hire a Social Media Agency or Consultant.
Step #2) Start becoming active in the social media space on your own. There are two major components to social media and they are really easy to do with only about 1 hour per day. That is creating content and communicating with people. Content can be written, video, and/or audio and it doesn’t have to be longer than a minute or so to consume. Then you spend the rest of the time talking about topics related to the type of content you just produced or talking to your clients.
Step #3) Give your social media efforts time. Social media is NO silver bullet. Build your social media efforts within your entire business and utilize the powerful tools that are out there. They may be more beneficially internally than external. Social media is not just about ROI and increasing sales, this is also a customer service, networking, and PR platform. You don’t want to shut down your efforts because you are not seeing any increased sales. You may one day run into a major pitfall. You don’t want to then try to hurry and scramble to the social media platforms to get the good word out about you and your company. If your in there and already established, your communication channels are already fully open.
Is your management team running your social media efforts? Do you think interns are able to run social media for some certain companies?
