The Coach's Bulletin - Company Time Wasted on Facebook?

Why are you even considering becoming more active online? Sometimes the answer to the savvy marketing versus waste question is in the clarity of your goals for becoming more active in social media. And ultimately the proof is in social media's impact on the results in your company.

The lure - more for your money, or no money at all

If you are like many small businesses, marketing is one of those investments for which the return on investment is sometimes difficult to quantify. And if you are hiring someone to help you, sometimes it's difficult to know whether the outside resource that you are contemplating using is a good fit and worth the money.

Marketing online need not be an expensive proposition. If you are willing to commit some of your oh-so-abundant downtime, or at least some non-peak business hours, you can make your own space in social media. You can establish and manage a Facebook page, a LinkedIn profile, a Twitter ID, and even a YouTube channel - all with an investment of solely sweat equity.

If you want or need to delegate your online activities, there are a lot of local resources to help you do so, including other small businesses specializing in marketing online and social media. Or you might have a friend or "digital native" relative that would be willing to help you. Be creative about sourcing this, but if you delegate it, make sure the tone as well as the content is well defined, agreed upon and monitored.

The importance of clarity on your goals

Companies have a variety of reasons to become more active online. Some potential goals for your company may include:

Boosting awareness of your brand
Driving potential customers to your main website's e-store
Notifying the community about events and/or specials
Building credibility as experts in your industry
Keeping your company name top of mind
Building a network of fans and referral sources
Obtaining customer feedback

Your patience for seeing results from your online efforts will partly relate to your reasons for being there. If you are trying to drive direct sales by sending customers to your online store, you should be able to measure your results fairly readily in the volume of online sales activity. This doesn't mean that you'll see growth overnight, only that you will be able to measure it easily.

The status of the other online goals is a bit more difficult to measure unless you ask new customers where they heard about you and why they chose to buy from you. The reputation and awareness-building process can take months or even longer to accumulate results, and again, you won't know whether your online efforts have had impact unless you ask.

Customer feedback and your online reputation

Potentially the most important, yet underestimated, goal for an online presence is the last one on the list - obtaining customer feedback. Social media can be a tremendous boost for your business, but it can also drive potential customers away just because of the speed and breadth of the communication. If there's a problem you'd better be monitoring it, or negative word of mouth could spread like crazy overnight via the megaphones that are Facebook and Twitter.

If your company finds out about a problem or disgruntled customer online, handle it quickly and post about the resolution that was made. Everyone messes up from time to time, and your prompt and conscientious recovery from the problem may attract customers that never noticed you before.

If you're worried about online gossip that might not be true, make a point to post testimonials and positive comments that you receive from your customers. Online customers know that not every post they see online is, let's say, credible. Even if there are a few wild hairs out there flaming about your business you can balance the message.

If you want to know what's being said about your company without spending hours and hours online, subscribe to Google alerts. You'll receive emails about online mentions of your company, and you can follow up on them.

Sticking to your knitting

Social media works best when you have established a purpose for your presence there and then stick to it. Sites like Facebook are full of opportunities for you to take a left turn and get involved in a bunch of comment-fests that bear no relationship to your business. Sometimes they can even lure you in because of a topical or emotionally charged issue about which you have an opinion that you want to express. Danger - don't go there under your company identity.

If you like being part of social media, keep a separate identity for the game and recipe sharing aspects of your time online. And don't confuse your company online time with your personal time. The cute kitten and heroic dog photo shares can quickly become a time vortex, and you can find yourself amazed that two hours have passed with no business productivity while you cruised online.

The importance of fans, friends, links, and followers

Your reach in social media, no matter your goal for being there, is only as great as your list of fans and friends (Facebook), links (LinkedIn and blogs) and followers (Twitter). You might be posting terrific free resource information online, but unless people are receiving your post you are whistling into the wind.

You will need to ask for Likes on your company Facebook page, to request to connect with influencers on LinkedIn, and to follow in order to get reciprocal followers on Twitter. Once you reach a certain critical mass your reach will start to grow without as much intervention, but you have to start the flywheel spinning.

Look for organizations in your industry, or online sites your clients might visit, and make your presence known there. Just like the "real world," you hang out where they do in order to get to know them and open doors to business opportunity.

Social Media Doesn't Want Your Content

Approximately every other business leader we speak with talks about how his or her company is activating their participation in social media, becoming frustrated with their attempts to measure the effectiveness of their social media efforts, or some such issue. Some are designating individuals or hiring contractors to handle this piece of their marketing. But if you agree with Olivier Blanchard, author of

The Brandbuilder Blog, you'll see that these businesses are misperceiving, or rather underestimating, the role that social media could be or should be fulfilling for their companies.

The marketing-focused approach to social media means that companies produce content. They blog, they produce You-Tube videos and slideshares. Blanchard thinks that this approach is short-sighted:

"If you have ever wondered why "content" was such a recurring theme and point of focus in the social space - when it clearly doesn't need to be, this is why. What you are looking at ..., and what you are hearing ... isn't representative of social business or a social media program for business. What it illustrates is limited to social media marketing: The traditional marketing function adapted and applied to social media channels. This world view reflects a belief that social media management is primarily a marketing function. This is of course incorrect.

Since social media channels and the social space are not inherently marketing-focused channels, the correct approach for a business looking to see both short and long term results, is one that is NOT primarily marketing-centric, and therefore NOT primarily content-centric."

This might be good news for you if you're sweating about your lack of resources or lack of talent for the production of content to place on social media. We could cite a multitude of examples where content pushers have been met with resistance, even hostility, in social media space, and here's why. Social means interactive. Content pushing, on the other hand, is a one-way conversation.

Blanchard sees the true potential in social media to be an across-the-board strategic integration with multiple functions in your company. There are so many points in your business operation where input from and dialogue with current and potential customers can influence and improve your products, services, and their delivery. Blanchard cites these examples:

Digital Customer Service

Business Intelligence

Digital market research

Consumer Insights Management

Online Reputation Management

Digital Crisis Management

And there are more - the above list is for illustration purposes. This list represents opportunity for you to have a real dialogue with your customers. That's social. That's not only marketing. That's integrated. And that, my dear Watson, doesn't require you to invest a ton of resources in producing content.