Hello and welcome to my blog! My name is Patrick Di Chiro, and I am the founder and CEO of THUNDER FACTORY, an integrated marketing firm headquartered in San Francisco. In this blog, I examine the convergence of marketing with technology, culture, politics and the global economy. If you like what you see, please spread the word and leave a comment. I look forward to your feedback!

If there is one thing we get asked all the time by clients, it’s: “How do we get started in social media?” Very often, companies are not even sure why they should get involved in the social media revolution, but they still don’t want the parade to pass them by. After all, everyone’s talking about it!

Update: Today’s Wall Street Journal has an excellent commentary on social media in marketing, what the authors call marketing 3.0. It is a very provocative and well reasoned piece. A key takeaway from the article relates to a topic I have blogged about previously in this space: the growing power of “co-creation” in business and marketing. The new highly fragmented, social media environment further underscores the intense need for marketers to treat “customers” not as people to comunicate and sell ”to,” but as partners with whom we can co-create products, services, communities, whatever, 

OK, back to my original post: Once you have made the decision to jump into social media — or at least dip your toe in it to test the temperature — the question then becomes, how?  Based on my own experience, and the expert advice from my THUNDER FACTORY colleagues Mitch Wainer and Miranda Abernathy, here are some initial principles and steps that will help guide you along your way to social media engagement and, hopefully, success:

• Define Your Objectives — As with any corporate/organizational initiative, start with objectives. What do you want to achieve with your social media program? Do you mainly want to track what is being said about your company/brand/organization, or do you want to take a more activist stance in the social media space? Start with a few modest goals, and work up from there. By setting realistic goals and milestones, you can track — and optimize — your social media results. Management will love you for that.
• Monitor It – Even if you are not proactively driving social media activities, it’s likely that your company or brand is already being covered and/or mentioned in some way. That coverage can be much more widespread than you would ever guess. That is why the first thing to do is make sure you are regularly monitoring what is being said about your company, your brand and your people (and/or, what they are saying, because it is highly likely that they are involved, too, sometimes under the auspices of your company name). The last thing you want is to be unaware of what is transpiring in the social media realm that relates to your organization. You need to proactively monitor this media environment (just as you would major business magazines, newspapers and TV), so you are plugged into what is being said about you. Absent that, you’re just flying blind.
• Join It – To get something out of social media, you will need to get involved. Typically that means joining the social media sites that interest you and your organization. For business, LinkedIn is a very popular place to start. Make sure your people join up and then link to your website (it all helps in your search engine results). Facebook is also very popular, and not just for individuals. Many companies now have Facebook pages, including my own integrated/interactive marketing firm THUNDER FACTORY.
• Blog It – Probably the best known social media form is the blog. You probably already frequent a number of blogs, for professional purposes, news, entertainment, gossip (I admit it, I read Gawker.com!), hobbies, sports, etc. Why not start a blog for your company, or just yourself? It is a great way to expand your contacts and promote your interests, issues, products, brand, etc. Blogging is also a terrific way to establish and communicate your leadership in a certain area (like your professional expertise). As with any social media, once you start it, you need to keep at it. Having an inactive blog is worse than having no blog at all.
• Twitter It – Another very popular social media site is Twitter (here’s my Twitter profile). Probably more so than any other site, Twitter has become an increasingly important part of the social media framework for businesses and other organizations (and politicians, too, like President-Elect Barack Obama, who has 130,000 followers-plus on Twitter). On Twitter, you can post for yourself and your company. As with any other social media, the key is to get involved and stay involved. You need to post regularly (easy to do because a Twitter “micro-blog” post can only be 140 characters), and then follow other people and their comments/updates. (You also need to be careful in the viral world of social media; there are pitfalls. Motrin was recently flamed on Twitter by a “flash-mob” of moms and others who objected to a Motrin ad campaign that some felt was negative regarding the use of baby slings, presumably because the ad inferred that they can cause back pain. Motrin’s manufacturer J&J pulled that ad pretty quickly after the social media backlash ensued. YouTube has a bunch of videos of those irate moms who didn’t appreciate a pain reliever brand calling into question baby slings. Many have subsequently commented that J&J probably reacted too quickly and rashly in dumping the Motrin ad. The Twitter backlash to the ad campaign was not really that big, they say. And, if J&J had really been “listening” rather than just knee-jerk reacting, they might have gotten something positive out of the experience by truly engaging the mommy bloggers.)
• Manage It – Someone (or a group of people for larger organizations) needs to be in charge of managing your social media program. You can’t just leave it to colleagues to participate when they have the time. Their “real work” will always trump what needs to take place in the social media realm. It is actually better to limit your social media interactions if you are not willing to make a reasonable commitment to them. This is definitely a case where the more you put into it, the more you can get back. But, even with that, there can still be surprises in social media because of its open, viral nature. Having a manager for your social media efforts will do much to make sure you are optimizing this growing channel, while protecting your interests, too.
• Discuss It – More than anything, participating in social media is about getting involved in the conversation. That should be relatively easy to do, as most of us naturally like to talk and communicate (well, at least that’s true of us marketers!). This includes everything from commenting on sites that cover your industry (I comment frequently on AdAge.com), to participating in online discussion forums and blogs. One thing is certain: If you don’t join the conversation, you won’t get anything out of social media. 

Of course, there is a lot more to social media than the points outlined above. But, getting started is surprisingly simple, if you are interested, committed and persistent. There is nothing mysterious about social media. By starting a conversation online — and joining others in their conversations – you will become part of the social media revolution.

And you can start by commenting on this post with your own thoughts and recommendations on getting started in social media!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS