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A recent non-scientific poll done by Jeremy Victor, which he published on SmartBlog is titled “Are you clueless when it comes to integrating social into your website?.”

He reports as results:

• 42.86%: “Our website has “Follow/Fan Us” links to our social presences but with no strategy”
• 22.08%: “There is no integration between our website and our social presence”
• 18.18%: “Our website is a fully integrated component of our social activity, with the goal being to bring users from the social site”
• 12.99%: “Our website displays activity from our social presence and has Follow/Fan Us links”
• 3.90%: “Our website has “Follow/Fan Us” links that encourage users to promote our brand after following”

This supports my earlier pondering that Social Media will start a development that will profoundly change the way we will do business in the future and by doing so will profoundly change our organisations.

My advice:

1. Access the issue of Social Media strategically. That means involvement of top management and the board. Secure their continued support
2. Understand what the strategic implications of Social Media will be and look at sustainability of these efforts in your organisation
3. Discuss how you want to change from an information push model to a dialogue model with your customers; assign the tasks to real people (coworkers)
4. Understand how to listen to your customers and how to turn their feedback into opportunities
5. Establish reputation management in your organisation
6. Set goals and objectives on what you want to achieve with Social Media and make it measurable
7. Select a smaller size but business relevant project to get started

You can use the Social Media Questionnaire to get a first impression of your maturity in these issues. Contact me if your want to discuss your own situation in more detail.

What is your take on this?

Related articles

• 5 Reasons Why Ignoring Negative Social Media is a Career Ender for a VP of Customer Service (Paul Kiser’s Blog)
• How to use social media marketing for your business (marketing.yell.com)
• Be social: Do you really need a social media manager? (marketing.yell.com)
• Be social: Why does your business need social media? (marketing.yell.com)
• I Don’t Have a Social Media Strategy (coydavidson.wordpress.com)
• Six Tips for Small Businesses Using Social Media (stayonsearch.com)
• Has social media for business hit the mainstream?
• 5 reasons why market research comes before social media
• Why social-media marketing isn’t really for everyone