The Importance of Being Social

Does your organization use social media effectively? Do you think it should?

I should think it is clear at this point that social media is not going away. It may change- Myspace came and went, Facebook is still going strong, Google+ wasn't the crazy success some people thought it was going to be- but social media as a whole is very much here to stay. And any business that isn't taking advantage of the prevalence of social media in our lives is, in my humble opinion, falling behind.

The PR and marketing advantages of using social media should be obvious. Social media is free, and if you put a little work into it, you can have quite an effective, interactive space that gets your brand out there to nearly everyone at little to no cost. You can showcase yourself and people can talk about you, give you feedback and recommend you, for free. Everyone should be doing this.

However, if you're going to go the social media route, do it right. Invest a little time in it, and keep it up. There is nothing sadder than a company twitter account that has 30 followers who are all employees, and has tweeted six times in two years. Might as well delete it and move on, because it just makes you look like you hopped on the bandwagon and then didn't know what to do next. And be aware that if you have a Facebook page, you may get a disgruntled client posting on it- don't just ignore it, don't just delete it and move on! Handle it, and if it is done effectively, you can create a customer for life. I work for an organization that had this kind of issue- the president of the company responded personally, and ultimately flew the client out to head office for a tour. She is now one of the biggest brand evangelists we have, and all this came out of a complaint on Facebook.

The advantages of using social media effectively go beyond marketing though- social media is a godsend to anyone in recruitment. It is free and easy advertising. If you've done your job properly and created a consistent branding image, you can reach all kinds of passive and active candidates through social media. Create a Facebook careers link, send out tweets with links to job descriptions, use LinkedIn, and in a very short time, you have gotten your message out to a wide pool of possible candidates that you might never have reached any other way.

In short, I think everyone should be using social media. Are you?