Don’t get hung up on specific tools!
What does success look like?
If your answer to the above question is “being on Facebook,” start over.
If your answer is “having 2,000 fans on Facebook,” start over.
Simply being present on a social media site and building up a large fan / follower base isn’t enough – what matters is how you leverage the social capital they represent.
For many organisations, one of the most attractive features of social participation is the ease with which people can publicly declare their loyalty or fandom. However, that ease of participation has its drawbacks too – if all people do is click ‘follow,’ how much value does each follower really place on your relationship?
This is especially true given the trend to offer incentives to sign up for a group or follow a twitter feed. If someone is only following you and retweeting your message in the hopes of winning an iPad, how loyal are they? It comes down to the understanding that social media are tools in much the same way that press releases, media buys or poster campaigns are tools. Success doesn’t come from using the tool; it comes from meeting the objectives you set out.
Those objectives should be SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-focused), and they should look a lot like your overall corporate or organizational goals