This document provides tips for how companies can effectively use social media. It recommends properly resourcing social media efforts and not abandoning them. It also suggests picking relevant channels based on team experience, spreading engagement beyond just social media teams, finding champions to explain the value of social media, empowering people throughout the organization, understanding how each channel differs, centralizing coordination, opening platforms to all stakeholders, encouraging employees to use social media for work, engaging where relevant audiences already are, supporting social media as an extension of company culture, modularizing and synchronizing content, emphasizing quality over quantity, making social media part of everyone's jobs, being conversational, and finding the right approach.

1. How social media can be
made to work for your
company
Steve Virgin
Director
Media Focus UK
steve@mediafocusuk.com
00 44 (0)117 965 4041

2. Be in it for the long haul
It needs to be properly resourced and cannot simply be left hanging as that would
look worse than nothing at all
Pick channels carefully
Take on what you and the team know about (perhaps from team members’ experience)
and build on that first. Build in the values that your brand offers and stick by them
Spread engagement to employees beyond the social
media team
After all this is about involvement, it is about communities of common interest –
your complete work force is a closer match to that than one single sub-group
Find champions who can explain and mitigate risk
The people at the top need to ‘get it’ ‘support it’ and see its advantages to be in a
position to allow social media used lower down the company

3. Empower people throughout the organization
Have one person in charge of promoting one idea in social media – spread the
load across the organisation – create teams that can learn from interaction and
bring knowledge to the organisation
Understand how each channel provides a different
dimension of engagement
The qualities of Twitter are not the same as Facebook – immediacy v visual appeal
– groups, fans and on-going information v fast information turnaround – bring that
learning back to the company and see how the company can tailor its appeal to the
new audience in the right way
Centralize coordination
There has to be consistency of message, communication and decisions made on
issues like ‘shutting down’ or ‘archiving’ older content that is no longer relevant –
a single holistic view ensures consistency and keeps standards of response high

4. Open the platform to anyone and everyone
There will be suppliers, would be employees, inventors, partners, clients all keen to se
and hear and discuss things of a topical nature or of benefit to them
Encourage employees to tap into social media to get
work done
Properly structured social media is the world’s biggest focus group, learning
resources can aid employees in presentations, hot news can be brought quickly
Depending on your product or service - engage in
to their attention
channels where people already are
There will be existing communities of interest, blogs, news sites, bulletin boards,
news rooms – build out from there in creating a community
Support engagement as an extension of the company
culture
It is nothing new, it just has a wider audience and it is two-way, not one way

5. Modularize and synchronize content across channels
Emphasize quality, not just quantity.
To scale engagement, make social media part of
everyone’s job.
Be conversational from the start – it should actually be
easier
than email if it works well
Doing it all may not be for you — but you must do
something.
Find your sweet spot – and build a reputation for trust
and authenticity