Phase 1) Get Hootsuite 2) Phase 2 3) Phase 3 – SOCIAL! – an ode to this southpark underpants gnome clip
The stories and importance of social media are everywhere. If you aren’t on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc you are losing out on clients, leads, eyeballs, etc (which is true). All this data needs to be tracked and analyzed, but don’t put a TPS cover sheet on your social analytics just yet…
What exactly are you analyzing? If you aren’t spending capital, whether an outside agency, or internally to expand your social reach, you are playing 52 card shuffle with yourself, counting the same cards each day, in a futile effort of busy work, and worse, false promises. Just because you track and measure something doesn’t mean you will get actionable results. Take weight loss for instance
How many times this month have you weighed yourself? How many times did you do something about it?
Chances are you weigh yourself out of habit each day. The pounds are adding up, but it’s okay, because you are tracking it (this is me right now!). There is little to no positive action taken to affect the weight loss, only understand it’s occuring.
Tracking is More Dangerous than doing nothing because it gives a false sense of achievement, a false sense of doing “something”
You know if your business is doing enough to succeed on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. No amount of tracking will pull the wool over your eyes, but enough reports will certainly pull the wool over some superior’s eyes, which leads to an unhealthy demand from companies to track everything, even if it means being less productive. There is a sweet spot when it comes to numbers having meaning, known as a sample size. If you aren’t obtaining 100+ social interactions in a month (across all your social profiles, comments, etc), chances are you can put down the calculator and put your hard hat on and “go to work”. Analysis is doing nothing for the majority of companies trying to go social, and acting as a major hindrance.
How do you take action to become a more social company?
No one wants to be the first to “like”, plus 1, subscribe, tweet, etc. Have a circle of friends or like minded people help you build a “social base”. Hire an agency or hire someone internally to manage your social accounts, and building their presence (if you aren’t willing to spend $$ on growing it, no sense tracking it).
Only post something that is worth reading. Fools always have something to say, but the savvy business will post great promotions, thought provoking reads, or something that adds value to their readership.
P.S. – just did 10 pushups, which has done me more good than tracking my weight for the past 2 weeks.