Managers: 10 Ways To Drive Results with Social Media

Let’s start the year off with a bang: managers, here are 10 things you need to do to turn social media into a business tool that will increase your team’s results:

Attitude is everything. Like Woody Allen said, “90% of success is showing up.” So show up already—in body and spirit. Stop shaking your head at me. How do expect to understand—let alone manage—a process you’re not a part of? Would you take advice from a CFO who had never seen a general ledger? Would you follow a preacher who hadn’t read The Good Book—or who openly decried it as a waste of time? Why would you expect others to listen to anything you say about social media if you’re not a willing participant in it? At a minimum, you need to be on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebookand Slideshare. Also at a minimum, you need to stop telling everyone what a waste of time you think it is when people post about their lunch plans. When you say, “I don’t understand how anyone could possibly think sharing this kind of information on Facebook is a good idea,” your team hears: “Hold on; I share that kind of information. This guy is passing judgment on me! So either I’m an idiot worthy of his derision, or he’s a moron doling out judgment on things he doesn’t understand.” One guess which option your better people—who also probably have healthier egos—are likely to choose.
Get credible first. Once you’re on the platforms, credibility is key. The best written note in the world won’t generate a response if the people you send it to visit your profile—which they will—and find a hack. Life’s too short, and the options too many, for them to try to figure out if you’re for real.
Embrace your learning curve. Holy hell, if you do nothing else on this list but this one item, the benefits for your team will be felt for a long, long time… and will reverberate in areas far, far away from social media! Making it clear to everyone that you accept your learning curve with grace and humor infuses your team with the right attitude about risk.
Talk about it. At staff meetings, for instance, ask what people are talking about online; who they’re connecting with; whether any of their activities are (or could be) work related; and—this is important—what you can do to help. Just because you’re not an expert at social media doesn’t mean you can’t break down a few boulders for those who are… see #6, for instance.
Make metrics make sense. Before you utter the words ROI, watch this:
Then, rather than counting “likes,” which can be gamed—measure something meaningful, like the efficacy of your sales process.
Focus on your core. Eight million people have viewed the official version of Toby Keith’s video for his song, “Red Solo Cup.” That’s huge.
Solo scored this social media coup by doing one thing: making the best damn plastic party cup in the world. Viral happens only when there’s underlying awesomeness. If you don’t have that yet, build that first.
Know your impact. If your corporate culture is based on fear, then that’s going to permeate into peoples’ use of social media. You may want open and loving online, but if it’s command and control in real life, then your team’s social media engagement is going to look like a long spans of nothing, punctuated with short bursts of activity following frustrated executives’ rants.
Talk with, not at. Press releases and marketing pitches are great for broadcast media, where there is one speaker and many receivers. On social media—an interactive, egalitarian network in which any voice has the ability to rise above the fray—broadcast-style communications often seem arrogant and tone deaf. And don’t point me at Apple’s marketing machine—when you can match the experience, science, and expertise they have invested into their marketing, then I’ll listen to that argument.
Get profersonal.™ It’s not work/life anymore. Things are getting all mixed up. This is great, liberating news… but it’s also not without it’s risks. Set clear guidelines.
Guidelines > policies. Speaking of guidelines, use them! Just about anything you want to prohibit your people from saying online is already prohibited in your employee handbook. So rather than retread old ground, look forward. Establish guidelines for online behavior. Modify them as you do #4. Remove ones that seemed necessary but that turned out to be unintended consequences of not doing #7 as well as you could. Enhance them with numbers as you get better at #5. In other words, iterate. (There’s that #3 again!)
BONUS: Give yourself time. Like, two years. At the end of 2010, when SmartBrief measured the use of social media in business, they found that professionals had about an 18 month head start over companies in their adoption of social. Which means that the first few times you discover a great new opportunity that no one seems to know about, the reality is, they’ve already been there and passed on it.

Now it’s your turn: new year, new budget, new hope. New methods. Ready, go!

Jason Seiden is Co-founder and CEO of Ajax Social Media, a training company that shows professionals how use social media to work more effectively.