2011 was a big year for social media in human resources. 2012 is going to be even bigger. You know why? Because you still have a lot to learn.
Don’t get me wrong, you learned a lot about social media in 2011. You learned about the importance of listening and two-way communication, and you might have even learned how to get started and how to strategize.
But, chances are you didn’t learn:
- How to prove the value of social media to the C-suite: You may have gotten as far as getting your organization to agree that they need to get social — you may even be on social media already — but you probably haven’t shown the value of spending money on social media or having a dedicated team for social engagement.
- How to track leads with social media: The free monitoring tools out there are pretty comprehensive. You can do a lot by tracking engagement, virality and influence, but have you started tracking leads with social media? Have you proven a dollar in ROI?
- How to have a compelling B2B social media presence: Laurie recently wrote about what you’re doing wrong on social media, and some of the responses indicated disbelief that such a thing as a compelling B2B social media presence existed. We’ll have more on this in the very near future, but for now, for the sake of simplicity, let’s assume you haven’t figured it out either.
We still hear our clients say we need to be on social media. When we ask why? (naturally) most of them respond, Because everyone in our industry is.
It’s true that a lot of B2B companies are social now. In fact, 81 percent of B2B companies surveyed say they maintain an account for their business on a regular basis. But as long as that’s your primary reason for “getting on social media,” you won’t succeed at proving the value of your time and money spent on social media.
So if 2011 was the gold rush of “jumping on social media,” 2012 will be the year we refine, get smarter and simplify social media for ourselves.
Buzzwords like “engage” won’t hold the meaning they once did as we get into proving the ROI of social media to the dollar.
To do that, you have to have a better reason for getting started in the first place.
Not sure where to start?
That’s where we come in.
