Doug Davidoff
Recently, I've gotten a number of questions from clients and others about effective social media. It seems a number of people a wondering if now is the right time to jump on the bandwagon.
I was recently interviewed by The Strategic Coach on the subject. They combined my thoughts with insights on networking in general (which I thought was a great idea).
Here are some of the highlights:
- Networking is networking. The rules for offline networking are precisely the same for online.
- The biggest mistake made with social media is that people view it as a strategy - it's not. Social media is a tactic, used to support a strategy towards a specific result. If the result isn't clear, the strategy will be bad, and your social media efforts will be useless.
- Social media is a horrible broadcast mechanism. If you're think you're going to use Twitter, Facebook or any other platform to tell the world what you're doing, and that the world will then respond - don't waste the time.
- Social media is good for connecting, engaging and pointing. If you're not planning to actively participate, and build content to support your efforts, then you'll be much happier doing something else.
All that said, social media, and by extension the creation of meaningful content to share, is increasingly becoming mandatory. Imagine the biggest conversation in the world taking place. You've got to answer a simple question - do you want to participate in the conversation or be left out?
If growth is imperative, the answer is simple. It's the execution that's tough.