1. By Brent Williams

4. some statistics you need to know... The Big 5 = 400 million active users, 50% of active users logon each day, 3.5 million events created each month, the UK 2nd country = #4 Largest Site on the Internet, #1 Largest video site on the web, 3.5 million people visiting the site every single day = 1100% growth in a year, 23,500,000 visitors, number twelve website in the world, some 50 million tweets are sent a day = 77% of Internet users read blogs, 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog = 50 million users worldwide, 11 million users in Europe, average age is 41, 64% are male, 50% are decision makers NewMediaAngels.com

5. SocialMedia can be an incredible tool for your business

8. Overwhelming

9. With that in mind......

10. Put Together A Plan To : : Your Company’s SocialMedia Participation

11. Step One

12. Social media is a term we use to to discuss the tools that facilitate conversations. Before your company can be a part of those conversations, you need to know what people are already talking about so you can determine how you can best contribute.

13. StepTwo

14. Social media platforms help facilitate conversations between individuals, not companies. Once you have a sense of what people are talking about, it’s time to identify the appropriate people inside your organization to participate.

16. People want to have conversations with company representatives who are experts in their area, who are passionate about their work and who are empowered to act on the feedback they receive from the community. Part of this process should be to provide the proper training for these employees on social media participation

17. Set Rules of Engagement Make sure your company has a social media policy in place that offers guidelines to your employees on the appropriate way to engage in online conversations

18. Define Your Strategy Social media is comprised of many different platforms. Having an engagement strategy will help to determine how much time employees will devote to social media communications, what will be the focus areas for engagement and of course, it will help to measure success.

19. Step Three

20. This is the fun part! Start leaving comments on blogs, uploading images to Flickr, building a community on Twitter or whatever else that strategy entails that helps further the discussion and illustrates your company’s commitment to developing these online relationships

21. Step Four Go Offline

22. As stated in step one, social media is simply a group of tools that help facilitate conversations, but there’s really no replacement for face-to-face interaction

23. Step Five

24. Unlike other campaigns, measuring social media success begins by asking more questions: – Did we learn something about our customers that we didn’t know before? – Did our customers learn something about us? – Were we able to engage our customers in new conversations? – Do our employees have an effective new tool for external feedback and reputation management?

26. The potential payoff for corporate social media participation is enormous. These companies will have a better sense of how they are perceived by their target audiences, they will establish a two way dialogue with key stakeholders and they will empower their customers to speak with them, not at them. But without a strategic approach to social media, it’s difficult to succeed. Hopefully this 5 step plan can help your company get started.

28. QUESTIONS

29. C Facebook : Brent Williams Twitter : @brent007 Email : brent36@gmail.com Skype : brentwilliams2 My blog : www.brentsjourney.co.za