If we are to be successful in our pursuits to use social media to grow our businesses and our sphere of influence, we must have a way to measure the value of the time invested in social media as a toolset to get there.
SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN + GROWTH FOCUSED ACTIVITIES ONLINE + METRICS = #ROIT
The old adage, time is money, is as true today as it was when Benjamin Franklin first uttered the words. What would Ben think of the Internet I wonder? Would he be Twittering away about what he was doing or thinking? I believe we would be following Ben AND we would be listening and commenting. And if Ben later wanted to sell us something, particularly about making profitable use of our time, we would likely buy from Ben.
The metrics for #ROIT have to begin with the things easily measured, to be sure. Followers, click thrus on links, re-tweets, comments on your blogs, etc. But the real measure has to happen over time and must be linked back to your original goal. But it really has to start with developing a purposeful plan and then focusing your activities on those things that will help you get to the other side of the bridge - to achieve your vision.
This is a diagram that had its origins from Stanford Advance Project Management program. The Solutionz Media Group has adapted this to provide a visual vision for how companies should approach implementation of Social Media plans.
Becoming adept at social media personally, and in fact becoming an expert, should follow a similar pattern, with no less furvor than a company would apply to the vision. The vision is of course, Return on Investment of Time or #ROIT.
If you are launching a book and want to get a large number of folks to buy the book, but don't want to do a traditional distribution deal with a publisher, don't be fooled by believing that tomorrow you can establish a Twitter account or a fan page on Facebook and the next day begin promoting your book. You can no more jump to the Execution Phase of any plan and succeed than you can try to get a professional job without completing your high school (and perhaps even your college) education. It would be as foolish as a baseball player thinking that he can skip spring training and the regular game schedule and go right to the World Series.
You must follow a plan that closely mirrors a traditional business plan. Here is an idea of how that looks for an author:
- Identify the need (e.g. write your book about something that people are passionate about or are interested in)
- Identify the audience (who will buy the book)
- Identify evangelists (start with 12, that seems like a historically valid number for building disciples of your ideals)
- Establish credibility on the topic (blog about it, interact with others who blog about it, be on radio or TV shows that talk about it, comment in traditional print media about it)
- Build out your network to reach first the evangelists and those that trust them, then go for the larger audience
- Engage in real dialogue about the topic with those that are passionate (blog, comment, build relatonship)
- Then and only then, start to put together your campaign to launch your book
I would highly recommend Simon U Ford's book Social Traffic to help you on the tactical front. Watch the video about the history of social media and then let me know if you want a copy of the book. I'll see that you get access to a few of the chapters free to evaluate it free of charge.
Then, we can take it from there and see what your vision is and how much time you are willing to invest to master social media for your own purposes.
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