CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

Knowing how to build appropriate strategies around the key social platforms and implement
and monitor them, can provide small and medium-sized firms with a highly cost-effective
way of communicating, developing business, undertaking vital research, keeping up to date
with the latest developments in their field and creating value for their clients.

The past few years have seen social media mature as a means of communication. From the
early days of experimentation and tentative investment by businesses, the primary platforms of
social media have evolved, which means that most businesses today will have experimented
with using social media, meaning that the process of moving forward is as much about
reflection as it is about learning from others. Whether you have social media experience from
personal or business use, it is worth thinking about how it works for you now: what engages
you, and where are the opportunities.

This introductory guide will help you to decide whether to embrace social media or not, discuss
how to distribute social media usage effectively across personal and business use, while taking
account of the risks and benefits associated with it. We will introduce in detail the main platforms
– LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, blogging, YouTube and podcasting – and give advice on how to
set up and use profiles effectively. We will also cover the nuts and bolts of adopting social
media, advice on how to use social media platforms on desktop and mobile and getting the right
software, including descriptions of a number of apps that can be used to help manage social
media more effectively.

You will also learn how to build a social media strategy, discussing elements such as thought
leadership and brand positioning, before going on to ideas for scoping your own capability to
use social media compared to that of your competitors and the market you operate in and how
to decide on the directions you may wish to go with social media. We will also touch on
emerging trends and how to integrate them into your services.

In that respect, this guide is a complementary framework. Use it to get new ideas and ways to
formalise your venture into social media; but also make sure that what you read here fits with
your own perceptions. Social media works differently for everyone – this guide will help you
understand how it might work best for you.

Social media has blurred the line between personal and professional sphere like almost no other
development in the last decade. From overuse of Facebook at work to brand damage on Twitter,
businesses have many concerns about how much to throw themselves into social media and
how much to encourage usage amongst staff.

Through the course of this guide we will help you to answer that question for your own
organisation; bringing it back to a combination of strategy, trust, policies and general
organisational culture. But it is fair to say that social media is not going away.

More specifically – from a business perspective – social media is becoming the primary means
of sharing information about businesses. There is a conversation going on about pretty much
every business operating today; not being actively part of it doesn’t stop it happening. So, our
starting point becomes less about creating something new on social media, and much more
about joining in.

Having said that, many businesses will have justifiable reasons for approaching social media with caution, so we will
consider some of these issues in this section in order to help you better navigate the decisions
Personal and professional
Returning to this blur between personal and professional, it is clear that one of the major challenges
for your business when considering your way forward with social media, is whether to approach it as
a business or as individuals. Most people are familiar with big brands on social media; and traditional
marketing methods may lead you to want everything to be about your company, but it is worth
stopping for a moment and considering how things really work in business.

People do business with people and approaching social media from this angle inevitably provides the
most effective way forward. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t create a presence and activity for your
brand, but simply that the personal element is vital. Some platforms lend themselves better to this than
others, but overall it is the human element that really drives social media.

The relationship between brand and social media is an important one, and in working through your
strategic objectives (see 4.7 Setting social media objectives), you will gain a better understanding of
how to position personal, SME and corporate brands through your social media usage. Most of this will
be dictated by needs such as local focus versus national reputation, or whether you are working in a
particular niche, but good social media usage is dependent on at least a reasonable understanding of
the appropriate strategy for you.

In reading through this guide you will get a better picture of how the personal and professional
balance might work for you and your business, and how this fits within a wider understanding of
brand and strategy. For now it is vital to recognise the importance of not making everything about
your generic brand, and instead to focus on the more diverse possibilities of bringing the human
element to social media.

2.3 General benefits and risks

Social media does carry risks, but these can certainly be outweighed by the benefits. There is always
a certain degree of trust required in making more of social media, but many of the concerns
businesses have in adopting their usage tend to be unwarranted.

We will cover this a little more from a legal perspective later but here it is worth stating that social
media shouldn’t be considered in isolation from other communication methods. They may well provide
more opportunities for things to go wrong, but they are not the special case we may be led to believe.

Hopefully this guide will help you assess the specific benefits for your business. You may already
have a view on the benefits from your previous social media activity, in which case you can compare
your experiences with what is presented here.

2.4 Privacy and security

One of the concerns many people have about social media usage is connected with the sharing of
personal or generally sensitive information. In this regard many of us are in uncharted territory: we
have previously not had the platforms and tools to easily share our information so widely.

A common perspective on this is to consider social media – no matter which platform we are talking
about – the same as making any kind of public announcement. In other words, don’t share anything
you would prefer to keep private, wherever that might be. As much as we think we might be sharing
with just one person or a select group, the reality is that we can never be sure who is privy to our
updates and observations.

From an organisational perspective it is important to make sure that general policies around
communications and sensitive information are appropriate for social media usage. However, as
mentioned in the previous section, social media is, in most circumstances, not a particularly
special case, and existing policies will generally be sufficient.