When It Comes to Social Media, Best Practice Is Practice
A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a blog post on “Best Practices in Social Media,” a topic on which there is no shortage of opinions. (A Google search will return nearly 2.9 million results, which is about 400,000 more than last month.) As I was reading it, I was struck by how confidently the author threw around the term “best practices” to describe what he was doing. While I think it’s great that people share their experiences – the good, the bad and the ugly – I think it’s premature to start engraving anything in stone.
As I was sharing my thoughts with our Executive Vice President/Executive Creative Director, he summed it up very nicely. “When it comes to social media,” he said, “best practice is practice.”
Now I’m sure there are many consultants and “experts” out there who might shudder at the notion of admitting that they don’t have all the answers. But, realistically, no one can and no one does. There are just too many variables and too many unknowns. Moreover, the ways in which social media might be used as part of an overall marketing strategy can be dramatically different from one organization to the next. Getting to the right place will take some time.
So what’s a marketer to do?
Explore. Experiment. Practice.
To be clear, this process is not akin to throwing darts while blindfolded. You need to start with a hypothesis or two about how you might be able to use social media to help your business. It also makes sense to establish clear goals. Then you should do some digging to see what’s being done – find some analogs. As I said earlier, people seem very willing to share their experiences. Just be careful not to assume that what worked (or didn’t) for them will give you the same result.
Next step? Refine your hypotheses as needed and put them into action. Be sure to monitor closely against your goals, but remain open-minded to learning something that you never expected. This happens all of the time and can be critical in helping you find your rhythm. Then apply everything you learn – the good, the bad and the ugly – to your next effort and continue to move the ball forward.
It will take time and resources and, frankly, lots of hard work. But along the way you can rest assured that you’re on the right track since when it comes to social media, best practice is practice.
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