magine. There you are on your first day of college. You saunter up to your first class, with the hope and happiness that comes from not having spent nights staring at a screen or piece of paper for 5 hours hopelessly trying write a paper about Shakespeare’s form, studying the life cycle of the fruit fly, or researching how best to survive on Ramen noodles and chocolate milk. No, there you are full of ideas and wanting to explore the world and make a BILLION new friends and reinvent yourself. Picture this same feeling and apply it to your social media campaign.

 

Social Media is new, it’s been through its awkward Jr. High phase when it wasn’t really that popular and everyone would make fun of its crazy interfaces and “trendiness.” Then went through its High School phase full of partying and posting pictures and oversharing until it hurt and now it’s time for college. No, Social is not a fully grown up, but it realizes that it has to start fending for itself and learn a lot. In a few short years it should be a “real person” and ready to start its professional quest.

Welcome to Social Media University 3.0. This is where Social Media starts it’s higher education, while still remaining it’s fun (yet misunderstood)self.  This is where businesses start to build in a line in the budget just for Social Media. This is where Social Media starts to mature and businesses start to understand what it can do for their unique business challenges. The following will help you understand how Social is changing and becoming more than just a 140-character exclamation, a way to vent to your friends or a picture overshare.

social-media

Orientation: Sure it seems like a great idea to make a bazillion friends your first day and get involved with every single last club. Truth of the matter is, the people that you meet and speak with will be your best friends for the next four years, and you have to focus on only a couple clubs or you will get totally bogged down and burned out. The same stands for social.

Your core group of influencers, the people that are re-tweeting you now and liking your statuses are going to stay with your company in the long run. Be good to them, tap their brains for leads, ask them for help and advice and use their expertise. Use your groups to generate pinpointed community creation and use and share knowledge with other power players in the industry.

Using these star influencers to help out your business is the difference between buying a million friends and having a few good core followers, the latter effects real world profitability rather than pandering to your vanity. Being in one good group of influencers and movers and shakers is better than being in a five groups that have nothing to do with your business or your goals.

PHYS 101: Freshman 15 is a real thing. For those of you who have already gone through Freshman year at college and put on a couple pounds, you realize why many schools make you take a Physical Education class. Just as you have to work out in order to reach your fitness goals, you have to work on your social media goals in order to become a lean, mean, content creating, people influencing machine! Being present, consistent and spending time on Social Media will pay you back with the same enthusiasm as you put in. While there is really not going to be a way to relatively measure your ROI of direct dollars, any business with a successful social media campaign can tell you about the benefits of a healthy social media presence.

BIO 101: You may have heard that “Social Media is an organism”. This sentiment should directly apply to your social media. You can start to understand this by doing a little studying (You can meet us in the library study room if you want). By looking at your metrics and pulling reports from listening tools, publishing tools and Google analytics, you can get a better view of the “personality” or your social media campaign. Do the pictures you post on Facebook get shared more often than the pictures you share on Twitter? Analyze what this says about your social media marketing and figure out why it runs this way.

Much like experimenting and dissecting in Biology class, you need to do some experimenting and dissecting of your social media to understand what works and what doesn’t work for your audience, for your team and for your business.

ENG 101: This is the classic composition class you take in college. For many students this is the last English class they have to take before they are on to bigger and greater things. Probably if you took this class in college (which is pretty much everyone with a undergrad degree). But the importance of this class is usually stressed by the university. The reason why composition is so important is because it provides a basis for the rest of the writing you will be doing in college. This idea is important in the content that you write for social as well. While you may not be “content” marketing, the things that you post on Twitter and Facebook should be optimized for each platform and spelled correctly, with proper grammar. If people can’t find or can’t understand your content, you are getting nothing out of it you must optimize it.

The most important thing to learn about Social 3.0 is that it has evolved past just being a fun site to meet with your friends, but it still is that same site for many people. Your business has to realize that social media should be FUN but it should also help you solve and alleviate problems you have with your business. If you have an issue with monthly reoccurring revenue, use social. If you have a problem with getting more people to know about your business, use social. If you have a problem with your employees not being motivated, use social. There are billion ideas and strategies for using social in different and innovative ways. As it matures and reaches its own graduation day, and as businesses experiment and test its limits, social will begin to reach its full potential.

For questions about how to use Social Media 3.0 to help your business, please don’t hesitate to contactWebConnection.