Sorry, this entry is only available in NL.

Maybe you were at our Social Media for B2B event (see video above), or perhaps you read our tips and tricks and watched our video in our previous blog? Whatever. After some consideration, you might’ve come to the conclusion: “OK, let’s get started with social media!” Good! Now let the fun begin… What are the first steps you need to take if you want to use social media to communicate about your company effectively and efficiently?

Step 1: Make a plan

“Doing something” with social media isn’t enough. First you have to know exactly what you want to achieve, and be consistent with your choices. As you might have learned at our event, a company like RealDolmen mainly uses social media activities for recruitment, whereas SAP places more emphasis on sales. You need to make a choice for your company: how can social media help you most? Write down your objectives as clearly as possible. You need to do your homework, because have a look at Step 2 ..

Step 2: Talk to your boss

It’s essential that you company’s managers join in, or at least approve, your social media plan before you can get started properly. Only then will social media be fully accepted positively, allowing it to become part of your company’s culture. Just like with other media, it’s important that clear agreements are made with the company’s management about how, who and what. Demonstrate how and why social media can benefit your company. Explain how you see the integration of social media fitting in with the existing communication plan, preferably in as concrete a way as possible. Make it clear that social media is not free: it will take time to develop the network, create content and respond to other people’s relevant discussions. Be honest about this.

Step 3: Talk to your colleagues

Communicating via social media – as the name suggests – is not something that you can do on your own. Without your colleagues’ cooperation, your efforts will die a quick and silent death. You need to at least keep them informed of what you are blogging about, and what is happening on your Facebook page, Twitter feed or LinkedIn discussion forum. They will then feel more involved, and so will be more likely to publicise your activities via their own channels. Don’t forget that most of your colleagues are already using social media for their own purposes, and perhaps know some of the services better than you. They are the leading ambassadors for your company – they help take care of word-of-mouth advertising.
Some of your colleagues might even want to share their specialist experience and expertise on discussion forums, and so provide all sorts of useful tips. Draw up a list of colleagues who can help you, and what their roles could be.

Step 4: Start to listen

As well as getting the green light from your management team and some enthusiastic colleagues, you also need to have a good idea where you already stand. It’s not just your company’s existing presence on social media sites that needs researching; you also need to check out your competitors, possible business partners, your most important products or services, and the name of your CEO. So you need to focus not just on the number of updates, but also the context and so-called sentiment of these updates. Which discussions do you appear in most? What tone do people use to speak about your company? The results of this evaluation will also help you in the next step. Free and commercial monitoring services are available to help you gather this information. Free tools can give you a first impression of how a tool works, but it’s best to use a professional service for collecting exact details. You could, for example, use an evaluation service such as Auxipress, or monitoring specialists such as Radian6, Alterian or Engagor.

Step 5: Choose a channel

You can use the previous steps to help you decide what social media is most suitable for your company. Make this choice depending on your objectives, colleagues’ suggestions, results from your monitoring research and often also the sector that your company is active in. In many cases there is not just one, but several channels that can be useful for your company. As we’ve already written elsewhere on this blog: it probably won’t work if you only use Twitter. But please note: don’t be too quick to use all the channels that might seem relevant. In other words: make sure it all stays manageable.

The five speakers at our social media event for B2B companies generously shared their experiences. The video above shows you a summary of what they talked about.

You can find their slides on Scribd and SlideShare: Social media and brand ambassadors (Thomas Verschueren, RealDolmen), A pragmatic approach towards social media (Gert Diels, Cegeka), Social media: a must for management (Philippe Rogge, Microsoft), Our guidelines for using social media (Pol Vanbiervliet, Cisco).

We have also summarized their most important tips for you:

Getting started

• Social media is an extra means of communication alongside all the other channels; so integrate social media in your global communication mix and strategy
• Social media on its own cannot make the difference, but it’s very good at making your company and your brand more authentic or for reaching opinion-leaders
• Select your channels based on relevance for your target groups. LinkedIn is used much more in Belgium than in other countries, for example
• Make sure that the management also wants to take part, otherwise there is much less chance of communication via social media being successful
• Write guidelines, mainly so you don’t have to check everything in detail and because your employees dare to communicate more convincingly
• Social media is not free: sufficient time and resources are needed to succeed and to continue making progress
• Provide plan of action, set out with a timescale

Create content

• Enter into the dialogue with your community, keep it interactive, start discussions every now and then in the relevant groups
• Always be authentic and credible (if you aren’t, people will cut you off)
• People are looking for opinions and will listen, but if you actually have something to say, make sure you’re not just a sterile spokesperson for your company
• Work bottom-up and involve your colleagues: find the added value of social media for your company together
• Look for your brand ambassadors: colleagues who make your company’s expertise concrete
• Ensure transparency, openness and don’t control things too strictly to benefit your colleagues and your authenticity
• Make your employees aware and provide training sessions or workshops to get to know certain channels well (and find out what you can say there)
• Share relevant content to gradually become perceived as an expert in your field

Develop your network

• Draw up a list of people who are relevant for you and your company; invite them or follow them
• Sometimes it’s better to make separate networks per target group, such as an online community for technicians and a separate one for business leaders
• Write a personal message when you invite someone to connect with you
• It’s not your first-level network that is the most important, but your second and third-level networks (these are the people who don’t know you very well yet, but who can be convinced by your qualities)
• Positive use of social media ensures word-of-mouth and gives a positive perception to the outside world
• Use useful apps so that you can also use social media on the road
• Become a member of groups that are relevant for your company. Look at the other members of the group. These people are perhaps potential clients or partners

Monitor yourself and others

• Monitor what is being said about your company, CEO, products and services on social media
• React just as quickly and openly to the positive comments as you do to the negative opinions and remarks
• Take a note of who is following your company and look up the relevant opinion-leaders or people with expertise in their field; follow them at least, and react to their opinions
• Follow your most important competitors and what is being said about them
• Check which networks your clients are present on

Have you still got some energy left? Read our white papers about media relations and social media (in Dutch only, I’m afraid) and about testimonials and social media.