The scale of growth in the use of Social Media worldwide is incredible and can be daunting.
61.8% of the population of the world are internet users and 57.6% of the population use Social Media.
4.55 Billion people and growing.
People from all corners of the globe posting enormous amounts of video, text, pictures, documents, adverts and links, every second of every day.
Entire industries floating billions of ‘things’ on the Social waves, every second of every day.
The influencers, the sellers, the sharers, the gurus, the thought leaders….all adding to the colour, the noise and the chatter, every second of every day.
This can be a headache…
4.55 Billion people, think about that for a second.... Take out the young posting Tik Tok dance videos and the retirees posting on Facebook about their Social club and who is left..?
You and me…our investors, our bankers, our future partners, our next hires, our suppliers, our prospects, our clients….and our competition.
Simon Kemp and the good people at DATAREPORTAL, who produced the slide above as part of their ‘Digital 2021: October Global Snapshot Report’, tell us yet again all the indicators point upward.
409 million people have joined Social Media in 1 year…
We are now spending an average 2 ½ hours per day on Social Media
We are using more Social Media platforms that we think…
For some, all this colour, noise and chatter is confusing, some are terrified at the very thought.
For others, it’s interesting and brimming with opportunity.
Some are attracted and really want to get on but, they have no idea how to get started.
Those onboard the Merry-Go-Round are connected; they have networks and use them.
They share, connect, collaborate, and discuss.
They meet and have conversations that those outside the Merry-Go-Round never get the chance to have.
It might sound strange but, Social Media is becoming the glue that holds modern organisations together.
It should be obvious by now that transferring your Sales territory to digital is transformational.
In parallel, it directly improves Marketing, Business Development, Employee Advocacy, Supply Chain, R&D, HR, Safety and Quality…. all organisational functions that require people connecting with people.
And because of this, we find find many organisations that are attempting a quick and cheap fix...
My colleague Thomas Ross is based in Fargo, North Dakota. He said something at a meeting recently which stuck with me….
"we don’t give 5 dollar haircuts, we fix them…"
We hear it all the time, “we had someone in to do a LinkedIn masterclass one afternoon with the team and nothing changed”…
When you train a team in Strategic Social Media, you are evolving their perception of how business is done in a digital buying world.
You are giving them the skills they need to operate with confidence and in their tone.
You are bypassing meaningless hints, tips, hacks and challenges…
You are equipping them with a stable platform for commercial or cultural growth.
All the flashing colour, loud noise and chatter level out for them, they take control.
They step on together and its normal for them to tell you how everything has changed for the better and, that they wish they had done this 5 years ago.
When the team feel in control, they can open their shoulders and really let fly.
But there is something very important about this which is often missed in all of the noise…
Every ounce of energy you and your team put into Social Media should be linked to a strategy and a financial expectation.
Every time you touch a keyboard or a keypad to do anything on Social Media, its should be measured and link back to the plan and the P&L.
If not, you are playing at it whilst blindfolded. You are hoping for the best whilst fumbling in the dark.
We often find that for an organisation to become successful with Social Media, the senior team might have to suspend some preconceptions or beliefs and create a space where what needs to be done, can be done.
In terms of his own Social discovery, Business Coach, William Shorten, wrote…
“I think it boils down to not necessarily taking the plunge but going a bit deeper with every step. In addition, I can see that social is like many other networks, that if you want it to grow and give value you have to put in time and effort to nourish your connections and develop relationships”.
They key is not to think of this as “needing to do more on LinkedIn”, this is about becoming a Social Organisation.
Patrick Saracco is the CRO of leading Drones inspection and Visual Data company, Cyberhawk. He put it perfectly...
The conversation about whether this all works or not is over - dead - in the trash.
The question now is if your organisation has the culture to accept change, the mind to accept alternative perspectives and the hunger to win...
Live Social ‘21
Eric Doyle
Give your people the digital skills they need to be able to network, prospect and close business that originated on Social
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