True computer geeks (recently I was informed that that there is a discernable difference between nerds and geeks, although my friends - who may or not fall into this category - have some trouble explaining this subtlety to a mere mortal such as myself) predate Social Media. They were born of a time when screens were black and white, games comprised of those little orange men that I’ve mentioned before and remember with such fondness, and programmers were loners; pioneering through a dark void. The dark void is gone.

These days, to get ahead, you need some street cred - or Web cred you might say - despite the fact that it sounds substantially less impressive. The masters build and manage online reputations for themselves and where they wander, lesser geeks follow, and where there are lesser and greater geeks, there is opportunity knocking.
Many businesses have already caught on to this trend; starting blogs, creating and managing Facebook pages and learning to engage with their consumers on a whole new level. But why, you might ask, is this such a popular and self-sustaining trend? The answer is a simple one.

Not only does Social Media strategy do wonders for your search engine rankings, but it also gives your company a human face – something lacking in many organizations. That said; anyone who knows Rob Stokes will probably have heard him waxing lyrical about Expectation Management. (Yes, I capitalise for emphasis – so sue me) and so here is some Social Media marketing Expectation Management: using Social Media will not double your revenue overnight. It can however help you to increase your website traffic, assist with conversion and sales tracking, grow awareness around your brand and facilitate and maintain positive brand associations. Pretty worthwhile all round, I would say.

But it isn’t as easy as it looks. Social Media requires careful planning, meticulous implementation and often, a revamped way of thinking about your marketing strategy.

1). People Come First

For those of you who croon to your keyboards on a Friday night, while gazing longingly into the eternal depths of your screen, this is a difficult concept to grasp. Calm down; I’m not judging you. Far be it from me to comment on the social ineptitudes of others. The fact remains though; there is a human side to the Web that both companies and individuals need to recognise and understand before they can even begin to interact with it. It isn’t enough to rank well on the Google SERPs – people have to read further than the first line of whatever medium you have chosen. I know it’s hard. Terrifying even. But, yes, you actually have to talk to other people. If it makes you feel better, there will still be a screen, and potentially thousands of kilometres of cyber-space between you. So you can breathe - it won’t be a real conversation with spoken words or anything.

2). Friends with Benefits

Men spend a lot of their adult lives dreaming of the perfect friend-with-benefits. She looks like Jessica Alba, drinks beer like your Uncle Joe and never expects to cuddle or to ultimately be presented with a shiny rock and a promise of lifelong devotion. This is a flagrant generalisation of course (although this admission may be retracted if a certain someone doesn’t present said rock, sometime within the next…say…year or so). Generalisation or not, it does illustrate my next point rather nicely. Social Media strategy is all about friends with benefits. But, unlike the fat, hairy pervert lusting after Jessica Alba’s milky thighs, the benefits in this instance do actually need to be mutual. While this is a marketing strategy, aimed at increasing revenue, Social Media needs to be useful to ensure its success. Users need to derive value from reading your blog, or receiving your newsletter. Your business on the other hand gets exposure, as well as the opportunity to make friends with potential clients and interact with existing ones, all of which ensure favourable long-term gains.

3). Don’t Obsess About the Numbers

Some things, like love and Social Media strategy, are not quantifiable. You can trust me on this one; my aforementioned other half spent a gazillion years becoming an actuary or a quantitative financial analyst or something equally unfathomable and if there was a way to put the former into a neat labelled little box with a calculated return on investment, he would have found it by now. In retrospect, it would have saved him a lot of trouble. Alas, it doesn’t work like that with love or Social Media strategy. That is not to say that Social Media strategy isn’t measurable; just that it isn’t measurable in the traditional sense. Firstly, for most businesses, their Social Media strategy is too new for results to be accurate or reliable, in the same way as it's hard for me to tell at this stage whether 5+ years of cohabitation training will have long-term payoffs. The difference? Well, unlike the last 5 years of my life, Social Media tools are cheap. To implement, I mean. Thus the focus should be on making them available, rather than seeking immediately quantifiable ROI.

4). Build Links

Link building is like spreading the love – you shouldn’t be afraid to do it, but should always use prudence and, failing that, protection. Links are useful. Not only do search engine rely on them but from a user perspective; they add value, provided they are relevant. This is one area where prudence should be exercised. I’d be pretty nonplussed (to say the least) if I clicked on a link in your blog about jewellery design, looking for…lets say, wholesale diamonds; and instead got flashing boobies and other unmentionable body parts. Building links, both internal and external will have a number of positive effects for your strategy as a whole. Linking will boost your position in the SERPS, because the spiders all love a little link juice. They’re not the only ones. Like a new and blossoming relationship, spreading the link love to other sites, pages and blogs will encourage them to link to you too. And everyone knows there’s nothing quite as satisfying as a bit of mutually beneficial link love. 

5). Don’t Be Afraid to Stand Out

This is something that my mother tried hard to instil in me. My teachers at primary school too. I even remember some (highly annoying and repetitive) song about not hiding one’s light under a bushel. (Who says bushel these days, anyway?) And I have to say that no matter how hard they tried, I wasn’t buying it. It wasn’t that I particularly wanted to blend in either, but (as I told my mother) I saw great profoundness is a generic chain-store’s clothing brand – Free2Bu. Oh the irony. Fortunately, with all my days of teenage self-doubt behind me, I have learned; standing out is the way to get ahead, particularly if you are a business competing in the Social Media arena. With Technorati tracking 112.8 million blogs, you’ve got to offer something pretty unique to make yourself heard. And no, flashing boobies and other unmentionable body parts are not unique. I promise.