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So, you’ve embraced social media? You are finally ready to get on the wagon and see where it takes you? That’s great, but before getting all hyped up about it, let’s talk a little bit about what you have to next! Embracing it is only the initial part of the fun:

Learn It!

As easy as it may be to join the wave of Twitter, Facebook, and such, you still need to take time to learn what it’s all about. Not only the systems and the technical stuff, you also have to see how people use it, what do other business do with it. You can’t just pay an agency and forget about it, you need to investigate it and take a look around to see where you are standing and how it’s going to help you.

Discuss It!

It’s good not to jump right into it and talk about it with your team and employees first. Let them speak up and see what other uses they can find for the new embraced tools. It’s also a good way for the whole company to understand what it’s all about. After all, not everyone is skilled with social media. Who knows, you may discover a young social media expert among your crew.

Teach It!

Just because you decided to get cracking on Twitter, does not mean your customers have any idea of what is is! Spend some time teaching them what it’s all about, and especially how it’s going to work with your business. Explain them in how many ways they’ll be able to take advantage of these new tools when they think about your company.

Track It!

Once you start using it, you need to check continuously how it’s working. While a way to establish an accurate social media ROI has yet to be developed (it shouldn’t be your main concern, though), there are still many tools and numbers that can help you understand if everything’s clicking. And if that fails? Simple: ask your customers. They won’t be hesitant telling you your new social media approach sucks.

Include It!

After you get some positive results with it, start including social media as a part of every strategy, debate it with every sector of the company. With the right mentality, it’s almost 100% certain that you’ll be able to develop new plans and original marketing strategies for other sectors as well.

Improve It!

This one is obvious. Something failed or didn’t work the way you thought it would be? Go over it and see where you went wrong. Many successful bloggers failed blogging at first. It’s by improving and learning from your mistakes that you’re going to be able to take full advantage of social media. And as long as you are respectful, your customers will understand.

Show Off!

Yes, the final step after things have worked out: show off! It’s ok to tell everyone about what you have accomplished after your social media acceptance. It will impress the competition, it’ll make the customers that were a part of it feel good, and it’ll make the rest of us to want to join the movement. It’s ok to be a little cocky!

As you can see, embracing social media requires a lot of hard work and many steps if you want to be serious about it. But if you go through each and everyone of them, you’ll be able to have a powerful effect with it.

Carlos Miceli. Argentinian. Questioner of things. OwlSparks’ blogger. Freelance writer. Entrepreneur. Every day philosopher. Skill learner

Tags: community, content creation, conversation, Social Media, social network, social networking, Strategy, the right way, transparency