5 Steps Before Jumping Into Social Media

Thinking before you jump will save you from ending up ‘all wet’

It seems everyone can’t wait to jump into Social Media. And for business this may present a real problem.

Think of Social Media as a giant swimming pool. Now if you have a simple goal of just getting wet, then by all means jump in.

But if you have some real goals and want a return on your time in Social Media you might want to have a plan.

Here’s a checklist of 10 Things To Consider Before You Jump into Social Media:

1. Do you have the support of all the stakeholders? Seems simple, but without buy-in from employees all the way up to the CEO and shareholders you may find yourself spending more time explaining and defending rather than engaging in Social Media. If you get commitments of time and money upfront you can focus on getting off to a good start.

2. Do you have clearly defined goals? Social Media can be a lot of different things to a lot of different users, but one thing it can’t be: A miracle worker. Muddled and confused presences in Social Media will look like everyone behind them does not know who they are and why they are there. Do you, for example, know where your target audience hangs out in Social Media? Take the time to do the research and create a plan (with benchmarks to measure results).

3. Do you know what tools will best suit your purpose? Blogs may make sense if you have someone who is a good writer and has the interest in maintaining the effort. Facebook and Twitter presences could help grow the audience or how about LinkedIn profile where you share something about your business and show off your employees and their skills? The point is: Not all tools make sense for all situations.

4. Do you have the knowledge and skill to do this effectively? The good news: Your organization may collectively “know more than it knows.” In other words there may be people on board who know different aspects of Social Media. Great! But if not then you’ll need to hire some help. You also need to consider who will maintain the effort and who will oversee it.

5. Do you understand the risks? These run the gamut from “What happens if we don’t engage in Social Media?” to “What happens if something goes wrong in Social Media - how will we react?” Will your existing policies on electronic communications be adequate to cover employees and others using Social Media tools? Ask lots of questions.

If any of these questions about Social Media efforts give you cause to pause then you may need to turn to a professional – someone who can guide the process for you: from research and planning to training, implementation and measuring success.

Resources:

Peter Kim writing for Mashable.com on The 22 Step Social Media Marketing Plan

Cory Treffiletti writing the blog Online Spin for MediaPost on The Problem with Planning Social Media (No Problem)

Social Media Academy is an education and research institute whose graduates work in many aspects of Social Media

For some national “heavy hitters” in Social Media see ReadWriteWeb’s postSeven Social Media Consultants That Deliver Tangible Value


Previous Posts
10 Commandments for Social Media
5 strategies to get the Boss into Social Media
Social Media Expertise Is Hard To Find
Social Media disasters

Where do creative ideas come from?

Creativity and the importance of good sleep

What is the easiest way to boost your creativity? Get some good sleep.

No, really. And science is compiling evidence to support your need for that sleep. Increasingly science is discovering that the old adage of dealing with a problem by “just sleeping on it” has some basis in fact.

The German study
The international weekly journal of science Nature reported back in 2004 that German scientists had demonstrated for the first time that our sleeping brains continue working on problems that baffle us during the day.

Scientists at the University of Luebeck found that volunteers taking a simple math test were three times more likely than sleep-deprived participants to figure out a hidden rule for converting the numbers into the right answer if they had eight hours of sleep.

The German study is considered to be the first hard evidence supporting the common sense notion that creativity and problem solving appear to be directly linked to adequate sleep, scientists say.


Forging connections
Last year the New York Times reported on sleep benefits that included creativity in “We’ll Fill This Space, but First a Nap”(Sept. 27, 2008). A key finding reported in the story: “Sleep assists the brain in flagging unrelated ideas and memories, forging connections among them that increase the odds that a creative idea or insight will surface.”

British study
Now, the findings of a large self-reporting study by the East of England Development Agency in 2008 which polled hundreds of workers only to discover that most creativity, most new ideas, come to workers, not in the workplace, but in a more relaxing environment, usually as they sleep.

Psychology Professor Richard Wiseman of the Perrott-Warrick Research Unit at the University of Hertfordshire, England, says, "In our dreams we produce unusual combinations of ideas that can seem surreal, but every once in a while result in an amazingly creative solution to an important problem." He suggests that businesses start taking a more relaxed approach to creativity if they want to get the most from their employees.

Harvard findings
Writing in Alternative Health Journal last year, Editor Bob Condor says a Harvard researcher, Jeffrey Ellenbogen, discovered that getting enough sleep can lead to brilliant discoveries. In Snooze To Be More Creative he writes that Ellenbogen found that good sleep b y team members during “incubation” phases of work projects leads to 33 percent increase in the likelihood that people will “infer connections among distantly related ideas” that turn out to be nothing short of brilliant or ingenious. Dr. Ellenbogen says this creativity performance enhancement seems to exist “completely beneath the radar screen.”

Researchers believe that the reason for the improved performance of people who get good sleep – in other words sleeping on a problem – is that they give time to their brains to restructure memories.


Still need convincing?
Among famous fans of sleep and the creative ideas it can bring have been composer Richard Wagner, artist Salvador Dali and possibly the 20th Century’s greatest thinker, Albert Einstein. In more contemporary times Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has said the riff in "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" came to him as he slept.


We all spend – or should spend -- about a third of our lives asleep. Rather than viewing that as unproductive time perhaps we should consider it just another state of thinking – a very creative state.

Goodnight all. I’m off to do my most creative thinking!