The problem with all things social is everyone wants to measure the ROI from the wrong things which only reflects thinking about the wrong things.

Using social media effectively demands mind-sets and capabilities that are unfamiliar and sometimes even counter intuitive to many business managers. It requires building trusting relations with your market, internal and external, rather than enforcing top-down out dated policies. Business managers should allow themselves and the entire organization time to unlearn and rethink everything before they “jumping into” social media. Most are following those who haven’t unlearned and rethought how, where, when,who, why and what they communicate which ultimately produces results, good bad and indifferent.

Results are the end result of how well and what people and processes communicate. You shouldn’t use social media until you know how well and what your people and processes communicate to all markets, internally and externally. Using it without knowing this is like jumping out of a plane with no parachute. Splat!

An ROI from social media doesn’t come from the tools rather the skills and knowledge on how to use them for a specific purpose, value creation. How much value do you create from use of your cell phone? Your email? and last but certainly not least your mouth!

Snake oil salesmen are known for avoiding questions during conversations, or flipping questions into other subjects. The reality is that any company wishing to measure the ROI from social media is asking the wrong question and avoiding the real issues. Just like a snake oil salesmen.

The problem with all things social is everyone wants to measure the ROI from the wrong things which only reflects thinking about the wrong things.

Using social media effectively demands mind-sets and capabilities that are unfamiliar and sometimes even counter intuitive to many business managers. It requires building trusting relations with your market, internal and external, rather than enforcing top-down out dated policies. Business managers should allow themselves and the entire organization time to unlearn and rethink everything before they “jumping into” social media. Most are following those who haven’t unlearned and rethought how, where, when,who, why and what they communicate which ultimately produces results, good bad and indifferent.

Results are the end result of how well and what people and processes communicate. You shouldn’t use social media until you know how well and what your people and processes communicate to all markets, internally and externally. Using it without knowing this is like jumping out of a plane with no parachute. Splat!

An ROI from social media doesn’t come from the tools rather the skills and knowledge on how to use them for a specific purpose, value creation. How much value do you create from use of your cell phone? Your email? and last but certainly not least your mouth!

Snake oil salesmen are known for avoiding questions during conversations, or flipping questions into other subjects. The reality is that any company wishing to measure the ROI from social media is asking the wrong question and avoiding the real issues. Just like a snake oil salesmen.