Continued from Tuesday’s post:

3) Once you know what you want to accomplish –you need to measure it.  Again, this can be very simple.  If you are going to promote a fundraiser, then decide how much money you want to raise online.  Have you launched a new program or service – how many new users do you want to come from your online campaign?  Or how many volunteers will you recruit using your new online venue? 

Don’t be overly optimistic – identify what you feel is a reasonable number to accomplish that would justify for you (and management) the time and energy it will take to create your online presence.  One of the keys to work with management – whether nonprofit or for profit – is going to be a willingness to address the bottom line.  You must create a measure of success for your social media venture.

4) Plan for the negative.  It may not happen – however, one of the biggest management fears about social media is negative feedback.  Negative feedback can take the form of former clients or customers that come to your page and rant and rave about how horrible you are.  Or the political pundit who decides to lambast your mission.  To address this fear you need to have a plan in place for how you will deal with negative feedback should it occur.  A bare bones plan will assess the feedback – is it legitimate or not?  If it is legitimate then step up and do what you can to make it right.  Social media makes it very easy to demonstrate what kind of company or organization you are, whether good or bad.  Act with transparency and integrity and your followers will love you. 

If it is not legitimate – provide a response that deals only with correcting the factual inaccuracies of the post.  Do not engage emotionally with the feedback.  Please also pay attention to what your followers have to say – they may respond on your behalf as well.  Allow that to the extent that responses remain impartial and fair.  Do not allow anyone –even on your behalf – to engage in misleading or vengeful communication.  You cannot control everyone and these situations will call for a certain amount of tact and diplomacy – however this is no different than the kind of diplomacy your organization engages in every day in the op-ed section of your local newspaper.

5) Pick one venue – while it may be difficult at first glance to pick a social media venue, to get started its important to just pick one thing you want to try.  You may find that doing several twitter updates throughout the day is annoying or you may find that writing up pithy 142 character statements comes easily to you.  Or maybe you enjoy the interactive environment of Facebook.  Or perhaps what you really want to do is write a thoughtful blog article twice a week.  It doesn’t really matter where you start, as long as you actually start.

Which leads us to Step 6,

6) To steal from Nike –Just do it.  Pull the trigger.  Once you get some kind of go ahead, move forward.  Nothing is gained from not trying anything – start small, take baby steps and keep moving.

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Blog by Joyce