I’ve worked with so many organizations that have meetings upon meetings upon meetings about “What’s our social media strategy?” or “What are we going to do in social media?”
These meetings are a colossal waste of time. Absolutely nothing gets accomplished. If you’re not doing anything in social media, what do you have to talk about? And social media engagement is all about experimentation. It’s not about weeks of planning until you’ve planned out everything perfectly. It’s about doing, adjusting, and iterating. And doing that again and again.
The decision makers, usually the people who have zero social media experience, demand evidence. “Show me proof.” This just stalls the process. Some low level person has to search the web for an article about a similar company doing something similar. Once they find the article they present it to the C-level executive and then they finally say, “OK, go ahead and do it.” What a waste of time.
No “social media” gets accomplished in a “What are we going to do in social media?” meeting
Say there are a half dozen people sitting around the table discussing what you should and shouldn’t do. Nobody’s producing anything. It’s often the blind leading the blind.
I’m suggesting a moratorium on all “What are we going to do in social media?” meetings.
Instead of having that one hour meeting, why not cancel that meeting and require all six people spend that available hour writing a blog post? Now six blog posts have been created which is an enormous social media accomplishment. And instead of having another meeting, spend the next free hour reading the other blog posts, leaving comments, and promoting it to your social networks (e.g., Twitter and Facebook).
Go into your calendar and cancel your next two one-hour meetings.
On the first cancellation notice, indicate that every intended meeting attendee must write a blog post.
On the second cancellation notice, indicate that every meeting attendee must read the other blog posts, leave comments, and then promote the posts to their social networks via Twitter and Facebook.
That’s the only “let’s get started” strategy any company needs.
Stock photos courtesy of Shutterstock.
