Social Media Marketing For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Take Your Organization with You, from the CEO to the Field Representative

We discuss in this book how you can apply SMM to different parts of your business and beyond the realm of marketing. We also cover strategies and tactics for making SMM work in conjunction with the other forms of marketing, whether they’re digital or offline. But that isn’t enough. To succeed in SMM means that you must carry your whole organization with you — everyone from the CEO down to the field representative.

SMM is fundamentally about everyday influence in all its forms and crowd-sourced innovation and product design. To embrace SMM and succeed in it requires your whole organization to orient itself toward it. Your CEO is probably one of the best spokespersons for your organization. He should be one of the people talking to your consumers in a SMM voice that they appreciate, wherever they may be spending their time online. On the other end of the spectrum, your field representatives are out there selling products. Each of them has a network of customers. They, too, are powerful SMM voices. Empower them to speak on behalf of the company to their constituents offline and online. Succeeding in SMM means taking everyone in your company in this direction. And a good place to start is by surveying your own employees to understand how much they’re using social media today and how they feel it can be harnessed to support your business.