The word ‘expert’ implies brilliance, experience, and at the very least, an excellent level of training, but too many of our current crop of ‘social media experts’ have little, if any, of the above.

Just because someone uses social media to connect with friends and family, is good with computers, or is under the age of twenty five, doesn’t mean that they are qualified to put together a company’s social media campaign. Up to 66% of marketers who “work for organisations that have not used any form of social media marketing or PR” consider themselves to be well informed on the subject. This kind of overconfidence is one of the reasons that many businesses often fall short on their social media targets.

Almost 80% of companies are either using or are about to start using social media, but only 12% of companies feel that they are using it effectively, according to research from the Harvard Business Review. This next statistic holds the key to why the number of effective users is so low: only 12% of companies hire dedicated staff to manage their social media campaign. For the most part, businesses are still delegating the responsibility to people who have little social media experience.

In fact, without proper training, even well-intentioned social media users who are tweeting on behalf of an organisation can do irreparable PR damage. The ‘White House burning’ tweet from staff at the British Embassy in the US which resulted in a series of embarrassing apologies is one of many events that highlight the need for training. The British foreign office invested £92,000 in social media training in response to the gaffe, but one has to ask if the whole incident could’ve been avoided had effective training been put in place earlier.

Social media has seen such widespread adoption that all businesses need to give the issue proper thought and allocate some of their budget accordingly. Whether you have a policy that deals with employee social media usage in place or not, your staff are likely already using social media and what they are saying online in their personal time may have implications for your business. With effective training this can be an opportunity to promote your brand. What happens when you Google your employees? Do their social media profiles project the image that your company is aiming for?

Business leaders have traditionally lagged on adopting social media because it is notoriously difficult to tie money spent in social to a concrete return on investment. As is often the case, the biggest companies are leading the way in terms of the numbers, with @Cocacola tweeting 94,000 times since 2009 and @SamsungMobileUS clocking an impressive 85,000 tweets since 2008. As more businesses are becoming aware of social media’s capabilities in sales, as well as branding, social media training events and services are springing up across the country to meet demand. The difficulty comes in determining which of these events and training providers are worth the price of admission.

How to Train your Staff to Effectively Use Social Media

Encourage your staff to attend online panels that are led by trendsetters within social, such as the “Training Employees to Use Social the Right Way” panel that was recently held on LinkedIn and headed by Amy Watson, Vice President at Goldman Sachs. LinkedIn and Twitter are, obviously, great places to learn more about social media.

Keep an eye out for conferences, both online and face-to-face. Online conferences can be attended in the office and are great for cutting down on transport time.

Use a bespoke training services provider, such as EduCare, to devise your own social media training programme. This has the extra benefit of putting you in control of the material, so you can tailor the course to your own specific social and business needs.

There has been a change in the way that businesses look at social media. In the past, social media was seen as a productivity drain for employees, a potential embarrassment for branding, and a quick and dirty place for a marketing campaign. Now businesses are starting to see the wider potential for social in market research, customer service, branding and sales too. Social media is still young and it’s business uses are yet to be fully realised. Staying up to date with the complex changes that are occurring within the medium is a responsibility best tackled by someone with dedicated training.

 

By Keir McDonald MBE, founder and CEO of EduCare.

 

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