Thought I’d just give a glimpse into what I’ve been up to lately. I recently had the challenge and pleasure of participating in a companies foray into the world of Social Media. It was a great experience for me as well as a paying job, which is always nice to have these days!

I was given the title Community Advocate that came with responsibilities very similar to what is discussed here in this post about Community Management.

It’s very interesting when working with a company who has not used a Social Media strategy before. It’s a big leap of faith for them to say, “Here is my business, now please go represent me on the internet.”

It takes a huge amount of trust for this to work. All the potential client really has to base decisions on is case studies on what has worked for other businesses and your word that you know what you’re doing.

In this case the company had a website where they were successfully selling a product to a very loyal following. This company also had a very active presence on a few online forums where they were managing their brand, answering questions about their products and relaying new product information.

It was not difficult to attract followers. This company thrived on excellent customer service and had ardent, loyal customers. We started a Facebook fan page for them and engagement there was a success. We ran a contest and not only was it fun, we had a lot of participants. All was going well.

Bi-weekly reporting showed a slow steady increase in our numbers. By all measures our engagement on social platforms was a success, BUT, it didn’t turn into more visits to their site and, in turn, did not turn into more sales. My attempts at strategy — and I came up with excellent ideas, I might add — weren’t accepted because they were new and scary and involved more trust in engagement with the online world.

What I learned from this experience is:

- It is necessary for the company/brand you are representing to have clearly defined goals

- It is important and paramount to the success of your project that the people you are working for understand the time necessary to grow a community, instill trust and engage

- A monthly examination of those goals to see if they are still applicable is a must

- Clear definitions of what measurement tools you are using and what those numbers actually mean, and what those numbers can result in must be explained

- Policies stating what constitute an emergency and how that will be handled (for example, customer complaints, bad “press”) must be put in place. The Community Manager’s role must not be over-ridden if something like this occurs – everyone must share information and work together

- There needs to be clearly defined roles and chain of “command” in terms of who speaks through what channels and when. It’s no fun to sign on and discover *someone* who you work for has been tweeting away in your absence, without your knowledge. It confuses people

After a few months, they gave up their online presence and stuck with the way things were before. This company was comfortable in their tradition and that comfort, coupled with economic influences, determined the Community Advocate role was not necessary. They wanted to see more direct visits to their site, which in turn they hoped would result in more sales.

Was this a failure? No.

I learned a lot from this challenge, the company became educated in using Social Media to attract, engage, respond and reward customers. And customers, in turn, gained insight into a company that cared enough to try.