We all have seen that Social Media and how to use it in our businesses has been one of the big questions in 2009 and 2010. Many companies have jumped in and started using it to huge advantage in their businesses, whether in customer service, customer retention or building their brand and customer loyalty. But many, most I would suggest, are still on the sidelines and wondering what is all of this about, does it matter and how can they integrate the use of Social Media into their business.

Many companies have been stopped by the fact that the possibilities are huge and they don’t know where to get started. Many companies are deterred by idea that they have to change their communication style in the social media sphere from one of broadcast, associated with traditional marketing, to one of engagement and conversation.

Further, many businesses and their executives recognise that the internet, particularly the search engines, has a very long memory and mistakes or half-hearted attempts at leveraging social media tools can have a tendency to echo round the net for some time.

Therefore, here are 8 key questions that you can ask before you dive in:

1. What do you want to get out of it?

• Having a clear goal of why you want to integrate social media into your business, customer service, acquisition, brand strategy etc will help you keep focused and able to decide what you should be getting involved with and, more importantly, what you shouldn’t.

2. What are your customers doing online?

• Having a clear idea about what your current customers are doing online will give you an idea of what you should or could be doing. If you don’t know what they are doing then just ask. Also, don’t forget to think about your potential future customers and what they are doing online.

3. What are your competitors doing?

• The internet is such an open arena that you can easily do lots of competitor research and find out what businesses around you are doing? Is it working for them? What can you learn from what they are doing? How could you do it better or differently?

4. What sites/tools will you use?

• Once you know your goal, what your customers and competitors are doing done, then you can do some research to decide what sites/tools (Blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr etc etc) you think will fit and help you achieve your strategy or goal?

5. What’s my voice?

• Now that you have decided what tools you would like to use and why, the next key question is what sort of voice do you want to use. What I mean by this is looking at your strategy ask yourself are you there to help, establish authority, connect, be fun, listen etc. Knowing this is key to understanding the type of voice that you will need to adopt to help fulfill your chosen goal.

6. Who’s responsible for it in your business?

• Let’s be honest this can take time and practice and needs some dedicated focus. Understanding and delegating responsibility for this new strategy will give it the best chance of success.

7. How will you manage risk?

• As mentioned before, there is no guarantee that you will get this right first time so I would advise that you either ask for some expert help or set up a pilot project (ie. in one region, city, country, market, customer segment etc) that can help manage the risk of things going wrong and maximise learning before you roll out your new programme.

8. How will you measure Return on Investment (RoI)?

• We are in business and the point is that we expect a return on our investments, whether time, personnel or money. So, as a final question, be sure to understand what benefits you would like to see accrue to your business and over what time-frame. This does not need to be pure cash returns or more sales, it could be better handling of customer complaints, increased loyalty etc. You decide.

Are there other questions that you think a business should be asking before it dives into the pool of social media?

Thanks to arenamontanus for the photo