The Business Side of Social Media

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Business Intelligence   Communications Management   Marketing and Sales   Strategy  

Virtually everyone on the planet who has any access to the internet or owns a smartphone knows about social media. It is woven into the fabric of most people’s daily lives, and that weave is becoming stronger and more integrated into everything.

Yet not every business has implemented a strategy to effectively tap into the power that social media can bring to its success. Having an effective social media presence—one that promotes and builds the brand, one that grows loyalty and sales—takes more than having a Facebook page and using Twitter.

To unleash the power that social media can bring to a business requires a well-thought-out strategy that combines social media, smart data analytics and specific goals and objects geared at building a sustainable and self-renewing connection with customers—a connection they identify with and embrace.

Few businesses can achieve this level of social media integration into their marketing strategy without serious planning, introspection, trial and error, and professional guidance. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t try and continuously improve.

One of the missing pieces in many social media strategies is the mining of demographic data that can be accessed about existing and potential customers, including the:

• websites they visit
• places they go
• products they buy
• how much they make and…

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