The Vandiver Group, Inc. is constantly looking for new ways to use existing tools from our communications toolkit to help clients reach their goals. Social media is one of those tools. To share our expertise and insight in social media, our President and CEO, Donna Vandiver, participated in a panel discussion on social media and business for the St. Louis Business Journal’s Social Madness kickoff event.

Here are some key highlights from the discussion:

• Social media should be implemented as part of your bigger communications strategy.
• No matter what kind of company you are (B2B or B2C) you can still effectively talk to people on social media.
• Policies and guidelines are important to ensure employees are using social media correctly, and representing your company and brand appropriately.
• Training employees and stakeholders on how to effectively use social media gives them the tools to become digital brand ambassadors.
• Being active on social media not only raises awareness within each network, it also positively affects search engine optimization (SEO).
• Your company does not need to have a presence on every social media site; find two to three that work best for you and do them really well.
• Social media needs to be aligned with your business goals; those goals will determine how you measure ROI.
• Mobile will continue to grow in the future, make sure your online presence is optimized for mobile use.
• Start the conversation and build engagement before you ask for the sale or action; it’s all about the relationship.
• If you’re not on social media, you need to start thinking about it now.

That last bullet point is one we particularly want to highlight. As we like to say, asking if you should have a social media presence is like asking if you should have a website, a question we used to get ten years ago. People are still hesitant to jump into social media, but if you don’t have a presence you are missing out on opportunities to connect with and grow your target audience.

If you are not currently active in social media, now is the time to start. As you look at your budgets for the next fiscal year, make some room for social media. If you have no social media experience, consider hiring a consultant like TVG to get you started. We can provide strategy recommendations, draft social media guidelines for employees, generate content and even train your employees.

You can find additional tips from today’s panel at twitter.com, by searching #SocialMadnessSTL. For more information on the social media services The Vandiver Group offers, contact Claire Eckelkamp at 314-991-4641 or ceckelkamp@vandivergroup.com. Or Andy Likes at alikes@vandivergroup.com.