One of the first things an entrepreneur or organization needs to consider with respect to social media strategy is social capacity. What are your true capabilities when it comes to  engaging in social media?

3 Factors That Affect Social Capacity

Culture

• Is your organization passionate about their stakeholders and do you believe that audience engagement has value?
• Does you organization see social media as an opportunity or a waste of time?
• Is your culture built on open communication or hoarding information?
• Culture has a lot to do with your ability to plan and execute a successful social media program – Trying to launch a social media initiative in an environment that doesn’t really care about communicating with stakeholders is a waste of time and money.

Time

• Social media demands time – time to come up with a plan; time to create content on an ongoing basis; time to use the tools for listening and participation
• The amount of time you have doesn’t need to have a bearing on your level of social media success – but it should guide your level of participation
• If you don’t have a lot of time start slow and select social media tools that fit with your ability to create content and manage participation (I suggest starting with one…two if you’re ambitious)

Attitude

• Do you believe that engaging with your audience is the right thing to do…regardless of ROI?
• Yes…regardless of ROI. Before you lose your mind and start writing nasty things in the comment section, let me clarify
• I get the fact that ROI is important  – you have to understand your objectives and use analytics tools to measure the success of your social media efforts – whether that’s leads, sales, engagement levels, etc.
• But it’s also important to realize that social media is intangible…and be willing to view social media the same way you would some of your other marketing channels
• Be honest – Do you know the exact ROI of all your existing marketing initiatives?
• How about negative ROI – What’s the Return on Ignoring your audience?

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“The closer you get to someone, something, some brand, some organization… the harder it is to demonize it, objectify it or hate it. So, if you want to not be hated, open up. Let people in. Engage. Interact.” (Seth Godin)

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This visual was inspired by a recent Newt Barrett post on Content Marketing Today – Six Steps to a Successful Small Business Content Marketing Strategy.

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Chris Brogan is a busy guy…

Average Emails per Day – 590

• Untargeted press releases – 48
• Bacn (look it up; anniversary of the term is tomorrow) – 114
• Requests for help/ideas – 171
• Friends – 49
• Interview requests – 27
• Project-related mail – 54

Other Communication:

• Average Direct Messages on Twitter per Day – 210 (up from 180)
• Average Text Messages a Day – 52
• Average # of Phone Calls a Day – 19
• Average Books/Products sent to my Home/Business (per week): 8
• Average Paper Mail (personal) sent to me (per week): 3

How Chris spends his time (less accurate, may not add up but presume overlap):

• Typical hours awake each day: 19
• Average hours in front of a screen (laptop, phone): 14
• Estimated time on Twitter (non-conference day): 4 hours (multitask)
• Estimated time in email (non-conference day): 2 hours (multitask)
• Estimated time on blogs (reading/commenting): 2 hours (condensed)
• Estimated time on Facebook/other networks: 1 hour (multitask)
• Estimated time spent writing (book, proposal, contracts): 3 hours
• Estimated time spent with family: 3 hours
• Estimated time spent reading: 1 hour

Check out Chris Brogan’s “Behind The Scenes” newsletter for great social media content (that’s a little different from his blog) and some cool behind the scenes stuff.

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