Golf Swing Follow-Through by haraldMM

If you’ve ever hit balls at a driving range, swung a tennis racket or attempted a free throw, you’ve already learned one of the most basic tenets of sports: always follow through.  A golf swing doesn’t end when you make contact with the ball; it ends when your body completes the action.  Stopping short not only decreases the impact of your efforts, but it’s bad for your body.

Social media works the same way.  Unfortunately, many social media practitioners don’t notice the resemblance.  They see individual actions (a tweet, a Facebook message, a video, a campaign), but they don’t acknowledge that each action or engagement point is all part of a larger process.

Your social media efforts don’t end the moment you tweet about a new sale or reach 1,000 fans on Facebook.  Like all marketing, the social side began before that tweet was sent, and it’ll continue long after that 1,000th fan has closed her browser and turned in for the night.

If you’re measuring your success by your actions, rather than by your process, you’re only seeing part of the picture.

David Murdico recently shared some excellent tongue-in-cheek “advice” in MediaPost, in which he offered five tips guaranteed to make sure no one will ever see your great new video.  As amusing as his advice is, it’s frustrating to realize that hundreds of decision-makers could read that article tomorrow and pat themselves on the back because they’re already making these same mistakes every day.

  • Do you promote your sales and news across ALL your social media channels?
  • Do you use content from one channel to feed the others?
  • Do you have a multi-stage outreach plan for each new media campaign?
  • Are you tracking your efforts to see where you’re gaining traction?
  • Do your social media, marketing and PR departments overlap?

If you’re not supporting your great ideas with a great process, your efforts are falling short.

Having a great idea is easy.

Having the follow-through to make sure that great idea becomes a great experience is what counts.

Image by HaraldMM