As a Social Media Specialist, I’ve been asked many times before what is it that I do and how I do it. I simply reply, I write, because social media is far too complex to describe in one sitting. New sites are popping up everyday, like Bo.lt, a website that is supposed to be better than Pinterest (crazy, right?), and new trends are always rising. Which means it is my sole purpose to research industry trends and analyze current social business data available to better understand what is working in the social media world and what isn’t. However, some companies fail to understand the importance of a social strategy and thus implementing social media tactics is not a priority. To those companies, I say, good luck!

Social business is important today, despite what you might think, and it is expected to be more important in the future, according to a report by the MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte: 18% of global executives say social business (defined as activities that use social media, social software, and social networks to enable more efficient, effective, and mutually useful connections among people, information, and assets) is important to their organization today, and 63% say social business will be important in three years:

According to this report, Execs say social software is helping their companies meet various challenges and cite the following as "important" or "somewhat important" benefits of social software:

• Managing customer relationships: 80%
• Innovating for competitive differentiation: 74%
• Acquiring and retaining employees: 65%
• Responding to new competitive threats: 62%
• Growing revenue: 61%

ActivEngage uses such programs as: Hootsuite, Hubspot, and Bitly, to track the success of Tweets, Pins, and Facebook posts. Here is a little more about these sites and why we use them:

HootSuiteis a social media management system for businesses and organizations to collaboratively execute campaigns across multiple social networks from one secure, web-based dashboard.

Hubspotis an  all-in-one marketing software that helps us with email management, lead nurturing, keyword analysis, marketing automation, and competitor tracking.

Bitly is an easy way to share and customize links on the web. What’s great about Bitly is that you can also track how many clicks your link has and from which country your link is getting the most clicks.

Now implementing a social business campaign takes dedication and vision, here you can see how to implement it:

The key to any successful campaign is strong leadership and a clear vision:

This means you must have a thorough plan of action spelled out before beginning any social media efforts and also have clear goals for each campaign. Otherwise, you are just shooting bullets at random targets without any direction at what target to shoot at. Strong leadership support and oversight of your social media strategy not only fuels creativity but also allows for the entire business to be on the same page in understanding the importance of such a strategy. It is very hard to sell a vehicle to an interested Facebook user if your Sales team does not find these types of leads to be a priority.

Clearly, social media isn’t going away and more consumers are turning to different platforms to reach out to companies to make a connection and voice their concerns. So before you think that blogging, Tweeting, and making your daily rounds on social media isn’t that important, think again. Don't be like the unicorns that missed the boat, social business is here to stay.