I never thought I would see the day when I'd be using Facebook at work.
I joined the social networking site about four years ago when I was in college, as a way to connect with friends and past classmates. It was strictly for personal reasons.
Fast forward to 2009, and not only am I using Facebook at work, it has become an essential part of managing Springfield Business Journal's online presence.
If you read our May 18 cover story, "New Wave of Networking," you know that more companies are using social media to connect with customers and utilize this new method of marketing. SBJ is no exception.
In March, we formed a task force to map out our strategy for social media and determine what uses best suit what we do as a publishing company.
For our first meeting, I asked each task force member to bring a list of all the social media Web sites they had ever heard of or used. Our combined list nearly caused me to give up right away - dozens and dozens of sites existed. How could we possibly tackle something of this magnitude?
We quickly realized that the best strategy lies in simplicity.
Not every site in the social media world had applications for us, and many were too obscure. We opted for what seemed to be the most popular sites and began exploring what they had to offer.
First up: Twitter. As a journalist, this is the site that gets me most excited. Twitter lets you post microblogs no more than 140 characters long. Other users "follow" you and are fed an automatic stream of your posts. You also can follow users and receive their posts.
Talk about potential, especially for media outlets. In the few seconds it takes to post to Twitter or read others' posts, I can: distribute headlines and breaking news from our Web site; keep readers updated on the stories we're working on; seek out story ideas and sources; hear feedback from readers and start discussions about business-related topics. The time commitment is minimal, the financial investment is zilch and the possibilities are huge.
On Facebook, we've built an SBJ page and invited people to become "fans." Our page has different sections for information about our company, status updates, headlines from sbj.net and our blog, The Fine Print*, a listing of upcoming events, photos and discussion boards.
And here's a cool feature: We can send a message to all of our fans with a single click. It's a great way to directly contact the people who want to stay abreast of what's happening at SBJ.
LinkedIn is in a different category of social media. The site lets you build a personal professional profile, complete with work history, education and colleague recommendations.
Companies can create profiles, too, and that's what we did. The SBJ LinkedIn page posts employee profiles, key company statistics and streaming headlines. We've also started groups on LinkedIn for past honorees of our 40 Under 40 and Most Influential Women awards. Already, more than 80 people have joined and now proudly display these accomplishments on their LinkedIn profiles.
Video is a brand new undertaking for us.
It adds another layer to our news coverage and lets us recap special events for people who weren't able to attend.
Obviously, we're in unfamiliar territory, having stepped out of the print medium we know so well. Our media partner, KSPR, has generously given us advice on equipment and offered us a lesson in production basics.
SBJ also has a YouTube page, or "channel," that keeps an archive of all the videos we produce for sbj.net.
SBJ by no means has cornered the market on social media.
We think we've got a handle on it, but we're always learning more and changing our game plan constantly. Beyond a doubt, though, it has become an integral piece of our operation, helping us reach readers in a radically different way and open a two-way street of communication with them.
If you or your company haven't jumped in yet, take the plunge.
Springfield Business Journal Online Editor Dee Dee Jacobs can be reached at djacobs@sbj.net.
