The Social Media Coaching Center is our newest project and we are very excited to see it launch at last. Completely built in our favorite blogging platform (WordPress of course!) the site offers everything from tips and tricks about social media strategy to step by step tutorials to use the tools and networks efficiently and to the best effect.

Janet Fouts hand-picked some amazing social media coaches, consultants and practitioners to help you understand what social media is and how to use it for business without getting bogged down in the details.

The site is your one-stop shop to really learn about social media and online marketing and the content is top-notch. No matter whayt your learning style, you’ll find something here of interest.

In addition to the content on the site Janet will be doing weekly call in shows with social media and on-line marketing experts where you can ask any questions  you have about social media, social media networks or social media coaching and get answers. She’s even offering to build tutorials or videos to demonstrate her answers!

The site is in response to the many questions that came up while Janet was writing her book, Social Media Success! which just came out this week. The book gives you the strategy to make your social media efforts successful and the website gives you the tools and techniques to use to implement it. All and all a perfect couple! So, what are you waiting for? Check out the Social Media Coaching Center while it’s still free!

Our social media coach Janet Fouts just posted a very interesting article on social media measurement in the IABC newsletter. We’ve always held that you can’t hold your social media presence to one metric or the other, but that the important thing is to figure out what your goals are, how you will measure success and then determine what tools and strategies will reach your goals. However, people still insist on having metrics.

The debate continues. Recently we’ve had a lot of discussions internally and with others in the field about setting expectations. When do you expect to see return on the time invested in creating long term relationships? One of our clients pointed out that she often spends 6 moths to a year just to gather data, segment the market and determine the goals for a particular marketing campaign. Then it may take another 6 moths to a year to see the carefully created alliances blossom into measurable return. Yet people seem to expect that a social media marketing campaign will happen faster because the reaction to a particular post or video can happen so quickly.

the thing to remember here is that those times when you get a big hit in social media seldom sustain the interest. These days the attention span is short and the consumer moves off after the next big wave in a heartbeat.

So, what to do? Build lasting relationships with the knowledge that you’re not in “this” for the short haul. You are building long term programs to help increase communication of your message and turn your faithful friends, followers and readers into evangelists. Your virtual sales force.

While we invite you to discuss your campaign with us (well, Janet actually), we ask you to be realistic in your goals and to believe us when we tell you the truth about social media instead of what you’d maybe like to hear.

Social media is hard work and it takes a committed team to build trust in their relationships. That doesn’t happen quickly, but we firmly believe that a relationship based on trust and sharing information will reap bigger rewards than any flash-in-the-pan campaign.