What Finishing a Basement can Teach You about Social Media

Back in November my wife and I bought and moved into a home with an unfinished basement. We recently decided to start finishing it and it got me thinking about the similarities between finishing our basement and social media. Specifically “social media strategy” vs. “social media tools.”

As a guy, I can tell you right now that my first impulse was to go out and buy a bunch of new tools. Just the thought of going to the local hardware store and filling a cart with new power tools was enough to make we want to get started right away. Thankfully, my father-in-law (who has years of experience doing this kind of stuff) was able to reign in my enthusiasm and get me on track.

The Plan

There’s a saying that goes something like this “if you fail to plan you plan to fail.” It’s cliché, but it’s the truth.

For us, our first step in finishing the basement was to come up with a plan. We sketched out several ideas on a legal pad and then went downstairs to start measuring things out. Once we figured out which idea would work best, we started measuring out walls, snapping chalk lines and figuring out what tools and supplies we would need.

The Strategy

Because of our limited budget, we decided we would have to finish the basement in phases. We laid out which sections would need to come before others, what supplies would be needed to complete each section and what tools we would be using along the way.

The Tools

Once we had our plan and our strategy in place we were finally ready to pick up our tools and materials and get to work.

Conclusion

So what does all this have to do with social media? Well, it seems to me, that all too often people and organizations see some new tool (Facebook, Twitter, or whatever comes next) and immediately think they need to be using it. So, they start throwing around resources without any type of a plan or strategy, much like I would have done with our basement. They see everyone using them, but they don’t take the time to create a plan and strategy around how to use them.

Simply creating a profile and throwing out content about your company, might work every once in a while, but chances are you’ll be spending time a resources on something that will never return any value. It’s not enough to simply pick up a tool and start trying to make it work. Sure, I could go buy a cool new hammer to start working on my basement, but if the first step is cutting wood, that hammer won’t do me a lot of good. Before you go out and start spending time and money looking for tools, take a minute to ask yourself why you need them, what you hope to accomplish with them and how will you use them. If you don’t already have a plan and strategy in place, start there and worry about the tools when you’re finally ready to get to work.