Champions

Champions: To get conversations started in an online community, you need a group of enthusiasts who are willing and confident to get things moving by posting messages, responding, and helping others.

Agencies or companies need a person or a department that is their social media champion. Social media is a vital part of marketing as a whole, not just online or offline. It's not something that can be attempted lightly, without resources being attributed to it, otherwise it will end up "bad".I

If you don't have a social media champion plan in place or a social media champion on your team you should consider getting one, Fast.

By understanding the in's and out's of the social media sites, and by understanding exactly how your audience is communicating, the Social Media champion can get a much better handle on those conversations that are taking place.

By understanding the impact a blog post, Facebook profile, MySpace comment, a tweet, update or post in a forum has upon an audience about your company's perception, it can br important for companies to have the Social Media champion squarely involved in helping to develop social media policies for employees who are not directly involved in the companies social media efforts.

Still on the fence about dedicating resources directly to social media? Think about how hard it's been trying to pull a social media marketing effort together. How much time spent so far. That should be enough to let you know its time to assign one person (or team), Social Media champion(s) to be solely at the helm of the efforts to make them a success!