Follow these steps to take advantage of social media’s myriad business benefits

There is ample evidence that things are changing and that the way business gets done will never be the same. Police now use crowd-sourcing to catch terrorists, and online communities, networks and shopping have become a way of life. But is your business up to the task; are you ready for social media and business?

A recent report from McKinsey Global Institute showed that although 70 percent of businesses are using social technologies, most businesses are not making effective use of them. They are failing to use peer-to-peer communications effectively, facilitate innovation or utilize market and client insights.

Small- and medium-sized businesses have a unique opportunity to use social tools to provide them with Web presence and enhance their brands well beyond what they might have been able to achieve using more traditional tools. But for this to happen, they need a strategy and the right resources to do this.

Steps to Successful Social

Often, the approach is to simply ask the youngest person on the team to set up and maintain a Twitter or Facebook account. Allowing an inexperienced individual to be the voice of your online brand is not always a wise strategy, unless that person really understands the business and is well versed in how to communicate about it.

The business leaders who succeed will be those with a plan for change that unleashes the creativity of their employees and their customers. The following are steps one can take on the journey to becoming a social business.