1. Answer the question “Why do your NREN needs social media”.
    1. Write down what  you expect form social media
    2. What’s your audience
    3. How do you plan to talk to your audience (in comparison to other channel)
    4. What do you consider as a success?
    5. Are you and is your organisation prepared to communicate? Who are going te be communicating and are they prepared to make enough time to do that?
  2. Decide on which social media you are going to adapt and make a thorough plan. Start building your Social media strategy (check NREN strategies examples on wiki)
  3. Compere what you will get with extra work it will bring and make a final decision (evaluate ROI). Don’t forget that you will have to be active on your social media.
  4. Prepare a company Social media policy and get a management “buy in”. (check NREN policy examples on wiki)
  5. Start deploying your social media and engage
    1. General advices
      1. Like it and be liked
      2. Use web RSS feeds to keep your Social media profile up to date
      3. Answer all question as soon as possible
      4. Make people feel their opinion matters
      5. If you have nothing to say, don’t say it
      6. Use various tools to monitor all your social media presences in one place (e. g. on netwibes)
    2. Facebook
      1. Create company page profile (don’t use groups since they will be depreciated and don’t create a personal profile for your company since it’s against the FB rules)
      2. Add company data, try to “talk to people” don’t just use facts
      3. Add as many photos as possible
      4. Create stilled welcome page
      5. Create company events, invite people to events
      6. Photograph events and post photos from events on your profile
      7. Notify your friends about your page and hopefully they will like it (and others will follow them).
      8. Activate your work colleagues so they like and post on your profile and activate more users
      9. Don’t forget to use it for contests, events and new service launches
      10. Monitor insights and see what your public likes and activates on
      11. Advertise to friends of your followers
    3. Twitter
      1. Make sure everyone twitting for your company learn “twitter language”
      2. Create company Twitter profile and customize it. Make sure you state who stands behind company Twitter profile - name the person(s).
      3. Build twitter in your every day workflow
      4. Start following journalists and people of the same interest
      5. Reply to twits of people you would like to follow
      6. Whenever possible try to twit breaking news
      7. Use twitter for the channel to VIPs
      8. Use Twittdeck to manage multiple profiles on one place

      9. Use Twittwall on conferences to engage users in conversations with presenters

    4. LinkedIn
      1. Create corporate page for the sake of brand awareness.
      2. Promote at least a few high end services
      3. Invest more time and effort if you are a regular seeker of employees
    5. Youtube
      1. Customize your channel
      2. Create playlists
      3. Use insights to understand your users
    6. Google+
      1. Not jet so popular but at least register your brand for future use.
    7. Wiki
      1. Make sure information about your NREN is up to date.
      2. Be aware of strict editorial policy and comply to it.
    8. Blogs
    9. Flikr
  6. Measure successand report back to management
    1. Number of likes and followers.
    2. News dissemination through social media (if possible monitor your CMS for different entry points to your news articles).
    3. Use tools for accessing influence (e. g. klout, peerindex)
    4. With a help of reasonable effort  the Social media will grow all by itself, so It’s a great PR resource for you.