15 Stages of Online Presence Evolution Through Social Media, Part I

At Salty Waffle we have the privilege of meeting a lot of great people during our social media classes and we always seem to learn just as much or more from them as they do from us. As we watch people in the class and keep up with them afterward, we have observed a kind of pattern of development they go through while implementing social media.

We want to help everyone get through all the stages and we figured it would help to know what they are, so we wrote them all out best we could. There are 15 stages in all, we’re going to start with the first 3 in Part I because this seems to be where most people are at the moment. Stay tuned for the rest and identify your own stage.

Once you do, we can help from there. Social media made simple, we start where you stop.

Stage 1: You have a website that may or may not be the .com of your business name and you have email address with that site. You’ve never updated your site, it’s a brochure. Email is your primary mode of communication and fads like Facebook are a waste of time.

Stage 2: Somebody told you that you had to have a LinkedIn account and maybe a Facebook account so you opened an account but you’ve never updated either since. And you have no idea what the business case is for having these accounts.

Stage 3: You checked your Facebook one day and noticed that a lot of people are talking about the Twitter. Something about birds? Anyway, your Facebook skills are developing nicely because you found that you like reconnecting with old friends and looking at everyone’s pictures. People share some interesting links on your wall and around your network so you check it when you check your email. You “Like” some fan pages and can start to see how this would work for your business.

Check back in a week for the next few stages!