I help organisations derive more value from their investments in social media and mitigate risks. My work helps them:

• Achieve better results.
• Operate more effectively and efficiently.
• Protect the reputations of brand, business and employees.
• Satisfy the needs of their stakeholders.
• Enhance customer loyalty.
• Harness social intelligence to inform their planning.
• Deliver more successful campaigns.
• Build stronger and more valuable networks.
• Transform their internal communications and corporate culture.

My role typically involves working with the internal team to:

• Audit the effectiveness of social media activities and identify areas of risk and opportunity;
• Devise social media strategies;
• Develop operating processes and risk management procedures;
• Provide training programmes for all levels of the organisation;
• Mentor senior managers in personal (digital) brand management;
• Produce social media content (films, infographics white papers, articles).
• Plan and project manage social media campaigns.

Projects usually start with an audit to:

• Measure the overall return on investment generated by social media.
• Identify areas of risk.
• Review the effectiveness of individual activities.
• Test the effectiveness of systems and process and identify areas requiring improvement.
• Identify investment needs.
• Highlight skills/knowledge gaps and training needs.
• Highlight potential missed opportunities.

The problems I tend to encounter during an audit are:

• Social media investments and activities are not aligned with organisational priorities or stakeholder needs.
• Inadequate policies and processes are leaving the organisation open to significant reputational risk.
• Results are underwhelming and/or considered irrelevant by senior management.
• The teams responsible for delivering social media activities are frustrated and feel under-supported.
• A lack of investment in tools, training and resources.
• The mix of channels and accounts lacks any strategic logic.
• Intelligence and information derived from social media is not being shared widely across the organisation.
• A lack of senior management involvement and/or engagement.

‘I’m particularly fond of the social media work Martin Thomas does. There are plenty of social media offerings out there – but somebody who works at board level, gets organisational direction and also gets social media and changing generations? Such individuals are rare.’ Dr. Simon Haslam, IoD strategy consultant and Visiting Fellow at Durham University Business School