Sustainability... What a difficult word, don't you think? And how about social media?

Can you describe the two in a short sentence? No? You are probably asking: "What does social media have to do with sustainability?"

A lot, actually.

Social media and sustainability are both paradigm shifts. The challenge is how to leverage them and do so in synchrony in order to create business value. Utilising social media could transform any sustainability initiative. And because the foundations of social media and sustainability are guided by the same values of community, transparency, authenticity, innovation and collaboration, combining and aligning the two concepts could have a powerful impact on effectively balancing the triple bottom line.

To help you see the connection, let's go back to school and make things a little bit easier to understand. Below you'll find my list of ABCs with each letter representing an important characteristic that ties these two seemingly unrelated concepts. Additionally, you will find multiple actionable tips you can deploy in your business.

So pay attention now!

Believe it or not, I am still seeing many businesses shying away from social – either not even getting on it or, yes, having profiles there, but doing nothing. Why? Are you scared? Of what?

To be honest with you, the pros far outweigh the cons.

Today, platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn are your most powerful instruments for two-way communication and digital relevancy. This means, they offer you the opportunity to talk directly with your customers, but most importantly your customers have the means to talk back to you too, anytime, anywhere, about their needs, their wants, their pain points. And this is where the power of social media lies – in communication that is meaningful. 15 years ago were able to ever come so close to your customers? Did you ever have the opportunity to be so relevant? I’m guessing no.  

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by social media? Have you struggled organising your time in order to handle your social media activities?

Social media is just too much, right? Too many posts, too many people, too many questions, too many tweets, too much noise, too much to do to go through it all. And you only have a few hours a day to get everything done…

Fear not, it’s not just you, it’s almost everyone.

The past few months with my move to a new country and my new job have been super busy for me, so I have also felt overwhelmed. What helped me was HubSpot’s very simple formula that you can use to make the most of your time on social media on a daily basis. And because it’s worked so well for me, so I decided to share it with you today. Hopefully, this will give you a daily structure of how to more efficiently handle your social media activities every day.  

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to participate in a Q&A session for a social media strategy workshop that was held by a friend of mine – Chryssa Skodra – for a group of start-ups in Finland. I really enjoyed being part of it via Google Hangout as I got to interact with some bright entrepreneurs and share my knowledge around social media and blogging.

My friend Chryssa, who follows the HubSpot blog and knows that we post a ton of useful content there, also asked me to send over a list of curated articles on social media strategy to share with the participants. I happily obliged, of course, and thought that this list of resources would be super useful for you too, so I decided to share it with you today.

Please note, this a strategy guide, not an implementation guide – how you create and optimise your social media profiles or what social media posts to create are topics for another piece. This one is about understanding what social media is, how it can benefit your business and what you need to consider to get started. 

Storytelling – undeniably the buzzword of 2014 in communications and marketing continues to garner the attention of many professionals and businesses. It’s kind of become a more trendy word for content creation, don’t you think?

With the significant shifts happening in the media space where news finds us rather than us looking for it, storytelling is moving to a whole new level with social and mobile dictating the creation and dissemination of news, and so the journalistic craft as well.

This is one of the major findings of a recent study by Edelman, News Whip and Muck Rack addressing social news consumption. Indeed, the research focused on the US, but reading through the results I believe there are some important points to bear in mind outside the US. Why? Because they could be sources of competitive advantage for early adopters around Europe (I think we all know (but not always admit) that most European countries move a little bit slower than the US when it comes to the adoption of technological advancements).