It’s amazing how many organizations and businesses still don’t use social media. When I say it’s amazing, I really mean that. Any organization that does not already understand that social media is the key to their future success has yet to realize it is 2014.

I have had firsthand advice from the “General” here in Calgary about why not to use social media, and although he thinks he knows everything, I have continued on, and it has certainly rewarded Stormhold Energy Ltd.

Here are some reasons why social media is essential to our oil and gas development efforts within our company.

Time management is key to my productivity and is very important to me on a daily basis. Using my social media “sites” allows me to set up keyword searches that will track what people are looking for and saying about our ever so changing commodity. Being able to find these quickly and engage in conversations is very rewarding from a time management perspective.

Scheduling is also part of our time management criteria. Scheduling meetings that have been qualified through my social media criteria is key to a successful meeting.

Each message or post I throw up on the screen can be tracked to see if anyone is responding. This is important, because it allows you to find out what is effective and what is not. Posting joint venture opportunities, land sales, current price per acre, as well as job positions is a very effective way to gain interest.

Most social media sites allow coworkers to work together on your social media campaign, which increases both productivity and effectiveness. Including, joint venture opportunities, business plans and even networking strategies.

Website tracking, which also includes LinkedIn and Facebook, is very important in my opinion. Stormhold Energy Ltd. has been very successful using this medium. We have sourced multiple interests through both websites including our own www.stormholdenergy.ca, which in turn is entirely self-directed.

Social networking websites, such as Facebook, are just a small part of social media. For business, social media is much more. Understanding the various opportunities social media provides for business is the first step toward capitalizing on its potential.

Social media is mostly user-friendly, but  embracing it in business is far from simple. There is a huge difference between using Facebook and bringing the right aspects of social media into your company. The amount and depth of information relating to social media is overwhelming, so capitalizing on the right combinations of social media tools for the company can be challenging.

One aspect that makes social media for business a very attractive avenue is that many of the tools are free to use, which provides excellent costeffective solutions. Bringing social media within a company is not completely free; however, time is the key resource.

Social media opens doors to enormous markets. For instance, there are 75 million business people on LinkedIn including the CEOs of some of the top companies in the world. The business opportunities a company can get by connecting to only a small percentage of those people are extremely valuable. Having easy access to these markets simply cannot be ignored.

It is important to keep in mind the benefits far outweigh the risks. Having the will to invest time and a strategic plan will allow a company to increase its competitive advantage moving forward.

Perhaps, the most important aspect to keep in mind when using social media for business is it constantly needs to be adjusted.

Social media is an evolving avenue of different opportunities. The tools that are useful today may not necessarily be useful tomorrow. As tools change, a winning social media strategy will be one that is able to capture all these innovations and constantly create the right combinations of tools for your business, joint venture leads, and/or drilling partners in our case.

Please follow my next article when I touch on business relationships and partnerships Stormhold Energy Ltd. has established using social media as well as past engineering (gouging) relationships that need a “kick in the ass”.

Chadd Radke, Stormhold Energy Ltd., President/ CEO/ Director