Social Media Marketing-DIY

Companies with their fingers on the pulse of commerce have already figured out how to do social media to enhance their brand and create a greater presence on the Internet. Are you ready to get involved?

“Facebook in particular, and social media in general, gives us an opportunity to romance the consumer and not hard sell them. People aren’t on Facebook to be sold things; they're on your fan page because they love the brand. We want to meld these two ideas: We want social media to be a revenue driver and we want it to be profitable, but we also want it to be this bastion of our brand—how it can reflect the brand”

 --- Charlie Cole
V.P of Online Marketing
Lucky Brand Jeans – Quoted in Thumbonomics

We recommend a strategic, step by step process so that your social media efforts are focused, trackable, automated, and last but hardly least; bring you real Return on Investment. Although social media is free to use, your time is money.

Before You Get Started in Social Media:

Figure out who you're going to be—what corporate identity or personality do you want to express? Some questions to ask yourself and your staff:

• How do we express an authentic and engaging personality that reflects who we are?
• Why would people want to be our followers/friends/fans?
• What is it people really want to know and learn about us and from us when they engage with us through social media?

The “Big Five” Social Media Portals

Although there are now dozens of popular social media sites, we recommend that businesses create a presence on these five main portals:

1. Facebook—Not just for teenagers and college kids, Facebook is currently the number one social media site, with over 500 million users. With this huge user base Facebook will definitely be your biggest plug in to consumers. 
2. Twitter—The fastest growing social media site, frequently in the news. Twitter is what’s known as a “micro-blog.” Communications via Twitter are very short, small snippets of information; only 140 characters at a time. It’s wildly popular with those same people who love to text.
3. LinkedIn--The B2B portal, primarily for business executives and business networking. Your blog and even your Tweets can be ported right onto your LinkedIn profile.
4. YouTube—Videos are something that people really like. Many people are visually based, that’s how they learn, so a video about your product or service makes the most lasting impression.
5. Blogging—This modality appeals to people who love reading, love new content and RSS feeds. Your blog should be incorporated into your website; it should not be a stand-alone blog.

To get going with Social Media, first be clear about your objectives:

• Are you most interested in enhancing your findability and ranking higher in a Google search?
• Do you want your social media program to help brand your company?
• Do you need reputation management, or improved customer service?

Other important considerations:

• Do you have the time or manpower to continue once you have started?
• Who in your company will be responsible for maintaining the social media program? (Nothing will annoy your fan base more than engaging them, and then abruptly ceasing conversation.)

Once you are clear about your corporate personality and your corporate objectives, it’s time to set up a professional profile on each of these four sites, and get your blog going. Remember, you are representing your business; these are not personal pages.

Tips For How to Do Social Media Effectively:

• Use professional headshots
• Use a professional persona* in your profiles
• Use your top ranking keywords judiciously in all your posts, and most importantly—their titles
• Respond immediately to customer questions, concerns, or any negative posts such as complaints.
• Don’t use social media to hard-sell. Its magic is that it creates two way conversation, connection and engagement. It is an old but true saying that people do business with those they trust.
• Automate your Tweets or posts using a tool that can also track vital information to show you your efforts are bearing fruit.
• Update your sites frequently, and keep engaging and posting on a regular basis.
• Offer information of real value.

*Take a look at this video to see the difference between “person” versus “persona” in your social media profiles.

Do you have a company policy in place for social networking? Download a Social Media Corporate Policy template.

Social media automation and analytic tools we recommend to our clients:

Hootsuite is an easy to use dashboard that allows you to manage multiple social networks in one place as well as launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow your their audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels.

Here at the Findability Group, we write all of our tweets and wall posts a month in advance. This gives us a coherent program designed for specific goals, as opposed to randomly making them up as we go along. Then we go into HootSuite and schedule them…presto: a months worth of social media done in one meeting.

Social Oomph is another fantastic free tool with a feature that allows you to automatically follow people who follow you. SocialOomph also lets you schedule posts and tweets.

Tweet Deck is similar to HootSuite, but they each have a totally different look and feel. Tweet, sharing photos, videos or links directly from TweetDeck.

Ping.fm is about content syndication. It manages Flickr, the photo sharing site, as well as Delicious, NIG, GoogleBuzz, and 30 other tools. Once Ping.fm is set up it is completely automated.

Twitter Feed is an RSS content updater. RSS stands for “really simple syndication”. People subscribe to blogs and news feeds via RSS. TwitterFeed sends your blog posts automatically to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

Tube Mogul is all about syndicating any video you upload to TubeMogul multiple platforms that house video information, like Blip TV, YouTube, Edge Cast, and the other big video distribution websites. TubeMogul tells you how many times your video has been viewed, and gives you some meaty analytics and feedback about your video efforts.

For the full low-down on how to do social media, including a step-by-step program for each of the five main sites, and how they all work together, order Thumbonomics: The Executive Guide to Social Media and Mobile Marketing for Findability and Profit, by Heather Lutze. It will answer all your burning social media questions, such as:

• How can I convince my CEO that social media is the way to go…?
• I’m no videographer, and my budget is tight. How do I get usable YouTube videos…?
• I don’t trust my staff on social media—doesn’t using it make my company too vulnerable…?
• Help—I don’t know what to Tweet or blog about…?

For more information about how to do social media, please CONTACT US. We offer convenient one hour trainings in how to use the top five social media portals for business marketing.