Playing Your Tune in the Social Media Space
June 22, 2010
How do you play your own tune in the social media space?
Here it is in a nutshell!
1. Have a blog
Establish your blog as the basis of information. You have no control over the rules of the game of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. But you do have full control over your site. Enrich your site with content using keywords in context. Upload your videos to YouTube and your own site. If you decide to blog once per month or once per week, stick with it.
2. Get on Twitter
78% or marketers are using twitter because it’s a great tool for branding, it’s short, sweet and to the point! Use tools such as TweetDeck, HootSuite and Twitterfeed to manage your twitteratti, increase your following and automate your blog post announcements. Did you know that there are approximately 50,000,000 (yes, that’s million) messages sent per day on Twitter?
3. Get on Facebook
Have your personal Facebook account and your Facebook Fan page. Your Fan page is for your business. Did you know that there are over 1.5 million businesses that have a fan page? Did you know that there are more than 5.3 billion fans that have been created on these business fan pages?
4. Get on LinkedIn
This is your online resumé! Take the time to complete it 100%, join groups, make and get recommendations, and use the LinkedIn Answers tools to run your own surveys! Think that your customers are not going to look at your LinkedIn profile? Guess again!
5. Get Educated
Take advantage of attending free social media seminars, get online, read articles on SM, a great resource is www.Mashable.com. In other works, stay up to date because the environment is moving quickly! And you don’t want to be left behind.
Remember, social media marketing is about an integrated approach between all these different tools with one thing in mind: to reach your target audience, listen to what they have to say and engage in the conversation. Use these different tools to leverage your marketing efforts.
Social Media Seminar at Mimi’s Restaurant
June 22, 2010
I spoke at Fort Worth Star Telegram’s social media seminar for realtors, builders and developers today held at Mimi’s Restaurant on Bryant Irving in Fort Worth. Great people. Great service!
Social media is an excellent medium for small businesses and professionals to get the word out about their products/services and most importantly, connect with people. Your presence in the social media networking tools helps enhance your image and branding of your business.
Now more than ever it is much easier to play the game of online marketing because of so many great tools that are readily available, are free, and are very easy to manage.
Want to get on board? Now is the time!
I’m offering two 3-session webinars for the summer. Sign up today!
Social Media Networking Craze: How it all works and how to make it work for your business
April 5, 2010
Facebook, Friends, Fans, Pages, Twitter, Tweets, Followers, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Blogging, CMS ― do you feel overwhelmed by the social media networking craze? You are not alone! But think about this: where would Microsoft be had it failed to update its Windows operating system? Even today, Microsoft refuses to stay behind because it too uses Facebook and Twitter. Even Facebook has its Twitter account. Social networking is pretty much extending your menu options to not just tacos, but tacos (Taco Bell) and pizza (Pizza Hut)!
Small businesses should take advantage of the most popular and successful social media networking technologies for three reasons:
- they are free
- they provide tremendous value in building your brand and enhancing your online presence
- and most importantly, it is where your current and future customers are hanging out!
How Does It All Work?
Think of a social media networking strategy as building a high-performance home. If you’re a green builder, you know that building a high-efficiency home goes beyond putting certain products together, even if they are ENERGY STAR or some kind of green-labeled product. Green home building requires an integrated approach. It entails a different way of thinking. A beautiful green-built home begins with a great design, one that takes into consideration many aspects including the site selection, home orientation, eco-friendly materials and green building strategies.
It’s All About Strategy and Avoiding Mistakes
Just like building a green home, social media networking requires a plan―a strategy with a purpose―in order to maximize your profits and productivity as a business owner.
Social media networking and bookmarking is beyond blogging, sharing and having online discussions with your friends and co-workers about what you had for lunch, or how tired you’re feeling on a Monday morning after a crazy weekend.
Your social media networking strategy deserves an integrated approach. It requires a strategy. You want to manage your online presence because this is where your customers and business associates are and will be reading about you. And when they do, would you have any regrets as to what you’ve shared with the world?
Use social media networking to extend your business relationships with your customers and business associates. Avoid posting messages and photos that would you would not share with Grannie, your customers or your new boss! Your business image can easily be damaged by making these mistakes.
Your strategy should involve posting “online billboards” in various social media networking platforms to attract future customers to your website, thus increasing online traffic, with the goal of turning leads into loyal customers. Successful businesses are using social media to stay connected with their current customer base and to attract new clients in a transparent, friendly, informative, and non-threatening manner.
Your Blog Is Key
One of the main things you need in order to sing your tune and get with the social media dance, is to have a blog for your business. Your blog serves as the source of information where you regularly share your knowledge and expertise, and that of your organization’s. In addition, your blog serves as a way to engage with your customers in conversation. It should have a mechanism for visitors to leave comments and submit questions. In short, your blog begins the discussion.
Blogging Tips
Three things to keep in mind about blogging:
- keep your articles customer-friendly, yet professional
- respond in a timely manner to questions or comments, and
- end your articles with a call to action
Larger organizations have departments dedicated to managing their online presence. Although you may not have the ability to hire someone solely to do your online social media management, consider cross-training and selecting a couple of key individuals in your organization that are internet-savvy and can help you in this area.
How Do You Get Started?
First, familiarize yourself with the social media lingo. Attend social media classes, spend time learning about these (free!) tools and technologies, and study how other colleagues and businesses in your industry are using them.
Second, begin mapping a social media marketing strategy to enhance your online presence, i.e., decide which platforms make sense for you to use for your business and learn more about them.
Third, create a schedule to manage your online brand. You can easily manage your strategy in approximately 7 hours per month. This is not bad to manage your online branding using platforms that cost you nada!
Questions or comments? Your feedback is welcome.
How to Manage Your Social Media Strategy
March 4, 2010
Once you have selected the tools and technologies to increase your online presence, how do you manage your strategy? You may find it difficult to squeeze one more item on your already hectic schedule. Here are some tips for you manage your online presence.
Giants Unite
First, let me mention something about partnerships. You probably have seen the menu items expanded when visiting your local Taco Bell because for several years now they are offering Tacos and Pizza. Their relationship with Pizza Hut was a good move for them and the customers.
The social media networking giants of Facebook and Twitter have done something similar. By networking, both giants maintain their popularity among their already enthusiasts. LinkedIn and WordPress are also working together. This has given more power to you and I, while making it easier for every social media enthusiast to post updates on multiple platforms. It won’t be too long, I believe, when there will be a single platform where you can upload your post and automatically populate your updates to multiple platforms.
Take Advantage of Partnerships
So how should you manage your strategy? Take advantage of the relationship between Facebook and Twitter. Setup your Facebook Fan Page to tweet your Facebook posts in Twitter automatically. Also, take advantage of the relationship between LinkedIn and WordPress. If you have a WordPress blog, you can set up your LinkedIn account to automatically display your latest blog posts. By the way, YouTube also allows you to connect to your Blog. Pretty cool, isn’t it?
Schedule It
Finally, and most importantly, review your monthly calendar and your schedule editorial dates. Do you need to blog every day or every week? Not necessarily. What you want is to maintain fresh information on your website at least once per month, and this is also very good for you to gain a more favorable position with the search engines. However, writing a couple of blog posts about your new home projects, new developments, or even press releases, you can easily plan to write two blog posts per month. This could take you approximately 2-4 hours per month, depending on the amount of research your articles require. If you can schedule 1 hour per week to keep your social media accounts updated, this will look good on you and it will not be overwhelming.
Manage Your Time
How many hours do you actually need to manage your social media networking accounts? Suppose you decide to post two blogs per month, budget about 1.5 hours per blog, that would be a total of 3 hours. And suppose you decide to update your accounts once per week, for which you budget 1 hour per week (this would be your Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).
Your total hours could per month could be about 7 hours. This is not bad to manage your online branding using platforms that cost you nada, only time! Larger organizations spend thousands of dollars on a monthly basis to do this. You can do it for $0 if you budget your time right.
Whatever amount of hours you budget, stick to those hours and schedule them just as you schedule your doctor’s and customers’ appointments. It simply takes discipline. But recall, it’s $nada$!
Manage Your Brand
One last thing: both the search engines and customers want to see fresh information. Neither one of them likes stale news. This is your opportunity to be a creative resource for your current and future customers.
What’s your strategy?
Learning the Social Media Lingo
February 15, 2010
The social media networking and bookmarking universe has a world of its own when it comes to terminology. Facebook, Friends, Fans, Pages, Twitter, Tweets, Followers, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, Blogging, CMS―and many other acronyms and lingo can be overwhelming and difficult to understand.
We have put together a Social Media Dictionary for you to familiarize yourself and master the language of social media networking.
Did we miss defining any other wacky terms? Let us know!