Social media strategy??

[KieranMPH]

Evening everyone,

It now seems in this day and age that we need to look towards a social media strategy and I was wondering how everyone goes about promoting themselves?

I am starting my business in Q4 of this year and it will involve a lot of getting the word out there to build excitement.

I was wondering what sites the UKBF members use to get the word out there and what has worked for you.

The sites I am looking at are the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, am I missing any?

Thanks
Kieran

 

[khalid1]

If you have viral content, i.e. funny images/videos, then the likes of stumbleupon will work.

For comprehensive, informative and often off beat news then Digg will help.

I link my twitter account to my blog so everytime I post it posts a Tweet, that helps.

YouTube is good for uploading lots of videos and placing links/ads to your site.

A good mixture is what you need

 

[silver]

I have just started on Twitter because I thought I would use it as 'gentle' introduction to blogging as I have never blogged before! I am taking it a step at a time because it takes time to work out how to use, whether or not it will work for your business etc. Also, I've spoken to a few people who have signed up and have accounts but have not maintained them..I think this is where the problem comes in because it does take time and it is not enough to have a presence, you do have to be involved.


Alison

 

[QVA - Emma]

Social Media is a great way of interacting with and "meeting" new prospects and industry professionals. I use twitter daily, not only to promote the business but to help other users with questions, promote their blogs and general chit chat.

You can follow me @emmaewers to get an idea. A fellow UKBF member and prolific Twitter user is Nikki Pilkington - she has a great Tweetmentor programme which helps you through Twitter via e-mail tasks/information and assistance, I thoroughly recommend you visit her website for more information on how social media can help your business.

Emma

 

[which]

I fairly new to online marketing,but social networking seems to be trial and error. It depends on your product or service and the similarities between your target market and the people using a particular social site.

 

[sandralewis]

As well as the social media site, you could promote your business on blogs - I take it you have a website then? Good luck with the new venture!

 

[4little1s]

We do a bit of everything, blogging, Digg, Stumble, Tweeting. Its been great for building contacts and some traffic

 

[which]

Hi 4,
If you don't mind my informality, I had a quick look at your site (v/good) You've got articles,but, no live feeds from your social sites. I was told that you should use this resource. ( I haven't,mainly because we are updating all our existing sites). My Q is, do you find social sites good to build buzz or as a page ranker.
Cheers for the reply

 

[4little1s]

Hi which,

Havent managed to get the live feeds to our site yet as not sure how...need to dig around a bit and investigate. Its on the list....how about you ?

 

[Anelly]

It's true, social sites can generate you some nice traffic but you have to spend many hours on them. Don't expect to generate traffic starting with the first week, it might pass months. What is important: don't spam this social sites. Submit many other things, and periodically submit your own information. Because in this way you can create a strong relation with other users and your links will be promoted.

I use Reddit, StumbleUpon (my favorites), Mixx, Delicious and Twitter

 

[tcg]

I see you are talking about a SMO (Social Media Optimisation) strategy vs a social media strategy. Any SMO strategy has to be built around targeted content. It may sound obvious but it is seldom done this way. People look towards tools first, then building profiles and then maintaining those profiles.

Start at the beginning
1. Define your audience
2. Figure out their learning styles
3. Understand where they live online
4. Learn the rules through observing, listening and reading
5. Determine how they are influenced.
6. Build your content strategy around what you have learned.
7. Build relationships. Participate around broader issues
8. Resist spamming, rather add value
9. Enable your content to travel, to grow, to change and to have value added to it.
10. Take what you have learned, reassess, adapt, address issues and carry on.

Here are a few links
Social Bookmarking
Social Network sites
Chris Brogan http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ (Look up his post If I started today)
There are many more resources out there.

Good luck with building your strategy

Alasdair

 

[billhilton]

If you're launching in Q4 it might pay you to get moving now. Unless you're a star, establishing a social media presence takes a bit of time.

For example, in the great wide world I'm relatively unknown (sob), so although I've now got ~560 Twitter followers, it's taken me a year to get to that point. Mind you, they are mostly good-quality followers (including, as they do, the likes of Alasdair, above - he's @ajmunn).

I've resisted the temptation to blanket-follow thousands of people to artificially increase my follower numbers. Neither have I signed up to any dodgy autofollow schemes. Instead, through steady work I've built up a quality list organically, using strategies rather like the ones in Alasdair's list.

Is it paying dividends? Yes. I've had a fair amount of business out of Twitter and made some excellent contacts.

I guess the principles apply to any social network: I'm just using Twitter as an example because it's the one I know best.

 

[jayrbench]

If you have viral content, i.e. funny images/videos, then the likes of stumbleupon will work.

For comprehensive, informative and often off beat news then Digg will help.

I link my twitter account to my blog so everytime I post it posts a Tweet, that helps.

YouTube is good for uploading lots of videos and placing links/ads to your site.

A good mixture is what you need

I am really new to social media and don't know much. How do you link Twitter to your blog. I guess I first should get a Twitter account.
Jay

 

[4little1s]

Get Tweetdeck, there is an option to do it in there

 

[greeneast]

Hi, I use Facebook and Twitter seperately as I don't like going on facebook and seeing lots of short posts from twitter. I prefer the more indepth social side of facebook.

I use google blog (valuable keywork links in well chosen text) which also uploads automatically to my notes in Facebook. I also have a Facebok fan page where I have started discussion boards, update on products etc., but getting fans to join and partake in this is the bit where I lose the plot.

I talk about product updates on my profile and because I sell eco friendly products working from home, I also talk a little about things I do at home and in the garden that are green. I talk a little about business and socialise a little with friends. Not sure I'm getting the balance quite right yet but working on it. What works for everyone else?

Ecademy is good for global efforts and much more business minded connections but not much good for reaching the consumer market.

 

[timelesscasting]

Hello! I use Stumble Upon, Twitter, Hubpages, Spicypage, and etc... In social media strategy, you have to have a great content with much rich words on it and much originality on it.

 

[Epindura]

You guys are really brewing some real cool stuff here. Yes, most of these methods do take time. But the beauty of it all is they can be evergreen, and once some of them are done and done properly, they will continue to make you a steady income for years to come.


In addition, what doesn't take time, unless you have money to throw away using some services you are not absoluely sure how they work and whether they will work for you. If you want to succeed in anything, one way or the other, I have since learnt that you have to learn and practice what you learn, and that just takes time, there is no two ways about it.

Eddington.

P.S. I am going to be coming here more often, hey Dan you are doing a good job here, keep it up.

 

[Michelle Carvill]

Hi there
I've been dabbling with social media platforms for a while now - and am just in the process of pulling a formal social media strategy together for one of my clients. So your question was at front of mind when I read it. So, applying 'traditional' marketing strategy to the social media arena - here's what I'd advise:

1) Take a step back and consider what your objectives are.

• Increase awareness of your products / services for sales generation?
• Raise brand awareness generally?
• Utilise for customer support (as Dell does)?
• Create a community of supporters to fight your cause?

Have a clear understanding of your objective - and then you can apply your activity in a focused way.

From my experience social media activity could consume an awful lot of time - so, whilst this arena is still relatively fertile territory, it's probably best to be focused and clear on what you are looking to achieve. (As any good marketing strategy would commence!).

2) So once you've figured out no 1 you then need to 'do the research'. For example - let's say you've decided the strategy is firmly to increase awareness of your products/services for pure sales generation. You need to consider your audience - (probably the ones you are looking for possibly behave in a similar way to the ones you already have) therefore, you can research what your current customers are doing on the 'social media platform' - do they know what Twitter is?

Twitter search and other Twitter resources such as Twellow.com (and there are many others) enable you to type in 'keywords' relevant to your 'audience' - and you can see the context of those keywords. This is a useful tactic for 'connecting' with the right type of people. Follow them - watch what they are saying and start to engage them with your services.

(I recently wrote a post all about tactical ways of using Twitter from a 'beginner's perspective and so you might want to check this out too.

3) So in 1 and 2 you've decided your objective and you've done the relevant research. You know the types of issues, conversations the 'target audience' are talking about - and now you are going to start engaging with them.

For this you need to consider all the what, when, how, who and where elements.

What's your message?

When are you going to do this - allocate specific days in a week, hours in a day (remember it can be all consuming if trying to do too much so I would suggest starting off with a couple of activities and seeing how you go).

Who is going to do it? If you decide to run a blog to engage with your audience - are you a great writer, can you connect with them with your writing? If not you, then who will you get to do it? Consider that you may need to train them, communicate with them how certain social media platforms operate etc.

How - which social media platforms are you going to utilise? Blogging and commenting on others' relevant blog posts, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, Forum participation, FlickR etc etc. Like I say, if you try to do too many things you're likely to 'burn out' - so select the most relevant for your needs - and choose just a couple to start out with.

4 Integrate - integrate your social media marketing strategy with your main marketing strategy. My advice is that all marketing strategies should now consider 'social media' as part of the mix. (I've blogged about this too)

5 Measure - as with all marketing activity - you ideally need to be able to measure how things are going. Your 'measurables' will be dependent upon what you decide to do. More traffic to your site? More traction/subscribers to your blog? Less support calls? So determine relevant measurables and keep your eye on the ball.

Hope this helps...

 

[L Patmore]

I have used stumbleupon in the past, and for promoting 1 site it's a bit poor as it only allows you to promote a single site 12 times.

Your product will dictate what will work and what wont. For a few ideas take a look at freelanceadvisor .co.uk

 

I am pretty much agains social twitting sites for most business's for the following reasons.

1 The amount of time spent would be much better used on promoting your owns site in the search engines.

2 The traffic from social sites is in the main non targeted traffic.

There is no better traffic than that which comes from a search engine where a person has entered:

" cheap your product"

I will qualify this by saying that maybe for certain areas twittering may be useful, but for main stream e-commerce the return is pretty poor.

There is also the point that you are relying on a third party to promote your site.

Earl

 

[tcg]

I am pretty much agains social twitting sites for most business's for the following reasons.

1 The amount of time spent would be much better used on promoting your owns site in the search engines.

2 The traffic from social sites is in the main non targeted traffic.

There is no better traffic than that which comes from a search engine where a person has entered:

" cheap your product"

I will qualify this by saying that maybe for certain areas twittering may be useful, but for main stream e-commerce the return is pretty poor.

There is also the point that you are relying on a third party to promote your site.

Earl

Hmm. What if I don't want people to think of my product as cheap?

As Michelle says, Social Media should be part of your integrated marketing plan. PPC and SEO can be seen as an element of the marketing plan too.

There is a tendency too look for the latest network or to follow the crowd, when relevance is key. If social media is not relevant for you or your product then it is ok not to use it. Just as advertising in the Yellow pages may not be relevant for some companies.

We do need to look at Social media in terms of context, then content.

Context takes care of all the steps you need to take to build your strategy (read above) and content involves building a strategy around your content development so it can travel, have value added, grow and evolve.