Thanks Copyblogger for shooting some great advice our way about the elements that can really make a difference in social media marketing.
1. Get your home base together- You are in total control of the user experience. Take a leading role in the design process, the content layout. Show that you are truly knowledgeable about your message. Essentially, prove your digital worth.
2. You need a human face- Adopt a persona. This doesn’t mean oversharing by any means. Unless your business is pertinent, your audience should not know what you feed your dog. Be social and informal, but remain appropriate, interesting and relevant, and above all– genuine.
3. Who else has your customers?- Build relationships that will help your business. Look for bloggers and online personas who have healthy-sized audiences. Ensure that they’re a good match for your business or product. These guys are the best way to share and promote. How do you cultivate these relationships? Kindergarden stuff here- be a nice person. Be basic, link to their content, and comment intelligently.
4. Pick a primary platform- You may personally be attached to a particular social media platform, but that doesn’t mean its the primary medium for your business. If your customers tend to come from Facebook, spend ten hours on Twitter on your own time.
5. Manage your time- Ironically, this works in your favor. Copyblogger makes the excellent point that if you don’t budget your time, you’ll end up spending all of your time. Recall your home base, that’s where most of your time needs to be spent. Kitchen timers can make a comeback and be especially helpful with budgeting your social media time. Just make sure that you really listen when it goes off.
6. Content first, conversation second- social media and marketing do both focus around conversations. However, when you’re spending so much of your budgeted time creating relationships and only hoping they’ll lead to transactions, you’ve lost your way. Words of wisdom- if it feels unproductive, it most likely is. Put content first, conversation will flourish and become much more meaningful.
7. Never forget your SEO- It’s not a replacement, it’s a complement to social media. Search engines want to unearth the content that is valued, which is why they use social media sharing.
Simple and accurate. Thanks, Jenna!
What a great tool, thanks Jenna! I recently found some info specifically about the importance of location based services in social media http://www.goldlasso.com/learning-center/the-from-line-blog/entry/trend-location-based-services-we-want-it-here-and-we-want-it-now that I think could tie in nicely.