I’m in the process of reading the “Digital Handshake” by David Meerman Scott and he mentions that every once in awhile it’s a good idea to provide your readers with a list, so I figured where better to start then with a list of social media pointers to help you build an effective strategy.
– Determination / Motivation
In order to really unlock the potential of a social media strategy, you need to look at it as a long-term strategy that is going to integrate with your traditional marketing approach. You are going to continuously need to add value and produce content, tweaking it as you go along to find out what works best for your situation.
– Drive
Why are you doing this? What are you hoping to get out of your social marketing strategy and how can you make this happen? There needs to be a force behind the strategy to ensure you stay course and meet the goals you set out for!
– Community
Your peeps!! Who are they? What do they want? Why should they listen to you and what do you have to offer to them? It’s getting harder and harder to get your message heard because people ignore the noise. Mass marketing is slowly dying and you need to figure out how to “Make Friends and Influence People”.
– Content
We all have a story to tell and the sooner you start writing, the better!! This will be directed by what is driving your strategy, though the key is to start writing and find your niche!! And don’t be afraid to show your personality, which leads to the next item….
– Individuality
This may vary depending on whether you’re writing for an organization or yourself, though you need to ensure that you inject some type of personality into the work because people no longer want what the “Mad Men” produced, they want something real!!
– Tools
While Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Youtube and Blogs are useful social tools, there are also many other new sites that continue to pop up that we have to be aware of like Pinterest, Instagram, Gentlemint, just to name a few. And we can not forget sites like Yelp, Google Places, Yellow Pages Local, Bing Places, City Search, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle, Thumbtack, Patch, InsiderPages, Twellow, LinkedIn, & Judysbook.
– Method
This is going to depend on your goals, though setting up some guidelines on which tools will best work for you and creating a schedule will help simplify your world and keep you on top of things. It’s also important to experiment with the various tools and keep your eyes out for new ones!!!
– Measurement
The beauty of social marketing is that it provides you with a host of tools to help you track & measure your results, though it’s important that you do some research and first gain a bit of understanding about the different measurements to help you determine what measurements will work best for you! The data can be extremely valuable, though don’t get lost in it and make sure you know why you’re doing what you’re doing!!!
I’ll take a look at these in more detail in future posts…
Giddyup
