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19 February 2010
Posted in
Social Media
The guide has eight parts, which consist of:
Part 1 – Learn To Listen.
For a company of any size to successfully participate in social media, it’s absolutely essential to take time to listen to the conversation online. We like to use the “dinner party” analogy. You wouldn’t walk into the middle of a dinner party and start shouting about topics that only you want to discuss. You would introduce yourself, listen to people and then join the conversations. The same holds true online and in social media.
Part 2 – Join The Conversation.
When small businesses take time to listen to the online conversation happening in blogs, forums and social networks, they often discover that a lot of people are already talking about topics related to their business. The next logical step is to join that conversation.
Part 3 – Start A Blog.
Once companies have taken the time to listen to the online conversation and build relationships with digital influencers, they often find that starting their own blog is the most effective way to participate in that conversation and engage key audiences.
Part 4 – Tap into Twitter.
Twitter is a social networking and micro blogging service that allows users to send and read short, text-based posts. Each “tweet” is limited to 140 characters and typically answers the question, “What are you doing?” You can choose to “follow” the tweets of other people and allow them to follow you.
Part 5 – Crowd source Your Next Big Idea.
Over the past few years, you may have heard about a concept called “crowd sourcing.” It’s the process of enabling your customers to play an active role in creating a new product or service, or in some cases, solving a business challenge for your company. Let’s face it – our customers know what they want and need better than anyone, so it makes perfect sense to involve them in business-related decisions when they’re eager and able to contribute their ideas.
Part 6 – Harness the Power of Facebook.
Facebook is the fastest growing social network in the world with more than 400 million active members. Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Anyone can sign up for Facebook and interact with the people they know in a trusted environment.
Part 7 – Share Photos and Videos Online.
Photos and videos can engage customers and convey more about a company and its people, products and services than text alone. According to comScore, Americans viewed 31 billion videos online in November 2009, representing an increase of 160 percent from 2008, with around 12 billion viewings a month. Those numbers aren’t unique to the United States – online video views are soaring globally, especially among the next generation of consumers.
Part 8 – Measure Your Success.
In previous sections, we have shared several ideas for using social media to achieve business results. Some of these ideas are low-cost, while others require a more substantial investment of time and money. In any case, it’s important to understand how a social media program is performing against specific business objectives in order to maximize the impact and justify further investment.
The beauty of social media is that it is highly measurable. In this section, we will share tools, techniques and best practices for tracking online performance.
