Sara G N Kerr 's List: Introduction to Social Media

• Creating stellar content for your marketing is great. But great content doesn’t (quite) distribute itself. It needs vehicles for people to pass it along,

• Social media has grown so explosively because connection is probably the deepest drive we have. The campfire gives us a place to share information about the day’s hunt, a forum to air out the tribe’s differences, even a place for us to consider new and better ways to build campfires.

   

  No, it’s not a utopian picture. Our campfires are places for bickering and malice as much as for inspiration and community. But without a connecting place, without a central spot to bring us together for conversation, there is no tribe.

   

  Our gathering places are never perfect. They’re human. Which is what makes them so extraordinary

• Here’s the part where you either roll your eyes and leave in disgust or read on and potentially change your game. Make your decision.

   

  Schwartz describes sitting at his writing desk five days a week. It was a cluttered disaster, but he had a ritual and he never wrote anywhere else.

   

  He’d have his coffee on the left, with a little cream mixed in, and a few pens on his right, displayed just so.

   

  He’d turn to his machine and the ad he was working on (admittedly, he didn’t have to worry about Twitter back then).

   

  Then he’d set the small timer for 33.33 minutes.

   

  Once that timer was set, there were only a few simple rules:

   
   
  1. He could drink coffee
   
  2. He could stare out the window, or at the wall
   
  3. He could sit and do absolutely nothing for 33.33 minutes
   
  4. He could write the ad
   
  5. He could not leave the chair for any reason
   
  6. He could not do anything else
   
   

  That’s it. He just sat in front of his open page with research notes and a skeleton outline on it.

   

  He’d usually sit in that chair for a few minutes until he got bored, and then he’d slowly start typing.

   

  When the timer went off, he’d stop — even if mid-sentence — and go do anything he wanted for 10 or 15 minutes. Then he’d go back and do it again.

• Are you curious what successful companies are actually doing to gain social media success?

   

  You’ve come to the right place. This article highlights nine companies (big and small) that have transformed their online presence by implementing innovative social media marketing.
• Look at the tactics these companies employ and don’t concentrate too much on the target audience. It doesn’t matter whom you’re targeting—these tactics will work for just about any business… so let’s dive in!

• No-one has benefited more than small businesses.
• Almost all marketers find that social media helps them stand out in an increasingly noisy marketplace
• Small business owners were more likely than all other groups (89.2% reporting benefits) to see increased exposure.
• • The self-employed and small business owners were more likely to report new partnerships, with at least 59% noting a benefit.
   
  • Small businesses were twice as likely to find qualified leads than other types of businesses.
   
  • Forty-eight percent of self-employed and small business owners saw improved sales as a direct result of their social media efforts.
   
  • The self-employed (59%) and small business owners (58%) were more likely than others to see reductions in marketing costs when using social media marketing.

• What’s in Your Toolkit?

   

  It’s easy for marketers to become enamored by the newest tools, but the industry study showed that almost all marketers have four tools in their toolkit: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogs.

• Integrating Social Media With Traditional Marketing Strategies

   

  In a survey that highlights the increasing reach of social media marketing, it’s surprising to see trends that emphasize a growing use of more traditional (online and offline) marketing approaches. For example, at least 64% of all marketers plan to increase their use of search engine optimization and email marketing in 2011.
• Email Marketing
• Event Marketing
• Press Releases

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• 1. Register brand names and create online identity:
• The social media platforms we will use to create awareness, identity and community should have the same vanity urls, handle-names, logos, and overall look-smell-and-feel as the rest of our digital assets. Our messaging needs to be clear and concise. It all starts with our digital properties and corresponding hyperlinks.
• second chance to make a first impression. In a digital world, your web site is the introduction to your organization.
• Adding value to your community is important, it helps you stand out from the crowd and identifies your motives as pure and not self-serving. It takes time just like anything else to be accepted into an existing community.
• 5. Create good quality content:
• Quality content comes in many different shapes and forms across multiple platforms. You could establish your persona with a blog.
• 6. Guest posting:
• Guest posting affords you an opportunity on higher, more relevant industry related platforms then your own to get your voice heard
• Your time will be better managed and more efficient using a social media tool kit that makes sense for you.
• 8. Don’t over extend yourself:
• It’s true, invest your time and passion where the fish are first.
• 9. Track everything:
• Track everything as much as possible when possible. Analytics is key for measuring and tracking the performance of website traffic. Was a particular campaign a success? Did we see spikes in traffic? How are customers finding us? Generating online PR consists of generating inbound links, links you need to be monitoring and tracking for. Google Analytics will give you reporting on all of this information
• Tracking links off-site is easily done with url shortening services such as bit.ly, or HootSuite. Both of these services do offer Twitter analytics and management.
• 10. Don’t be fooled, it’s about quality not quantity.

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• 1. More People Are Active on Social Networks Than Are Not
• 2. Twitter is a Tiny Sliver
• impact is not driven by the size of its user base, but by its real-time nature
• 3. Twitter is Incredibly Diverse
   Just 55% of Twitter uses are White, followed by 22% African-American, 15% Hispanic, and 3% Asian. This is of course substantially more diverse than the population overall, and markedly more diverse than Facebook.
• The Emergence of the Super Socials
• 5. Super Socials Love Twitter
• 6. Super Socials use and Worship their Smartphones
• Among habitual social networkers, 43% follow companies on social networks, compared to just 25% of all social network users.
• Brand Interactions Occur Predominately on Facebook
• Facebook is Where Consumers are Influenced about Buying Decisions

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• Getting started with social media, whether for personal or professional use, requires learning the basic fundamentals. Social media is more than just creating a blog or Twitter account. The tools are great and give us big advantages, but they are simply extensions of how we engage and participate in social media, they are not the answers. The social in social media is all about the human element. This post touches upon 40 key elements to aid your success.
• 1) Register your domain name
• 2) If you are an individual and your goal is personal branding, use your first and last name for the domain, and preferably a dot com extension as well.
• 3) Find a reliable Web host, and do your homework. When you are just starting out, it’s practical and economical to go with the cheap shared hosting plan, i.e. Go Daddy.
• 5) Familiarize yourself with the basics of web-mastering.
• Blogging:
• our first obvious choice should be Wordpress . The majority of blogs on the Internet are all powered by Wordpress, and for good reason. It's a stable, proven platform and it's highly customizable.
• Most hosting companies who offer even the cheapest hosting packages offerWordpress installs for FREE. Take advantage of it. You need to be in full control of your blog, starting with owning it on your own server.
• You need to be thinking SEO at all times, and this is the first step you should take with your blog. Your permalink structure should look something like this, www.myblogontechnology/this-should-be-your-permalink-structure.
• 11) Tell people what your blog is about, and most importantly what you’re about. Create an about page. When I find a blog I like, and want to know more about the author, the first thing I will look for is an about page.
• 12) Show your human side by using visuals. Add a real picture of yourself on your blog and on all of your social networking profiles.
• As with real life, image is everything
• 13) Blog only when you have something to say that is of importance, and that is useful, resourceful, and relevant to other
• but the number one thing it does is establish authority.
• Blog about your expertise, your passions, what you and only you do bes
• 16) Find the top 25 blogs in your space, and subscribe to their RSS feeds in Google Reader.
• 17) Quality content speaks for itself, and is recognized. Your content defines you and the message you are trying to convey
• 18) The content that you create should be something that people want to share
• 19) Leave thoughtful and constructive comments on other blogs.
• 20) Never fly blind. You must know where your traffic is coming from. Install analytic software, such as Google Analytics.
• set up Google Alerts to track mentions of your blog
• 22) Promote others, even more than you promote yourself. Retweet good content, Stumble it, Digg it, share it and so forth. The "others" first and foremost should be your network's content.
• Look for quality link exchanges from blogs that focus on your subject matter.
• It's also a nice way of showing support and appreciation for a blogger as well.
• 24) Interaction with your readers is crucial for long term success. Encouraging commenting is very important if you are seeking sustained long term repeat traffic. Ask questions in your post. Ask the readers for additional tips or thoughts on the story subject.
• 25) There are two types of bloggers. One way bloggers and two-way bloggers. You need to strive, and pride yourself on becoming a two-way blogger.
• Twitter:
• 27) Establish a Twitter account and learn how to make it beneficial not only for you, but for others
• 28) Do not use Twitter for spamming. This is a perfect example of how NOT to use Twitter.
• 30) There is nothing wrong with announcing a new Blog post on Twitter. Do it in a tasteful and respectful manner. If this is all you are going to be using Twitter for, you won't see much results. Contribute to Twitter first before you use it solely for self promotion. A good way of adding value and contributing is re-tweeting your followers tweets.
• You need to be where it counts. Establish and build power passports, profiles.
• 33) Consistency needs to be practiced and applied to every area of your involvement in social media. All of your online profiles should share the same information. Make sure to use the same user names.
• 33) Be consistent with blog posts. Try to establish and maintain a schedule for posts and stick with it. Be consistent with tagging your images, bookmarks and blog postings. Be consistent with commenting on other blogs, as well as with comments left on your own blog.
• 34) Stay consistent with the latest trends and technologies.
• 35) Experiment with new mediums

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• Do keyword research.
   Consider words being used by your customers, at conferences, etc. Take a look at your old site’s analytics to determine which keywords have been bringing traffic from the search engines, especially traffic that converts into real business. Also consider third party tools like Google’s Search-based keyword tool, Seo Book’s Keyword Suggestion Tool. And don’t forget Google Trends.
   How long should your keyword list be? That depends on your business model. But in most circumstances, a list of 20-30 is a great start.
• Testing. Try to break it before the site is launched. 
   Get a large group of people you trust to poke around, find broken links, etc. Use various browsers, operating systems, look at it on a smart phone.
• Take the time to create a Content Development / Maintenance plan.
   Use a calendar and map out when you’ll be adding new content. How often will the ‘latest events’ section be updated? Who will update it? When will you review the product descriptions? Or case studies?
• Keep a journal of this whole process

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• Facebook Gets Roasted By Google, Twitter & Foursquare [VIDEO]