Facebook

You may love or hate Facebook, but there is no denying that it needs to be at least a part of any social media strategy. As of July of 2011, Facebook has over 750 million active users. These users create profiles, connect with friends, "like" various organizations, activity groups and such, and basically talk about everything they love and hate.

By creating a niche that these users can appreciate, you become "liked", and the word of mouth growth can be amazingly fast. By being real, and interacting with your audience, you solidify your facebook place.

Twitter

Twitter is also important to a social marketing strategy. With over 200 million "tweeters", it is considered the SMS of the Social Network world.

To "Tweet", you send a microblog out to those who follow you. You read the tweets of the people you follow. These microblogs can discuss anything from "found a great deal at the mall" to "I am ready to go home and sleep". By mixing personal and more general tweets in with marketing tweets, your followers will stay loyal.

For Twitter to be a plausible part of your strategy, it is important to follow everyone who follows you. This is how your viewership grows. A study found that 90% of Twitter followers dropped off when the follow was not reciprocated. We suggest "FollowBack", which assists in growing your Twitter universe by automatically following everyone who follows you. You can find details here. They give a 30 day trial to test it out, and see if it works for you.

LINKEDIN

If you do any Business-to-Business work, LinkedIn is a great resource for growing your contact list, which can add to sales. With ove 100 million registered users, LinkedIn is a global business social site that allows for posting business information, and for generating referrals.

Website/Web Blog

These two go together for the most part. A clean, easy to navigate website is the first step. Most potential clients look to see if you have a website to show you are an actual company before they become clients. It is the nature of the beast.

But having a good looking site is only the first step. In order for your site to be effective as a social marketing tool, you must drive traffic to your site on a regular basis through blogging. Blogging is a tool that allows you to pass information on th the viewer, about many different topics. Think of it as a diary. You share your thoughts and opinions. As a business, this is where you overview your knowledge, and get current and potential clients interested in using your services, as well as gaining new knowledge. Keep blogs positive (for the most part - a negative blog CAN be used as a point-maker, but should be used sparingly). Focus on one topic at a time. Use tags and categories to help the viewer find and view the blogs they are most interested in.

Above all, try to use your website and web blogs to connect with your customers and potential customers. That will assist in generating a loyal user.

Managing your Social Networks

Managing your social networks can be quite time consuming, especially as your interactions with others in your networks become greater. It is then important to take advantage of tools that can assist in handling the various networks from one tool.

We have teamed up with Postling.com,a service that helps manage all your social networking sites in one location. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and your blog page can be instantly updated with new status or blogs, or you can schedule your posts to come at a later time. Get 25% off the usual monthly sevice by going to Postling.com here.

Another such service is HootSuite.com - HootSuite has a great analytics toolset to track various results. For more information on HootSuite.com go here.

For maintaining and monitoring multiple Twitter and Facebook accounts, SocialOomph.com is a great toolset. You can also try them out for 30 days, to see if it works for you. SocialOomph.com can be reached by going here.

There are other options, depending on the level of social marketing you feel is important. We can also work your networks, and stay on top of your social interactions, so you can do what you do best. For information on how we can assist your social marketing needs, contact us here.