One of the great things about the work I do is that I have a bird's eye view
of what's working and what's not when it comes to social media. Every so
often I like to give sort of a "state of the union" on Facebook and Twitter
best practices, because as I am sure you know, social media is constantly
growing, changing and evolving.
As you'll see, some of the strategies I am recommending are tried and true -
they have been working since day one and will probably continue to for the
foreseeable future.
However, there may be a few here that you've never considered - or may even
be surprised by. But they are what I see as being the biggest keys to
success and results for business owners on the two hottest social networks
on the planet: Facebook and Twitter.
1. Find Your Peeps
What this means is that you want to become part of the community you are
looking to serve. The first step of course is to be clear on whom it is you
want to serve and what problem you are solving for them. Once you know that,
the goal is to go where they are hanging out.
There are specific tools you can use to easily find and interact with your
target market. Two of my favorites for Twitter are wefollow.com and
search.twitter.com.
2. Concentrate on Conversing and Building Relationships, instead of
Broadcasting and Selling
One of the most common yet biggest mistakes that people make when they are
first introduced to social media is to focus on pushing their product or
service in a spammy way. That approach fails miserably in social media
because most people are there to build relationships and interact.
There's nothing wrong with letting others know what's going on with you or
your business sometimes - just be sure to intersperse your tweets or
Facebook updates with some two-way conversation.
3. Use a Facebook Personal Profile AND a Facebook Business Page Together
This might be a little "controversial" - and don't get me wrong, your
business SHOULD have a Page - but when you have a personal profile, you are
able to interact with other people much more easily.
As a business Page, a Page can't go comment on another person's Wall or
profile or in their Group or on THEIR Page AS that Page. You are really
contained inside the space of your own Page. This might be something to
consider because a lot of the magic of Facebook and the
relationship-building and rapport-building comes from that ability to
interact.
4. Cross-Post and Cross Promote
Once you've decided to make social media a part of your marketing strategy,
you don't want to keep it to yourself.
There are lots of ways to spread the word. For example, you'll want to
advertise your social presence on your blog, add links to your email
signature and use one social media platform to post to another.
5. Use a Social Media Dashboard like HootSuite and Other Productivity Tools
to Accomplish More in Less Time
HootSuite.com is my hands-down favorite, free social media tool, and the
reason why is because it does so many different things. For example, you can
use it to update many social networks at once, including Twitter, Facebook
and LinkedIn; you can use it to pre-schedule tweets, status updates and
more.
6. Get Them on the List
In most cases, people aren't going to buy from you right off from sites like
Facebook and Twitter. You need to shift your thinking from "how can I get
this person to buy from me or hire me now?" to "how can I bring this person
into my community and strengthen the relationship with them on an ongoing
basis?"
One of the best ways to do this is to offer people a way to provide their
email address via your blog or website so that you have permission to keep
in touch and build an ongoing relationship with them.
7. Measure and Track Your Social Media Results
Measuring the ROI of social media isn't exactly cut and dry. I am often
asked how you can tell whether the time you've spent on social media
activities is really making a difference.
Some of the best metrics? Blog comments, blog subscribers, newsletter
subscribers, social media profile engagement, number of friends and
followers and website traffic to name a few.
No matter who your target market is, you can be sure that at least some
segment of them is using social media. The important thing is to understand
that social media is a great way to get in front of that target audience.
And remember, you may not be able to equate your interactions to dollars
now, but what you are doing is planting seeds which can have big payoffs
later on.
Most of the strategies I've mentioned here aren't really "strategies" unless
you keep applying them over time - so stick with it to reap those results
you've been searching for.
my motto is "Keep it simple" and "don't leave anything for tomorrow that can
be done today."
If you have any questions or comments please contact me.
Regards Gerald
Website: http://www.webcraft.ws
E-mail: gerald@webcraft.ws
Twitter: WebcraftGuru
Facebook: Webcraft Guru
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