The Bloggin’ BUZZ

Social Media Marketing – 10 Easy Steps

“How do I keep up?”

“How do I know if it’s effective?”

“How do I do marketing with social media?”

Okay, those are all very different questions and each one can be covered in complete modules and step-by-step programs.

But, I’m going to take a moment to help you with 10 steps that will help you to get a handle on your social media marketing.

Keep in mind, this is by all means NOT a comprehensive list nor a complete strategy; however, it should give you a pretty good head start in keeping tabs on what’s going on with your visibility.

1. Google your name and the name of your business.

This is where you need to start. You’re not going to know if your social media activity is making a difference if you don’t know what’s going on with your name right now. This is an important step that you should be engaging in at least once per week. Why? Because you want to know what is coming to the front page when someone else Googles your name or the name of your business. It’s better for you to know before someone else. Protect your brand!!

2. Add analytics to your website.

If you don’t have analytics on your website, how do you know where your traffic is coming from? Google Analytics is a free service and relatively easy to set up on your website. Understand the statistics and monitor this at least once per week. This will give you a great idea of whether your activities are driving traffic to your website or not.

3. Understand your target market.

Years of experience in teaching and training have taught me that many, many entrepreneurs do not truly understand who their target market is. You need to define it. And I don’t mean in general terms, you need to understand who your target market is down to the types of shoes they buy! Well, maybe not that far. But, honestly, “People With Money” is NOT a target market. Define who it is that you work with the best. Understand your personal brand. You will fail at social media marketing if you don’t understand this aspect of your business.

4. Start with one social media platform.

If social media marketing is new to you, start with one platform (i.e. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, SpeakerSite, BlogTalkRadio, etc.). Make sure that you profile is complete and that you understand the rules of the site that you have chosen. You could try joining a whole bunch of sites in the beginning, but the problem with that is you will get overwhelmed and won’t spend the time that you need to understand the nuances of each site and develop the relationships that are going to make the difference in your business.

5. Put together a plan for your daily activities.

Social media marketing is a waste of time, IF you don’t have a plan in place. Now, I’m saying that based on the number of people that come to me and tell me that it doesn’t work. My first question to them is, “What was your plan?” This question is typically met with a blank stare.

Think about this. Social media marketing is a tool in your total marketing plan. Just as direct mail is a tool, social media is as well. If you’ve ever worked with a marketing company and talked about direct mail, hopefully, you put a plan together (what is the message, what is the target, who do we send them to, how many mailings will we send out, how long will the campaign last, etc.) You do that because there’s a cost involved. It costs money to send out mailings. Social media costs too! It takes time…time is money. So put a plan together!

6. Set a time limit on your daily social media marketing activities.

This goes hand-in-hand with your plan, but it’s important to bring this step out separately. You need to put a time limit on your activities. Why? Because once you understand your social media platform(s) and start building relationships, you can get carried away and not get other business activities done.

7. Build relationships.

Connect with people online and start building relationships. Conversations will begin to happen naturally based on conversations that you have with friends you already know. This happens because with every friend that you add, the comments that you make on your friends’ pages, updates, photos, etc. are also seen by everyone that they are connect to. And if you’re making sensible, personality driven comments, your target market is going to be attracted to you and come to see who you are. There’s also an implied endorsement about who you are based on the connections that you have. Very valuable.

8. Start blogging.

Now this isn’t going to work for everyone, because not everyone likes to write. However, if you can find a way to make it work for you (podcasting or having a video blog are alternatives), I HIGHLY suggest this step. Blogging is a wonderful way to express your expertise, drive traffic from Google to your site and build an audience of fans. How does it drive traffic? Google loves fresh content and every time you post a blog entry, every time a new comment shows up on a blog entry, your blog is scanned by spider bots ensuring that Google has the freshest content available for its search engine. (Here’s more information about Blogging.)

9. Automate updates from your blog to your social media plaform(s).

There are many ways to do this. Many sites have an RSS reader that allows you to set up the RSS once and from that point forward, everytime you post a blog entry, it also updates on that platform. As Twitter does not have that capacity, if you are on Twitter, I recommend using Twitterfeed.com. Based on the parameters you set up, Twitterfeed will take your blog entry, append or adjust the entry and post it on Twitter as a status update. For example, my Twitterfeed takes my blog entry and appends these words “new BUZZ post:” followed by the title of the entry. It then shortens the link to the blog post using my bit.ly account (bit.ly is a url shortener, you can read more about bit.ly here). This is a beautiful tool!

10. Revisit your social media marketing plan.

Just because you put a social media marketing plan in place, doesn’t mean it’s going to be able to stay the plan that you use forever. You will need to monitor your progress, keep an eye on your analytics and make adjustments based on your new activities, increased fan base, increased traffic and the changes in your business based on your the additional knowledge that you gain from being involved with your clients and prospects online!

Hopefully, these 10 steps will give you a great start and help you to build a BUZZ about your business!

Please add any other recommendations that you have in the comment section below!!

Deidre Hughey

If you enjoyed this article, you may enjoy reading these:
What Social Media Will Not Do For You – Video
Hiring a Social Media Strategist
Social Media Profile: Business vs. Personal

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 13th, 2009 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Protect Your Online Rep, Social Media 101 1/2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.