Having a social media strategy in place is more important today than ever before because most businesses have a presence on social networking sites.
More than 550 million members worldwide have a Facebook page and Twitter usage is estimated around 720 tweets per second in June 2010. And these are just two social networking sites. Growth is enormous on most of the other sites as well. Therefore, you just can’t ignore these numbers anymore.
It is time to get focused on your social media strategy for 2011. To help you get on your way to preparing a plan of action, here are some tips for the year:
Do your homework – know where your community is and research ways in which to reach them best. Do you find that your customers are using Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Indenti.ca? Bebo? Are they on a niche social networking site?
Make sure you converse with your community – Don’t just sell. No one wants to be sold to. Make sure you also provide interactive content. Sometimes a comment like, “How’s your day going?” will bring in enormous response from your community, and you can then turn around and start building stronger relationships and ties within that community.
Include geo-location sites – If you have a retail business or a brick-and-mortar business in your community, you may consider jumping on the geo-location bandwagon. Examples of geo-location sites include Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook Places, and others. Oftentimes, vendors will offer a free cup of coffee or a gift to their patrons who are using these sites. For instance with Foursquare, when you become the “mayor” of a particular place, you can even get “free stuff” on an ongoing basis.
Don’t forget Bloggers – In addition to your “legacy” media program, don’t forget to target online publications and bloggers. Bloggers are quite influential these days and can make or break your product or service.
Video is important – The next big thing is video. Make sure you have a YouTube or Google Video channel. And make sure it is a strong representation of your brand.
Cross promote everything – If you promote a blog or a news article, don’t forget to push it out to your entire community through an aggregator like ping.fm, hellotxt.com or hootsuite.com.
Be sure to monitor everything – Set up a Google Alert to start. After you dive in, make sure you retain a more comprehensive search tool to make sure you don’t lose anything that was said or written about you on the web.
Reposted from The New York Enterprise Report’s blog.
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- Do You Have A Social Media Plan In Place? (hilarytopper.com)
