http://orangesoda/ en jthaeler@orangesoda.com Copyright 2009 2009-09-02T22:36:44-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/social-media-strategy-step-3-observe-and-listen-to-the-communities-you-want/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/social-media-strategy-step-3-observe-and-listen-to-the-communities-you-want/#When:21:36:44Z If you don’t listen before you participate in an social media community you can make missteps and offend the community. Before you engage in social media marketing or work with bloggers, you should take time to listen. Get familiar with the likes and dislikes of different groups online and respond appropriately. In other words, be human. When someone is new they often make the mistake of coming on too strong. Establish relationships first, then try the big stunts. Most businesses new to participating in social networks and blogs want to jump in before they have trust or relationships within the community.  They try to be loud or find unique approaches to get attention. It’s all about them, their product or brand. Instead look for ways to make a contribution and add value. Look for ways to add to the community rather than exploiting it. Share other’s content, leave comments. Look for the key people who are actively involved. Rather than approaching a community directly, approach them privately and ask them to share the information. Information coming from them will be recieved better than from you if you’re unknown. Over time you can the support and trust. Then you can plan events or participate more actively.How do you listen? Get to know the locals and active participants. Look for information such as: Where do they spend time online? What Facebook Groups do they belong to? What magazines or blogs do they read? Who they talk to or consider trustworthy? What do they search on in Google? Who do they follow on Twitter? What forums do they frequent and participate in? What web sites do they visit regularly? After listening you can use insights you have to guide your messages and formulate strategies. Every social community is different. Some are more open and some are very hard on newcomers or marketers. For example: Digg and Wikipedia are not friendly to marketers. If you don’t follow the rules you will be shunned or hated. Know what you’re getting into and observe what works before participating. 2009-09-02T21:36:44-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/social-media-strategy-step-2-find-relevant-blogs/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/social-media-strategy-step-2-find-relevant-blogs/#When:21:22:14Z <!— /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; 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mso-ansi-font-weight:normal;} ol {margin-bottom:0in;} ul {margin-bottom:0in;}—> Women and especially “power moms"or mom bloggers are often key to brand’s success online and in social networks. These bloggers have trust and communities and can refer new business to you. But first you have to find them and engage with them in a personable and collaborative way. Women in Social Media Study Recent research by BlogHer a community for women who blog, has some interesting data for online marketers. (see http://www.blogher.com/files/2009_Compass_BlogHer_Social_Media_Study_042709_FINAL.pdf) Women are being targeted by advertisers both on and offline. Not only do women make the majority of purchasing choices for families, but they tend to share information with others. In other words, they can be great evangelists. Marketers have noticed and often target the power moms  – a small group of elite social media users who wield a lot of marketing influence. Key Findings – Why blogs and social networking are important marketing tools 1.        Women in the study are shifting time spent offline to online. Instead of reading a newspaper, talking on the phone, meeting people in person and other activities they are spending time reading and socializing online. 2.       The participants said they go to blogs to get information, stay informed, get advice and recommendations. 3.       They go to social networks to stay up-to-date with their friends and family. 4.       The number one place to get news is on blogs. That means if you have news and the news gets written about by a blogger with influence with your target audience you’ll get a larger reach. 5.       Research by Context Analytics of their clients found that blogs convert to sales at about the same rate as getting written about in traditional sources like the New York Times (10.5%). Obviously it’s much easier to get written about in a blog than in the media. 6.       Almost 40% of women who participate in social networks said they make purchasing decisions based on what they’ve read about the product on a blog. It’s also influenced them not to purchase a product. How do you find relevant blogs? Alltop.com – search by topic. Technorati blog search – search by blog post or blog topic and get an idea of their relative influence by their Technorati ranking. Google Search (i.e. type “social media marketing blog” into Google) or Google Blog Search. Find a blog and follow their links to other blogs they read. By referral - ask. If you’re on Twitter or know someone on Twitter with a decent following, ask them to ask their network for referrals. If you know someone who is well-connected, ask them. Once you find blogs then you can begin to create relationships with the author - sending content, making comments and getting involved in the community. We recently helped a client identify key blogs for the audiences they wanted to reach. Then we’re working with them to develop strategies and coaching them on the tools and technology to do that. We’ll provide SEO support and distribute their news online. We’re starting slow by working with one “power mom” and letting her collaborate on how the campaign will go. Then they’ll expand and do more outreah based on the results. Some say blogging is dead but it isn’t - it’s just that way that we think about them has. Perhaps blogging may not be effective for you but finding and reaching key bloggers would be. The next step is to “listen.“ 2009-08-27T21:22:14-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/video-marketing-can-mean-roi-for-small-businesses/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/video-marketing-can-mean-roi-for-small-businesses/#When:15:52:15Z Social media is turning into the next natural phenomenon on the web. With the right tactics, it is possible to get enormous amounts of exposure with relatively low costs. When people think of social media Facebook and Twitter are usually the first two networks that come to mind.  These are highly effective tools that should be used in coordination with video. More and more small businesses are learning how to leverage the internet to compete against larger corporations.  Video has proven to be an important tool if David wants to find success against Goliath. The main question on everyone’s minds is how you have a successful video marketing campaign. Lucky for you, we’ve dug a few tips out of our archives to help you out. Social media is turning into the next natural phenomenon on the web. With the right tactics, it is possible to get enormous amounts of exposure with relatively low costs. When people think of social media Facebook and Twitter are usually the first two networks that come to mind.  These are highly effective tools that should be used in coordination with video. More and more small businesses are learning how to leverage the internet to compete against larger corporations.  Video has proven to be an important tool if David wants to find success against Goliath. The main question on everyone’s minds is how you have a successful video marketing campaign. Lucky for you, we’ve dug a few tips out of our archives to help you out. Video Marketing Process -          Identify if your company has the type of product that could benefit from video marketing. -          Dig through all of your old marketing material to see if you can use any already produced footage.  There is a significant cost savings if you are able to edit and publish already existing video. -          Identify if your company would benefit more from our standard video marketing or our landing page video marketing.  Many companies would benefit from both. -          Produce video and distribute through as many channels as possible.  We recommend using a tool such as Traffic Geyser or Tube Mongol to help with uploading to hundreds of directories. Tips for Producing an Effective Video -          Incorporate upbeat music throughout the movie. -          Keep video to fewer than 4 minutes. -          Make your video funny, cool, or clever. -          Have a clear call to action at the end of each video. -          Be sure to incorporate the website you are trying to promote at the beginning and ending of each movie. -          If distributing on Youtube and other video directories, be sure to write excellent Meta Data. -          Edit your video in sharp, clear, and interesting clips.  Sample Videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKcGvv9XjPI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diGxtWr4mpc http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYmEHnX_Ah4 Take the Social Media Plunge Today With video or any other type of new marketing technique there is definitely a learning curve.  It is going to take a while to produce something that people are going to want to see.  At first, don’t be too picky about putting out something that isn’t perfect.  The important thing is that you try to improve with every piece of work.   2009-08-27T15:52:15-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/social-media-strategy-step-1-find-your-community-online/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/social-media-strategy-step-1-find-your-community-online/#When:21:10:48Z <!— /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1107304683 0 0 159 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} a:link, span.MsoHyperlink {mso-style-priority:99; color:blue; mso-themecolor:hyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; color:purple; mso-themecolor:followedhyperlink; text-decoration:underline; text-underline:single;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;}—> We’ve been working with clients on social media strategies and online PR. The next few posts cover ways to develop a social media strategy which is a part of online PR. Social media involves various communities that are online. They include everything from message boards to forums and Facebook. Why do people visit online communities? People go to online communities mainly to have fun. They also go to socialize, build relationships, find information and share recommendations. Being involved in social media is a great way to build word-of-mouth marketing. But first you’ve got to find online communities and build trust with them. It starts with finding your community or communities online. Be sure to spend your time participating in communities that are potential sources of leads. Do research to see where your target audiences are spending their time online. For example: You may find that people on Facebook are asking each others for advice about things you’re an expert on. Using OrangeSoda as an example, people might ask how to get traffic to their web site. Response: You can take an educational role, answering questions and providing guidance. In this example,we’d talk about optimizing a web site for search and paid search options. We’d let them know what we do to help. You may learn that people talking about how the economy is affecting them, and their needs and responses to it. They want a product like yours but can’t afford it. This is a hot topic right now. Response: Create or increase visibility of information that is helpful. Payment programs you have, the value of your product, etc. Or, you create a package that is priced more competitively. You offer discounts or bonuses to build value or reduce cost. How do you find your online community? The post has a great list of tools.   Here are some of my favorites: http://tweetreach.com - type in a topic, your branded terms, products etc. and see who’s tweeting about them most. Find the people who are most actively involved, follow them, develop a relationship with them and ask them to tweet your content. http://www.backtype.com - BackType is a conversational search engine. They aggregate information from blogs, social networks and other social media “so people can find, follow and share comments.“ So if you find someone you want to follow on TweetReach, type their name into BackType. You’ll see and can track which communities they are actively participating in. Also see the reach of your content by entering a URL. The next step is to find relevant blogs. 2009-08-18T21:10:48-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/twitter-101-for-businesses/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/twitter-101-for-businesses/#When:14:46:09Z Like Facebook before it, Twitter has become the place to be found in the online world. From February 2008 to February 2009, Twitter grew roughly 1,400%, hitting 7 million visitors in February 2009. From February 2009 to April 2009, it grew another 250%, topping 17 million visitors. This is a growth trend that is expected to continue for a long time. Is your business taking advantage of this incredible opportunity? It should be! Unfortunately, if you don’t know the ... Like Facebook before it, Twitter has become the place to be found in the online world. From February 2008 to February 2009, Twitter grew roughly 1,400%, hitting 7 million visitors in February 2009. From February 2009 to April 2009, it grew another 250%, topping 17 million visitors. This is a growth trend that is expected to continue for a long time. Is your business taking advantage of this incredible opportunity? It should be! Unfortunately, if you don’t know the Do’s and Don’ts of Twitter, you could do more harm than good. Twitter users, like users of any social media platform, are looking for sources of genuine value. They want information, humor, and great deals. They want breaking news, or the latest gossip. They want a place where they can communicate with people who share their interests. Twitter users don’t want to be bombarded from every direction with self-serving tweets, advertisements, and blatantly commercial links. There is no quicker way to alienate potential followers than to try to sell them something every time you tweet. These 10 steps can help your business to avoid mistakes and to succeed on Twitter: #1 – Determine a Niche – It is important that you find and occupy a niche in which you are an expert. If your company is a bakery, you should be tweeting about recipes, food related news stories, great places to eat, and the like. If you are an automotive company, your tweets should similarly focus on that niche. Be an expert in your niche, and those who are interested in that niche will look to you for information. #2 – Optimize Your Account – When you create a Twitter account, it is important to select a Twitter name that either contains your company name or that contains a keyword that is important to your niche. Make sure you fill out your profile with keywords relevant to your niche so that you can easily be found. Make sure you include a link to your website. It is helpful to have a custom, branded Twitter background created to set you apart, preferably one that contains business info to the left of the Twitter feed. #3 – Tie Your Social Media Accounts Together – A unified social media presence helps to establish your company as trendy and cutting edge. You can set Facebook to automatically update your status from your Twitter feed. You can add a Twitter module to your company blog. You can link to Twitter from your company LinkedIn page or your Google Local Profile. The more genuine and reachable your company is the better. #4 – Be an Expert – It is important once you have occupied your niche that you establish yourself and/or your company as an expert. Look for question tweets related to your field and answer them. Post up links to the latest information regarding your industry. If someone searches for terms related to your industry on twitter, your tweets should show up. It is recommended that you build up to at least 50-100 tweets before you actively hunt for followers, so that potential followers have something to look at and judge you by. #5 – Find People in Your Niche – There are numerous search tools for twitter, from search.twitter.com to Twellow.com and TwitScoop.com. Search for keyword related to your business or industry. As you find people who are interested in your niche, follow them. Read what they have to say, RT and @ reply to their tweets (re-tweet and at reply). These people will hopefully check out your tweets in return, and if you are adding value and are relevant to their interests, they will follow you back. #6 – Add Real Value – Do not be overly commercial! A good rule of thumb is 9 out of 10. Out of every 10 tweets, 9 should be about your industry, informative and non self serving. The other tweet can be about your business or products. If every other tweet is about your own products or services, you aren’t adding value to the community, and you will alienate potential followers. For example, if you sell baked goods you could use Twitter to announce when food is coming out of the oven or to offer free samples. If you own a restaurant, you could announce new menu items or freebie deals. If you sell online software products, you could offer a free copy to the first 10 people who respond to the tweet. Be creative. #7 – Build Loyalty – Twitter makes an excellent platform to distribute coupon codes and special deals. People love getting free or discounted stuff, and this will help to build a more loyal following. You can then track how many additional sales occurred using the coupon code or special offer, to determine if Twitter is an effective platform for your company. #8 – Tweet Often – 5-10 Tweets per day is a good, safe number. Any more than that and you may become a nuisance. Any less and you risk not being noticed. The tweets should be staggered, perhaps every hour or so (you don’t want to dump 10 tweets all at once). If you can’t tweet throughout the day, TweetLater is a great free tool that allows you to schedule tweets in advance, amongst other things. #9 – Tag Your Posts – It is helpful to use #hashtags to mark your tweets with relevant keywords for searchers to find. A hash tag is a # followed by a keyword, no spaces. Twitter has a lot of search engine strength, and proper keyword tagging can help you to be found by search engine users in addition to twitter searchers. #10 – Measure It – Twitter is actually pretty easy to measure. If your website has analytics installed, you can see how many visitors to your site are originating from Twitter (Google Analytics is free). If you sign up for a Bit.ly account, whenever you put a URL in your tweets use your Bit.ly account to shorten the URL. This will allow you to track how many people follow your Bit.ly shortened links. If you follow the above steps, you can create a solid Twitter following, improve your branding, avoid damaging mistakes, and determine just how valuable Twitter can be to your company.   2009-08-17T14:46:09-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/pr-has-changed-what-that-means-for-you-online/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/pr-has-changed-what-that-means-for-you-online/#When:20:55:34Z PR has changed in many ways. First, what was once a handful of journalists is now many – which means it’s harder to form relationships with them. So finding the right person and getting a story published about you just got harder. Why? Their jobs (like yours) are more complex. They once wrote articles that got published. Now their job includes new territory—online. They are expected to write blog posts, maybe audio recording or video to go with their stories. They, like you, measure success by metrics like traffic to their web site. Another way PR has changed is that your audience is splintered and increasingly it is online. To take full advantage of this you need to find and pay attention to the right audiences. Because once you get your message to the right audience, your conversion increases dramatically. Also, what was once pretty predictable is no longer predictable or controllable. You may not even want to be online but that won’t stop people from spreading information about your brand. You can either ignore it or find ways to participate. What started as more of a one-way conversation with a few people, has evolved into a collaborative communication with many people in many places. It’s a new neighborhood online and many are new to this community. Like any community is has its own culture and before you jump in you’ve got to get to know the locals. It’s not enough to have a web site. Search engine optimization, press releases that are distributed and promoted online, blogs and social networks are all part of online marketing. PR is part of online marketing.  What that means to you, is you have to be more savvy. Or your PR firm has to be more savvy. You may work more closely with your online marketing firm. The lines between journalists, bloggers and online marketers and PR are blurring.   2009-08-11T20:55:34-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/social-media-case-study-local-business-hits-gold/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/social-media-case-study-local-business-hits-gold/#When:16:43:15Z Social media is not a pancea but can be an effective marketing tool for local businesses. If you’re already spending on traditonal marketing and seeing less results, a social media campaign can get better results for less. Notice I did not say for FREE or nothing. Social marketing still requires an investment—especially an investment in time. And unlike other campaigns, it’s often an ongoing investment (like other relationships - one or two good talks or experiences doesn’t mean you can just stop and expect the relationship to be worthwhile). Overall social media is a tool for small businesses to reach a new audience and to build trust and participation with that audience. Notice I didn’t say to make loads of money. Or that it’s easy or fast. It’s a bit more like building a nest egg over time than hitting the marketing lottery. Here’s a great case study about a local jeweler who saw great success with social media. Do take note that the effort was well-coordinated with a PR firm and a social media consultant. OrangeSoda sets up profiles on Twitter and Facebook and direction for your campaign. Your staff is needed to keep it going. It’s tough to outsource the day to day updates and interactions that are needed—however, using the right tools to do that will save you a lot of time and make your work more efficient. Here’s more about the social media case study. I don’t think it is easy for small businesses to do social marketing. Some are better suited than others. But it can pay off well. If you don’t have the expertise I’d hire it out. The mistake I see is people think it’s easy and underestimating the planning part. It’s not as simple as creating an ad and buying placement. It’s a tough time for a lot of retailers. Many are looking for new way to reach and expand their markets. Social media is an effective tool to do that if you’re willing to engage. Some recent research from Shop.org’s 2009 State of Retailing Online (SORO) Marketing Report in partnership with Forrester Research showed retailers are spending more on the Internet while at the same time cutting in other marketing areas. Here’s what they found: “Almost half plan to stay the original course and spend largely as planned, approximately one third is ratcheting back spending, and the remaining quarter is actually increasing investment in their Web businesses beyond the original plan.” Those surveyed say they are increasing spend on the Web, specifically in search engine optimization (SEO), email and social marketing. Have you tried social marketing or do you plan to? We’d love to hear from you! 2009-06-04T16:43:15-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/learn-how-to-network-in-real-life-before-diving-into-social-media/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/learn-how-to-network-in-real-life-before-diving-into-social-media/#When:12:54:35Z Peter Shankman made a good point about social media: “…if you don’t know how to network in the first place, all social media can do is give you the chance to screw up to a much larger group of people in a much shorter amount of time.” This requires you to be more open-minded. If you approach social media as one-sided (it’s all about you or your business) your participation will come across as marketing, not networking. People won’t consider you a value to their network, but spam. Before you talk, start becoming more aware of your industry and the people in it. Listen to the conversations and become informed. If you don’t have time or dedication to this, perhaps social media isn’t the best venue for your business right now. 2008-10-30T12:54:35-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/how-social-media-can-help-your-business/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/how-social-media-can-help-your-business/#When:15:48:10Z I just read an email from Flyte Media with the title: Does Your Small Business Really Need a Social Media Strategy? The answer, is YES! Especially in a slow economy. Getting involved before your competitors are gives you an advantage. Rich Brooks goes on to detail how Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Skype, YouTube, and LinkedIn have helped his business. He also talks about why this trend to use social media in marketing a small business has so much attention. Social media does not a linear, predictable relationship but a hodgepodge of interactions that can and usually do result in ROI. Here are some example of how social media has helped his small business (wish I were a graphic designer because this would make a fun diagram): Someone finds you on Twitter and asks you to do a small job. That leads into something bigger - a regular contract. Or that person is happy with the small job and tells someone else about you when they need a similar service. Or the happy customer blogs about you and brings you more business. All started on Twitter. You reconnect with an old friend on Facebook who then sees what you do and hires you for a job for their business or company. Or they recommend you when someone they know needs internet marketing help. Note: a lot of companies haven’t considered that they need internet marketing until they learn what it is. Many people assume I build web sites. I never build web sites, only market existing ones. You travel to another state and while you’re there you set up meetings with people you exchange tweets with so you can meet them in real life. You read someone’s blog then meet in real life at a conference. You then follow each other on Twitter. You “friend” each other on Facebook, You post and answer questions on LinkedIn (like, can you recommend someone for this job?) and use Skype to talk in real life to people all over the world. I’ll add my own - a CEO from another country is scoping out a new place to do business. He reads my blog and contacts me. Someone else is wondering if they should invest in a company I’ve worked with and wants my opinion. These are people who never would’ve found me if I weren’t visible - in this case - through my blog. Rich talks about a common phenomenon - people think either these social sites are a waste of time or they can’t see how it can help a business. He points out that he had about 800 tweets (Twitter posts) before he ever got a job. You can’t predict when this networking will benefit you, but if you invest in it at some point it will happen, especially if you’re one of the only ones in your industry on that network. Each Social Network has its Own Culture What follows is that if you’re going to try to join the community, you’ll need to learn the culture. Bloggers have egos that are massaged when you leave insightful comments on their blog, blog about them and link back, or put them on your blogroll. Twitterers like it when you message them and expose them to your network, helping them gain new followers (if you have a good network). They like it when you answer their questions or respond to their requests or “retweet” their posts. Please add your knowledge of the culture on the social networks you frequent in the comments below. You first watch and listen and get a sense for how things work before jumping in and looking foolish (some social media sites are more tolerant of newcomers than others).  It’s like visiting another country - you don’t want to offend people by acting until you have some sense of what’s appropriate. He notes: “Use social media the right way and you will create and strengthen relationships. You won’t have to chase customers, you’ll attract them.” That is a very different mindset - attracting new customers rather than trying to persuade or cajole them into paying attention to you or responding to your advertisement. Doesn’t that sound great? It is. And as Rich points out it’s a lot of fun. And with that I’m going to “follow” Rich on Twitter and trackback to his blog post. 2008-10-09T15:48:10-07:00 http://www.orangesoda.com/social-media-marketing-blog/social-networking-sites-how-they-can-help-your-business/ http://www.orangesoda.com/site/social-networking-sites-how-they-can-help-your-business/#When:15:46:24Z People mistakenly think of social networking as a way to market - to quickly make an impact. They want to be on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other sites. They want to try every new technique they read about. The way most people approach social networking sites is like hiring people to hand out business cards to as many people as possible. They want to advertise, not be social. Social networking sites are about being social - which means interacting - but rather than to one person at a time it’s to a group. I recommend that you go deep rather than wide. Choose one social network or platform and do that well. Social networking is high touch - it takes time and expertise. If you go too wide and shallow you likely won’t see results. Instead go deeper. Guidelines for social networking – ways to be more social online: Find people in your target market who are already popular and try to get noticed by them. Add them to your network and see who their friends are so you can add them too. Example: It’s like you’re new in town and you need to find who the happening people are and work up to hanging out and being seen with them. Just by being seen with them you’ll get noticed and be more popular. While you’re street team might not be online, there might be someone they know who is very well connected on Facebook or online. Find that person. Friend them. On Facebook, you can suggest other friends. Interact with popular people who are in your target market online. Comment on their blog, their videos, their pictures. Leave a comment on their Facebook Wall. Follow them on Twitter. Read their blog. Track (use Google Alerts with your business name and perhaps the names of people or names in your space you hope to reach) so you can keep in touch with what’s happening and find new people to reach and news to talk about. If you get a Google Alert and find someone has blogged about you, write about it on Facebook and link to the post. Blog about it if you have a blog. Link to it on your MySpace page. Put it on your web site. Twitter about it, etc. Create content you can use on social networks – collect pictures (Flickr), video (YouTube), audio files. Use this content across the social media platforms you are on. Ask your network to teach you by asking their opinion. They have egos if they’re popular and by asking them you are showing that you recognize that they’re in the know. Example: Today I asked my Twitter network which headline they like best out of two I wrote. I got about 10 answers and #2 was the clear winner. This took less than 30 mins. But I had to build a network first. When you write about other people you compliment them (whether you blog about them, Twitter about them, or have a picture or video that has them in it). When you get a decent following or a lot of content, add links to your web site. So you might have a “find us on” Facebook (logo and link to your profile), MySpace, etc. You could feed in your Titter updates to your home page, etc. In other words, you can integrate all the channels. Blog updates can auto post to your Facebook page, Twitter can automatically produce a blog post of your recent tweets…all to reinforce what you’re doing and bring you buzz. There is a learning curve and it takes time to build relationships, just get momentum going by starting to communicate and by communicating regularly on social networks. Once you start communicating you need to have a commitment to continuing to engage. Choose one or two places to focus (places where your demographic is hanging out) and go. Here’s a press release about a large study of social networks that is find helpful to decide where your target market is hanging out online: http://business.rapleaf.com/company_press_2008_06_18.html 2008-09-29T15:46:24-07:00