To be successful at social media you need to have a plan.  As the publisher, you control the power to distribute your content through digital media platforms such as blogs, mobile, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.  Most businesspersons are overwhelmed with all the options and how to implement them.  These six steps provide a roadmap to use social media to achieve optimal results for your business.

Step 1 –Determine Social Media Value for Your Business

• Develop an understanding of social media and online communities – How can you gain traction for ideas and grow your network to benefit your company?
• Determine goals – What does your company want to accomplish with social media?
• Evaluate social media – Is it a good fit for your company/institution?

Step 2 – Identify Challenges Facing Your Business When Implementing Digital Marketing

• Determine organization’s changes – how will your company adopt social media?
• Demonstrate value added – how will you gain support for this new, often misunderstood initiative within your company?
• Determine your social media team – who will design and implement your social media strategy?
• Determine your audience – who do you want to reach?
• Determine competition’s social media activity

Step 3 – Select the Best Tools

• Choose social media communities – select the tools that will best support your goals.  Setup the Applications – Facebook, LinkedIn, Flickr, Twitter, Mobile, blogs
• Train your team on using the tools – optimizing profiles, frequency of use, portraying professional image
• Guide the team on Marketing the Tools – gaining followers, building your network and engaging your community
• Leverage Current Marketing – integrate digital media with your current marketing efforts

Step 4 – Develop Content

• Develop compelling content – content that your community wants to read, content that will benefit them and content they will share with their communities
• Remember SEO best practices – use keywords and key phrases
• Include trackable links – content with links to your hub or online environment, video or photos produce best results
• Post content frequently – consistency is key, good content with few hard sales
• Develop Action Responses – ask questions, opinions, advice; direct the user’s response for feedback, to engage in conversations

Step 5: Content Distribution

• Apply widgets to drive viral action – like buttons, share, and repost
• Syndicate your content – RSS feeds, NetworkedBlog, email
• Use applications and tools – simplify efforts, schedule in advance, tracking URL’s
• Integrated digital media strategy – design, implement and manage your social media and integrate it with traditional advertising, online solutions, business networking and integrate it with other social media networks

Step 6: Feedback

• Monitor company chatter – your team should use Google alerts, searches, free and paid tools
• Prepare for feedback – prepare for potential effects on your company, plan how your company will responds to positive and negative feedback
• Evaluation and reporting – through tracking and monitoring determine the effect of your social media strategies and what changes in the landscape have affected it
• Determine ROI – what is the return on your investment from your digital marketing strategy, identify the RGV (resources generating value)
• Adjustment – review your strategy and make the necessary changes and implement the next phase.

Every business wants to be number one on Google for their most relevant search terms. Traditionally, you might develop an organic optimization strategy for your site, perhaps in conjunction with pay-per-click campaigns.  With the advent of real-time indexing of social media sites by search engines, you now have a low cost option for promoting your business, which you can control and develop – social media. Here are some tips to help you build your social media search engine presence:

1.  Be active in LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is the ideal tool for making connections with prospective clients and business partners, establishing yourself as a thought leader, showcasing your work, and promoting events you are hosting and attending.  Make sure that you set up a vanity URL.  Be sure that your business has a profile, as well.

2. Be active on Facebook.

Once you have set up a personal Facebook account, set up a Fan Page for your business.  Use this to provide information, such as special offers, new product information, and special events to your fans.

3. Be active on Twitter.

Use important keywords in your Twitter post, putting them in hash tags when appropriate.  Follow and interact with prospective clients and business partners.

4. Post videos to YouTube.

Be sure to title and tag your YouTube videos with important keywords.

5. Create and maintain a consistent presence on a blog.

Make sure that you make periodic entries and moderate comments promptly.

6. Read and post comments to blogs.

Be sure to include your primary URL with your comment.

7. Customize your Google Local Business Listing.

If your business has a physical address, find it on Google Maps.  Click “Edit” in the bubble on the map, verify your business ownership, list it in appropriate categories, and provide keyword-rich information about your business. Read “5 Steps to Get Immediate Results on Google” for detailed instructions on how to claim your Google business listing.

8. Set up a personal Google profile.

Set up your profile at http://www.google.com/profiles.  Be sure to include your important keywords.  Provide links to your web site, blog, and other social media accounts.

9. Set up Google Alerts.

Google Alerts, located at http://www.google.com/alerts, allows you to set alerts for your personal name, your business name, your Twitter name, your web site, and your blog, and even competitors.  This tool will allow you to track the indexing of your social media activity.

These simple steps, consistently applied, will reap almost  immediate results in your digital footprint.  When used in conjunction with traditional search engine optimization strategies, the chance of achieving the rankings you desire is increased exponentially.

Who’s following You?  Have you looked in the mirror lately?

What’s the fastest growing marketing tool for businesses today?   It’s Social Media, and did I mention it’s free? We call it BIZ2.0. It’s a new way of thinking and doing business. For simplicity let’s focus on three of the most popular business tools - LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.

So you’re collecting Connections on LinkedIn, Friends on Facebook and Followers on Twitter.

• What’s your criteria for following back?
• Are you effectively building your network?

Chris Brogan, a well respected social media thought leader, wrote “You’re Doing it Wrong” openly discussing how we participate in social networks. Here are some of his comments:

• You follow too many people on Twitter.
• You don’t allow blog comments.
• You add people to LinkedIn that you don’t know very well.
• You have ads on your blog.
• You use partial RSS feeds.
• Your blog posts are too short (too long).
• You shoot really long videos and don’t edit.
• You don’t follow people back.

Shawn Welch wrote a follow-up post suggesting that “Social media is not the place for instant celebrity…” and adding

“It’s tempting to join a network like Twitter and follow everyone under the sun because it’s easy and that feels like success. But even if you pick up 500 or 600 auto-follows or a few polite follow-backs, you’ll quickly find you’re not the success you think you are.”

Shawn states there are two key principles to social media:

Patience — slow growth wins over aggressive expansion

Build relationships along the way, interact and engage

What’s your strategy?

• Which tools are you using – LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook?
• What is your strategy for building these networks?
• What are your criteria for accepting a Connection, Friend or Follower?

The Tools – Each tool has a different reach and target market – who uses it.

Reach:

• Facebook - 400 million people globally are active users -50% active users log on to Facebook in any given day and more than 35 million users update their status each day
• LinkedIn - 60 million professionals with high personal incomes
• Twitter -18. 1 million unique visitors in December 09- 579% growth from December 08

Who uses it?

• Facebook – 35+ demographic now represents more than 30% of the entire user base,  55+ audience grew a whopping 922.7% in 2009.
• LinkedIn - In US 52 % are men and 48% are women; 38% make over $100k per year.
• Twitter – 70% are over 25; more females than males

BIZ2.0 Strategy
It’s clear that social media is impacting the business world as documented in Jeremiah Owyang’s Collection of Social Network Stats for 2009. Social media is re-defining and expanding relationships in the global business community.

The key to BIZ2.0 is the building of a strong and relevant network. In the traditional business world, networking is considered a very valuable marketing tool for sales, recruiting, exposure and building relationships. In a WEB 2.0 environment, BIZ2.0 is becoming a tool to build your personal brand, become a Thought Leader and generate targeted sales opportunities. This network represents you and reflects on the work that you do. In addition you now have opened your contacts to the business world.

Social media tools are new to most business people. For the most part they have not developed a strategy to build their valuable network. Many people just collect friends — as many, as fast as they can. They are called open networkers. There are no criteria. You are virtually accepted on a cold contact, based on their belief in open networking or referral from another follower. The more the merrier! The alternative is to step back and develop your personal BIZ2.0 strategy using your own social etiquette.