Most people are gatherers and providers of information. An information consumer is on the outside of a community, looking in to obtain information, without contributing feedback or leaving traces that they were there. An information creator is a part of the community in which they are providing information. They may be debating an issue, offering professional criticism or support, or engaging in casual conversation with their peers.
Before engaging with a new community, first consider who the information consumers are, who the information creators are, and what the intentions are for each.
Information Consumer
- Who are they?
- What information are they looking for? Why are they here? What are they looking to gain?
- Where are they looking for this information? Is it appropriate and natural for you to provide information here as well?
Information Creator
- Who are they?
- What information are they providing? Are they experts? What are they gaining?
- Where are they providing information? Is it appropriate and natural for you to provide information here as well?
Before engaging with any new community, it is important to first assume the role of an information consumer. Get to know the group, how they talk, what they are interested in – before speaking up. An outsider can be quickly ignored or rejected, so be sure you know how to speak the language of the new group before you speak up!
Before involving yourself and your company in social media, a few important points must be understood.
- Social media is about engaging with people – not selling to them through a new medium. When developing a social media plan, it is important that it ties back to company objectives, but must be achieved in a way that engages the audience, provides them with relevant information, and inspires them to action.
- Effective social media plans are built on strong strategic marketing plans, which in turn are built on solid business plans. If you aren’t sure where you are strategically with business objectives and high level sales and marketing goals, you likely won’t get far in your social media efforts.
- The goals for engaging in social media should and will vary based on business objectives, target markets, and personas within those markets. You’ll likely be engaging with different people, in different, at different companies. How you’ll need to talk with and engage with these people will likely need to vary based on what their needs and objectives are.
- Every engagement should tie back to a measureable goal. This can be tricky as many of your social media efforts won’t tie directly back to a result (can you really say that a single tweet resulted in a sale?) You’ll need to define ways to measure the outcome of your efforts, but don’t dive into social media with some sort of goal that you can measure.
Before creating a social media framework or plan, a few important points must be understood.
- Social media is about engaging with people – not selling to them through a new medium. When developing a social media plan, it is important that it ties back to company objectives, but must be achieved in a way that engages the audience, provides them with relevant information, and inspires them to action.
- Effective social media plans are built on strong strategic marketing plans, which in turn are built on solid business plans.
- The goals for engaging in social media should and will vary based on business objectives, target markets, and personas within those markets.
- Every engagement should tie back to a measureable goal.
Steps to Creating an Effective Strategic Social Media Framework
Step 1: Determine company objectives in the Business Plan. This step should be completed before starting a Strategic Social Media Framework.
Step 2: Determine target markets and personas in the Strategic Marketing Framework. This step should be completed before starting a Strategic Social Media Framework.
Step 3: Determine the strategic marketing objectives that are to be supported by engaging in social media. These objectives are already defined in the strategic marketing plan. If not, stop. Take a step back and revisit creating a social media plan once you have established where you want to go as a company.
Step 4: Define Social Media objectives and the target markets ensuring each social media objective supports at least one of the strategic marketing objectives outlined in Step 1. These target markets should already be defined by the strategic marketing plan. If not, stop. Revisit your higher level company objectives and ensure this market is one you should be spending time engaging.
Step 5: Create high level measurable goals for each social media objective and target market. These goals will be revisited and expanded upon later.
Step 6: Determine the personas within the target market to be engaged with for each social media objective.
Step 7: Research and determine answers to the following questions for each persona. Most people are gatherers and providers of information. An information consumer is on the outside of a community, looking in to obtain information, without contributing feedback or leaving traces that they were there. An information creator is a part of the community in which they are providing information. They may be debating an issue, offering professional criticism or support, or engaging in casual conversation with their peers.
Information Consumer
- Who are they?
- What information are they looking for? Why are they here? What are they looking to gain?
- Where are they looking for this information? Is it appropriate and natural for you to provide information here as well?
Information Creator
- Who are they?
- What information are they providing? Are they experts? What are they gaining?
- Where are they providing information? Is it appropriate and natural for you to provide information here as well?
Step 8: Create a plan for engaging with each persona. This plan should include the following, defined for each persona:
From Strategic Marketing Plan – Personas
- Primary needs
- Primary wants
- Positioning, Value Proposition, Key messages
- Competitors
Create for Social Media Plan
- Trusted sources of information
- Communities already engaged in
- Revisit each goal created in step 3 and determine which goals this persona fits with
- If the persona that doesn’t fit with one of the goals, consider removing it
- Expand on these goals based on persona
Steps to Creating Effective Social Media Plans
There are three parts to creating a comprehensive social media plan:
- Strategic campaign plans relate to information pushes. These may include contests to promote a product release, special discounted pricing available for a certain period of time, or timely competitions based on world events, etc.
- General engagement plans define how a company interacts with a persona within a target market. Many general engagement plans relate to community monitoring with predetermined catalysts of engagement. Examples include responding on blogs which mention the company name, directly contacting a person who has said 2 or more negative things about the product, etc. General engagement plans can also include information pushes that are relevant to the persona such as blog posts.
- Industry & company alert plans determine how to alert each persona when an industry or company event occurs. This can include a product update, upcoming tradeshow appearance, executive hiring, new contract secured, etc.
Step 9: Create strategic campaign plans. Determine key dates for each persona. Create campaigns around these dates and the plan outlined in step 6 for engaging with each persona. Campaigns may not be needed for each persona. Each plan should include:
- Campaign overview
- Medium(s) / Channel(s)
- Schedule – preparation, campaign initiation and end dates, evaluation
- Required resources – (ex: internal people to manage it, online tools, outsourced skills such as graphic design, etc)
- Clearly defined, measureable goals
Step 10: Create general engagement plans. For each persona, determine general engagement plans for interacting with each persona based on the plan outline in step 6. A general engagement plan is needed for every persona, otherwise, that persona should not be a part of the Strategic Social Media Framework. Each plan should include:
- Plan overview
- Medium(s) / Channel(s)
- Schedule – preparation, campaign initiation and end dates, evaluation
- Required resources – (ex: internal people to manage it, online tools, outsourced skills such as graphic design, etc)
- Clearly defined, measurable goals
Step 11: Create industry & company alert plans. For each persona, determine a plan for notifying the communities of relevant industry & company events. Each plan should include a matrix of the following information for each persona:
- Persona
- Relevant topics
- Appropriate mediums / channels
Most Twitter users know how to get their follower #s up, but often, they do it the wrong way – by following whoever will follow back, right? Take that simple technique, a good dose of patience, and a pinch of common sense to get followers that are relevant to you. I recently did this for a B2B company in a very niche market… and it worked like a charm.
Track down your “competitors”. Check out their list of followers. See anyone that you think would be relevant to you? Follow them, there is a chance they’ll follow you back. This technique will take longer, true, but at least you’ll have relevant followers rather than a bunch of spammy accounts on your follow list.
I came across a great blog about common sense approaches for getting ranked fast on Google, geared specifically to bloggers and content strategists, check it out at Missilefish.
My highlights…
Updating previous posts with new information. Yes, common sense, but how often do we really do this? It isn’t uncommon to web cruise for info, come across a blog, spend some time reading it before you discover that it is 2 years old! Okay, so how about you read that same blog and see it has been updated recently to it keep it relevant? The blogger just gained some credibility huh? Why don’t we all do that?!? I don’t know, but we should. Oh and one more thing, search engines notice that too (now do I have your attention?)
Content Strategy, have one! Again, how “duh” is that but it is something we tend to not keep in the forefront of our minds. We have an idea, brain dump it in a blog, release it, and move on. After some time, that can quickly morph your blog into a bunch of random thoughts without targeted readers or an iota of SEO mindfulness. Maybe your mom will stay loyal but other readers will move on because you just aren’t speaking their language. And search engines? Forget about it.
Crosslink your posts. If you have any sort of strategy, any sort of target readers, some of your blogs should definitely be worth cross posting, so do it. It keeps people on your site and will get you some SEO lovin.
References:
Ping.fm is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that allows you to update all of your social profiles from one place. I found one of the greatest uses of it is for trying out a new social networks. By using Ping.fm, you can set up a profile on a new site, just hook it into your existing Ping.fm account, and it’ll get updated along with all the other accounts you manage. Disclaimer of course is that you won’t get much value from a social network if you just automate it and never participate, but it is a nice time saver. Ping.fm lets you group together different networks too, so you can choose to update just some your networks if you prefer.
Check out Ping.fm you won’t regret it 
Just a few of Ping.fm supported networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Buzz, Flickr, Delicious, Ning, MySpace, FriendFeed, Blogger, WordPress
Twitter Directories - Get a snapshot of who’s who on Twitter and follow others if you’d like.
Twellow – THE Twitter Yellow Pages. Run searches by keyword, search by industry, and much more. You can follow others straight from the site too. At the very least, stop in and setup your account so when peole find you, they see what you want them to see. http://www.twellow.com/
We Follow – search by tag and see who tops the influential list and has the most followers. You can follow people straight from this site as well. According to WeFollow, Britney Spears is currently the top Twitter user. Lame. Get out there people! http://wefollow.com/
Twitter Followers & Following Management - Great tools for managing who you’re following and seeing who is following you.
Refollow - this is maybe one of my favorite tools. Very powerful query abilities to see who’s ever followed you, who is currently following you, who you have ever followed or are currently following, keyword search, and so much more. Gives you the ability to mass follow or mass un-follow as well, but be careful, you could be seen as a spammer if you mistreat this, and Twitter could suspend your account. http://refollow.com/
Friend or Follow – Neat little site that shows who you’re following but isn’t following you (following), who is following you but you aren’t following (fans), and who you are following that is following you back (friends). And you don’t have to verify your account to use it, meaning you can see these stats for any account on Twitter (hello competitive intel). http://friendorfollow.com/
Twitter Alerts - These sites allow you to set up automated alerts to keep you in the know of what is going on in Twitterland.
Tweet Beep – set up email alerts based on whatever keywords you choose. http://tweetbeep.com/
Qwitter – set up email alerts to get notified of when other Twitter users stop following. Very helpful to know when you’ve mis-Tweeted, because you’ll lose more followers! http://useqwitter.com/
Twitter Stats – These sites provide nice snapshots of your Twitter account, allowing you to see how influential your are, how great your reach is, etc. Much of it is really just anecdotal, but can sometimes provide valuable insight.
Twitter Grader - a great tool run by the nice people at Hubspot.com. Their site is full of useful tools, this is just one of them. http://twitter.grader.com/
Tweet Stats – provides lots of data on how many tweets you have, when you post them, etc. Colorful graphs to brighten your day. http://tweetstats.com/
LinkedIn is a great resource for professional networking. However, your profile may need some work to ensure you are properly represented in the LinkedIn world.
The rule of thumb is simple – provide relevant and comprehensive information about your professional self and add connections to increase traffic to your profile and your visibility. The more information you provide about yourself, the more likely your profile will show up in LinkedIn searches. The more connections you have, the larger your network. The larger your network, the greater your visibility.
LinkedIn General Tips
- Be sure your LinkedIn profile is 100% complete – the more robust your profile, the higher your profile will appear in organic search results
- Do not block incoming emails (at some point, you may want to change this setting back, but keep it open unless spam gets unbearable)
- Include a Personal Photo – LinkedIn has plenty of fake profiles so including a picture of you (not your company logo or pet) shows that you are real
- Set your public profile to “Full View”
- Add a link to your LinkedIn profile to your email signature. It passively gives others an opportunity to check out your credentials – and drives more traffic to your profile
Ready for the Big Leagues? Check out the section-by-section guide for optimizing your LinkedIn profile
Ready to beef up your LinkedIn profile? Here is a handy guide I put together and have used with people needing a bit of LinkedIn profile enhancing guidance. By the time you’ve gone through this guide, you’ll have a traffic heavy super profile that is sure to be admired by your peers – and hiring managers.
Prefer an overview? Check out LinkedIn Guide Part 1: General Tips for Enhancing Your LinkedIn Profile
LinkedIn Section-by-Section Guide
Tip: Log in to your LinkedIn profile and click the section headings below to edit your profile as you go through this guide.
Name - Your display name should be capitalized properly and can include your professional title(s) (ex: CPA). If you want to include a professional title, put it after your last name separated by a comma. Include a “Former/Maiden Name” if applicable. This will help your profile come up in search results.
Professional “Headline” - This is the one liner people will judge you by; it is your brand, so don’t just put your title & company. This will appear in search results next to your name, as well as next to any questions you ask or answer.
Industry - Be sure you have your industry selected
Experience - Current & former positions need to be described with what the company did and what you did for the company. Use strong descriptive word pairings rather than lengthy descriptions. Think direct rather than passive. If you’ve had multiple positions within one organization, you can list them under one listing rather than separating them. Only include past positions that are relevant to your current role. If you’re a financial analyst, nobody cares that you worked at the Gap in college and quite frankly, its unprofessional to share that – doing so shows you may lack some professional judgment and highlights just how green you may be.
Education - Include each degree you’ve obtained grouped by level. Undergraduate and post graduate degrees should be listed separately. To add a new education listing, click “Add Education”. Each education listing should include all activities, groups, and your accomplishments while in school. See LinkedIn’s examples for more information.
Recommendations - Try to obtain at least 3 good recommendations for yourself. Get recommendations from colleagues, clients, and employers who can speak credibly about your abilities or performance. Click “Get Recommended” to be directed to a page that will help you with this process. If you’ve kept in contact with former colleagues, it doesn’t hurt to give them a call to let them know that you’ve sent them a recommendation request and why – they’ll be more likely to do it too.
Connections - Surf through your recommended connections, tap into your contact list, and use LinkedIn’s address book tools to add relevant connections (think current & former associates, classmates, trusted people you have worked with in the past). The more people you are connected with, the more often your profile will appear in search results.
Websites - Add websites to your profile. This will increase Google page rankings which will raise your visibility. You can include your corporate website, RSS feeds, blogs, etc.
Interests - This field should include a few things that you are interested in professionally or personally. Strategically include some appropriate personal info here to show the person behind the profile.
Groups and Associations - Include any professional groups or associations that you are a member of, including national organizations, trade associations, local networking groups or volunteer organizations.
Honors and Awards - Include honors or awards you have received that are related to your professional experience.
Twitter - If you have a Twitter account, add it to your profile
Be sure to select the following:
- Display your Twitter account on your LinkedIn profile - ”Yes, visible to anyone”
- Share your tweets in your LinkedIn status – select ”Yes, share all tweets” if you prefer to not manually update your status periodically. Otherwise, leave as “Share only tweets that contain #in”
Status - Update your LinkedIn profile status regularly with links to articles about you or your company, business accomplishments, etc. If you opted to have Twitter update your status on your profile automatically, you do not need to do this.
Public Profile - LinkedIn allows you to customize your profile’s url. It’s easy to do and makes linking to your profile shorter and easier to remember.
Professional Experience & Goals - This is your elevator speech about you and should give a brief description of what you have done, what you are doing, and the kinds of things you are interested in. If you had to sell yourself, what would you say? It goes here.
Specialties - List keywords that are relevant to your roles, capabilities, and interests that will help you turn up on LinkedIn Search. No personal stuff here, just professional.
Groups - Add relevant groups to your profile. Try doing some group searches for groups that are relevant to you and to your position – or positions you are hoping to get. Answer questions in your field and get active in your LinkedIn groups to establish your expertise, raise your visibility, and to build social capital with people in your network.
Blog Link - Install the Blog Link application. This will automatically update your LinkedIn profile with the latest blogs from your contacts.
resources:
megantime’s brain
megantime’s experience
Ten Tips on Building a Strong LinkedIn Profile
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