Social Media Tips

Social Media Tips

Marketing communications is about two-way engagement and creating conversations. Have a strategy, framework and commit to an ongoing dialogue.

1. Find out what your brand keywords are. Search on Google and your top 10 “hits” in all areas are your brand. List out your top 10 keywords. Use these keywords in all communication. To use keywords that get searched more often check out Google Adwords. Go to Technorati and find out what is being said about you. Sign up to monitor what others are saying with Google alerts, Tweetlater, Tweetbeep.
2. Get your online domains. Sign up for accounts on Facebook, Myspace, Twitter to avoid others using your name. Even if you don’t know what you are going to do yet get your domains now.
3. Use Tweetdeck on your desktop to manage twitter conversations.
4. With marketing and communications, link to videos and photos to make it more visual and interesting. Use Youtube and Flickr.
5. Have a blog or online forum and build a community.
6. Advertise with Google adwords and Facebook for ROI.
7. Be authentic and real as the online community sees right through spin and instantly you’ve lost credibility. Some people are ok about talking about what they had for lunch and others aren’t. Be your brand and personality and engage with your communities.
8. If you are using news releases, use social media releases and connect with bloggers and online sites. Marktetwire, CNW, PitchEngine (free), PRweb are a few resources for this.
9. Have a blog and online policy for employees. Some companies, like Zappos, encourage employees to have Twitter accounts and others encourage participating in blogs and on Facebook. Employees like customers are your community and your brand. Connect with them. See samples of blog policies.
10. Monitor and measure your objectives. Use free services like Google Analytics, TweetStats. Or if you want to pay use Radian6.