Here are some resources related to Making Social Media Work for Your Agency. This page provides links to many of the resources in the presentation – and some extras. Additionally, if you would like ongoing insights and tips about social media and Web marketing, I encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter. And please feel free to contact me if you have questions or if I can be of service to your organization.
– Jeff
Background Materials
One of the key background resources for understanding social media marketing is The Cluetrain Manifesto. This is the source of the “markets are conversations” concept. You can get the full text for free at:
Also, for straightforward, easy to understand explanations of key social Web technologies, it is hard to beat the videos at Commoncraft.com:
- RSS In Plain English
- Blogs In Plain English
- Wikis In Plain English
- Social Networking In Plain English
- Twitter In Plain English
- Twitter Search in Plain English
- Online Photo Sharing In Plain English
- Podcasting In Plain English
- Social Bookmarking In Plain English
- Social Media In Plain English
- Websearch Strategies In Plain English
Listen
Before you dive in and start talking about yourself or your company, learn to “listen” to what is going on out on the Web first. Some key listening tools are:
- Google Alerts: Set up searches on your company name, yourself, key staff, and topics that relate to your market. Google will deliver the results to your inbox or an RSS reader like the free Google Reader. (I recommend using an RSS reader and treating it like a brand “dashboard.” Be sure to use quotes around phrases you enter to ensure that results come back only on the exact phrase.) See How to Get Better News Alerts for tips on how to use more advanced techniques for refining your Google Alerts results.
- Also consider using the search capabilities on Twitter to see if people are talking about you, your organization, or topics that are important to you. You can subscribe to Twitter search so that you can view them in your RSS Reader along with your Google alerts. Use the advanced search capabilities to make your searches more local or filter them in other ways.
- For other listening techniques, see my blog post 10 Tools for Monitoring Your Brand.
Engage
- Consider a blog to help you communicate your expertise to customers and prospects – and give them a way to ask you questions and make comments. WordPress.com is a great free option for setting up a blog. A step up from that is getting a hosting provider to host your own installation of WordPress. Nearly all host now have this capability. It is a bit more involved, but gives you tremendous flexibility. You may want to see my recent post on 10 Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Web Site.
- For video content, consider getting a Flip Video Camcorder. The quality is very good, and it is designed to make it easy to capture video and upload it to YouTube. You can find the WillItBlend videos I referenced at WillItBlend.com. Remember, these were made with very simple equipment and were hugely successful!
- Simple High Value Tip: Put your company’s Web address (i.e., http://www.mycompany.com) within the first several words of the description you enter for each YouTube video.
- Use Twitter as a way to really connect into conversations with your customers and prospects. Register yourself at Twellow and also use it to search others you may want to follow on Twitter. I also recommend the Twitter for Business ebook by John Jantsch. Finally, if you become an avid Twitter user, consider using a tool like Tweetdeck – it makes managing Twitter much easier than using the Twitter Web site.