Did You Give A Social Media Party & Forget To Invite The Guests?
05/09/2010
Congrats! you've launched your social media initiative and you did it the right way.
7 Steps To Social Media Success
1. You aligned your organization's culture with the social culture.
2. You understood the impact the social web will bring to your enterprise.
3. You created a strategy that includes objectives, goals, measurable results. You've integrated it into your overall plan.
4. You listened to the social conversations and understood how your customers are engaging and the value you could contribute.
5. You built a content direction that could be maintained for the long-run and across multiple social platforms e.g., blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare and even the next shiny new toy.
6. You have internal and external guidelines in place.
7. You've even identified a social media champion who is respected at a senior management level.
You finally launched and took a celebration sip of a well deserved appletini or double espresso latte. You wait. You wait. You wait. So what happens now? Where are the comments? Where are the RT (retweets)? Where are the atta girl we love your ideas?
Ooops! You gave a social media party and forgot to invite the guests. If you build it they will not come .. unless you tell them. Similar to your traditional website .. social media serves many masters. Not only can it support marketing, public relations, customer service or consumer insights but think of it as an asset unto itself.
Shh .. don't tell .. here's the secret .. the missing piece to the social media puzzle that is frequently forgotten: a promotional strategy must be included with each and every one of your social initiatives.
Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
are beginning to get it with one of the first print ads I've seen that promotes its social media assets - Facebook and Twitter.
However, for me, the customer experience stumbles with the goal of providing only the website url. It's not easy to go to what is promoted - Facebook or Twitter. Once at the site links to Facebook and Twitter are below the fold. Though I might not have found the sweet dedication to their dog Lulu and her pup friends. Max sends woofs!
To help you ease on down the social road ...
18 Easy Tips To Promote Your Social Media Initiatives
1. Add urls to your email signature
2. Add urls to your business card
3. Include in traditional marketing communication materials
4. Include links in all of your social media assets
5. Add links above the fold on your website
6. Add links to the footer or site navigation bar that runs across the site
7. Include in ads - print,digital and broadcast
8. Create a special ad a la Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
9. Include links in your eMail newsletters
10. Drop a Facebook status up date
11. Drop a LinkedIn update
12. Judiciously tweet it out
13. Engage with the social web communities where you 'live' e.g., comment on blogs, @tweets, etc.
14. Include "share this" widget on posts
15. Optimize for key word search
16. Send email updates to your network
17. Add urls in media releases
18. Take online offline .. mention it to colleagues at networking events
Now .. take a sip of 'tini or vino or java and toast to your success!
