Ten Minute Social Media Primer

The Ten Minute Social Media Marketing Primer

A few months ago, I posted a comment regarding a question on LinkedIn. It inspired me to write this piece. Social Media is a fast moving discipline. A simple question put my mental wheels in motion, "Which social media tools should I use in developing a marketing strategy for a small company?"

Most responses were typical: "Social Media needs to be part of your over-all marketing strategy.", "Do strategy first, then see where social media can support it.", "Social Media is not a silver bullet." There were many repetitive cookie-cutter answers like these.

I thought a different question needed to be posed. If "Social Media", "Web. 2.0" (whichever name you prefer) was the only choice available in your marketing tool box, what would you do? Given the current state of the economy and companies' propensity of cutting their marketing programs first (the “We're not selling enough, so we'll stop trying." strategy), this isn't an unreasonable scenario; it's a situation many of us have or will find ourselves in.

Marketing efforts should aim to generate sales leads for a business. A little obvious, yes, but how many times have you seen one of these attempts fall short or lose sight of itself? Be sure to keep this in mind with Social Media marketing as well.

If you haven’t started using the power of social media to attract and retain customers, you need to. However; before you do, remember that social media marketing is going to require daily work to be fresh and relevant. This is real marketing and it takes real work. Assigning it to your administrative assistant to handle it isn’t going to cut it. Figure out your unique value proposition and start communicating it. Most importantly, share information.

The Ten Minute Course

LinkedIn - LinkedIn is your professional business face to the world. If you are not on LinkedIn, you must have been living in a cave the past few years. Get on it! If you are on it, and have not maximized your profile contents, do it today. If all you have as connections on LinkedIn are employees of you current company, or the last one you worked at, you are not capitalizing on it's power. Go through all those business cards of people you have met over the past year, and find them on LinkedIn. You can then get introductions to there connections, and your network grows. Join groups and contribute to discussions. Pose questions. Be active.

Facebook - Facebook is your more personal face to the world. This is where you are a "real person." Facebook is where you chat with people you actually know, and comment on what they are doing. The business power of Facebook comes from Fan Pages. A Fan Page is your customer lounge area on Facebook. This is where you can share news and tidbits about your company. Be careful not to turn your Fan Page into a spam machine churning out useless "buy now!" information. People will drop you, and Facebook will cancel your account. If you want to get some ideas on how to use a Fan Page, become a fan of others! See what others do, and see what some are doing wrong. If you don't like something, chances are other people don't either.

YouTube - YouTube is your 24/7 TV channel, and it is free! If your business has video content, create a channel and post it. If you don't have video, start shooting. Most people don't read anymore. They prefer their information delivered to them in moving pictures. Don't worry about spending a lot of money on professional production. Make sure the lighting is good, and put the camera on a tripod! Shakey cam is the fastest way to have people exit a video.

Twitter - Twitter is the fastest way to communicate to existing or prospective customers, and your social network connections. NEVER use it as an advertising outlet or as a way to push press releases. Twitter is about real conversations with real people. Do use twitter to share your new blog post, YouTube video, or to re-tweet something you found interesting. Re-tweeting is a great way to build followers too. Search for tweets about your company or your industry. Interact with those people. Build relationships.


How do you get followers? Follow them! Search for topics on Twitter and you will find someone tweeting about it. I have found that around 50% of the people I start to follow will follow me.

SocialOomph - One of the more difficult tasks in keeping your social media fresh is finding the time for regular updates or tweets. There are thousands upon thousands of social media accounts that were started with good intentions, but have since gone stagnant. SocialOomph is a great tool that allows you to compose updates, then bulk upload them to be sent out on a schedule. I have used it, and it has proved to more than worth the monthly fee.

TweetDeck - By now you might be asking, "How do you manage all of these social media accounts and how can I easily use them for business intelligence?" TweetDeck is your answer. From a single interface, you can manage LinkedIn, Facebook and multiple Twitter accounts, as well as do key-word searches and a host of other activities.

Blogs - You're smart. You work with other smart people. Between all of you there is some great expertise on what your company can do for potential customers. Find the experts in your company, make a list of topics and start blogging about them. Encourage people to write an hour a day during working hours. Allowing people to share their knowledge is a great way of building employee loyalty as well. BTW - Search engines LOVE blogs. Blogger is owned by Google. Take a wild guess which blogs tend to show up first.

Finally, tie them all together. Have your Twitter and YouTube links on LinkedIn and Facebook. Put a "follow me on twitter" link in your email footer, but use it carefully. Delete it when you don't think it would be welcome. Have a Facebook link on LinkedIn. You get the idea - have everything tied to everything.

This short article was intended to give you some ideas to get going fast with social media. Don't wait until tomorrow, or until someone in the company comes back with a big power point on their analysis of social media. Just get out there and do something today.

ted@greatwater-llc.com