Social Media in One Hour A Day

Overwhelmed with social media demands? Unclear where to invest your time? Ill informed about the tools that can help? Social media management requires planning, preparation and the right tools, otherwise the demands of social media involvement can consume too much of your most important business resources.....you!


Step I: Decide Where To Concentrate Your Efforts

• You can’t be everywhere at once – start slowly and build
• The most frequented social media sites are, in order: facebook, twitter, youtube, linkedin, wikipedia, flickr and blogs - after pinpointing the best networks, spend time developing a working understanding of each (E.G., What it’s about, its features and how users interact within the space)
• Learn best practices from industry experts
• Before starting, be sure to secure your brand’s username on each site and check to make sure no one else is illegitimately representing your organization
• A simple search on google ornamechk (http://namechk.Com/) will tell you if your preferred username is available

Step II: Define Objectives and Strategy – Establish Quantifiable Goals

What are you looking to get out of this investment today and in the future? What steps do you need to take to make it happen? Consider how to:

• Expand brand or product awareness: how you will get your brand name out there (advertising, promotion, integration with other media, blogger outreach, and initiation of peer sharing and user-generated content campaigns, etc.)
• Build community: how you will attract fans (awareness building, advertising, promoting, appealing to a specific target audience, etc.) and keep them engaged (tailored content plans, tone, frequency and types of interactions, special offers and activities, etc.
• Engage qualify fans and convert them to customers: how you will solicit information from users (surveys, contests, facebook applications, conversation starters, measured content views, data mining and analytics, etc.) and use that insight to further the relationship (sales team involvement, product sampling, boosting the one-to-one nature of the conversation, etc.)
• Improve customer satisfaction: how you plan to offer exceptional service and support, and how you will go above and beyond their expectations

Step III: Measure Your Efforts Against Factors That Impact The Bottom Line

• Number of fans, followers, readers (or number of high-quality/targeted fans)
  
• Number of video or other content views
  
• Volume of user comments posted to your blog, profile or posted content
  
• Retweet or peer-sharing statistics for related content and posts
  
• Comment or retweet resonation (number of user comments multiplied by how many followers or friends each user has)
  
• Engagement (duration of video views, time spent on your blog site, time spent playing your branded game application, etc.)
  
• Media coverage
  
• Media impressions (mentions on blogs or other media multiplied by the size of the audience)
  
• Advertising click-through rates
  
• Company website traffic statistics
  
• Quantity of new qualified leads or sales
  
• Volume of customer service issues handled.

Step IV: Research Available Tools - Select The Appropriate Ones Based On The Task At Hand

• Listening - use tweetdeck, google alerts
• Networking - use seesmic desktop,plaxo
• Publishing - use friendfeed, social oomph, twit pic, tiny url, tweetbeep, mobile twitter, ping fm
• Sharing - use stumble upon, del.icio.us, digg
  
  

Stay informed; social media constantly changes - continuous learning will enhance your success