Monday Morning Marketeer, 14 Ways to Add Social Media to Your Marketing Plan

14 Ways to Add Social Media 

to Your Marketing Plan 

There’s so much social media buzz out there and if you check on how many ways that you can just “share” something you will find  334 just on Add This.  So do you Join the Social Media Party or Start Your Own?

Which sites do you want to promote?  You can’t be everything to everyone, you can’t do them all.

My suggestion, first join the party then think about having your own.

If you do not already have a social media marketing plan for your small business, then you need to get one because it is very powerful and inexpensive to augment your marketing using social media.  Social media sites have started to take over the internet and even cellular phones as well. There are direct applications on smart phones for major sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, FourScore, Yelp and more.  Some people have 24/7 access to their social media sites.

Small businesses can use these sites to market products, services, and keep their clientele informed. This is a great way to build up a local small business, an online small business, or even for a larger business. Nearly every business uses some form of social media marketing to help drive traffic to their website and gain new business.

15 Basic and Easy to do Steps to Add 

Social Media to Your Marketing Plan:

1. Decide who is going to be responsible for your social media community, in other words who is going to be the networker at the party?

You can add additional administrators but each person needs to know their responsibility for updating content for your site, Multiple administrators is a good idea, if one person leaves then you can continue.

2. Claim your name on as many social media sites as possible but remember  you are only going to work a few.

3. Select an image that will represent your company, the branding should match your website and your other materials so guests and prospects can identify you.

Important to  select an image that will look good in miniature: think about  the size of a Twitter Profile pic, or how a thumbnail of a Facebook Page looks when the administrator posts something on the Wall.

4. Social media requires time and attention. Regular updates, posts and content are key to your social media community’s success. Come up with a plan for how you’ll communicate through

your social media community before you launch it.

If you’re committed to updating your social community regularly and want it to grow, you should list your social media addresses everywhere  that you list your business website—your brochures, posters, business cards and other printed information. Be sure to include a link to your social media community wherever you list your contact info on your web page.   There are icons for this at Twitter, at Facebook and also LinkedIn.

You may also want to consider listing it as part of your email signature.

5. Any Business Owner Needs a LinkedIn Profile at the Very Least,

Also Key Personnel should have LinkedIn Profiles then register your business.

Join Groups in Your Area and in your niche

In Your Area—to promote local business

In your niche—to monitor your competition

List your linkedin profile in your signature line of all of your e-mail  accounts, put a button on your website and put it on your business card

6. Start Your  Brand Building .  You are the Brand and so are your key employees.  That’s why LinkedIn is so crucial. You should know that this type of plan can work for anything from a flower shop to an internet marketing business and everything in between. Social media is worldwide and used by huge corporations, but it also helps to level the playing field for a small business as well.

7. Get a Twitter Account for your Business

From Twitter Blog

8. Brand building is a huge way to get your small business more recognized and more popular. You need to open a twitter account for your business and actually learn how to use it in your niche. This can be a line of defense for customer service and it can also help you to manage and build a great reputation. It may not always be about promotions, but it is a great way to tune into your market.

   Again Your twitter account should be on your business cards.

· Plan to Follow area businesses, organizations, non-profits, follow friends of friends who follow you.

·  Twitter can be used as a promotion as well and you could get a customer a couple dollars off their bill or a free dessert if they follow you while they are in the restaurant.   Just have them do it on their phone and show a manager. This is a great way to build up followers for a local business.

9. Nearly everybody that is able to access the internet has a Facebook page. This is one of the most popular ways to stay in contact and waste time at work , home, on your cell phone.

· You can leverage this and turn it into business for yourself. Just create a Facebook profile for yourself, and then create a fan page for your business.

·  If you’re trying to publicize a Facebook Page, be sure to secure your vanity URL.  You no longer need 25 fans to get your own vanity URL.  This way you have a  short and sweet easy-to-list URL to include in your overall communications efforts.  Mine for this blog is:  http://facebook.com/MondayMorningMarketeer

· Using the restaurant example, this could be a great way to announce new featured dishes, drink specials, happy hours, and any events you have going on. Just get people in your local area to become fans of your page on Facebook. When they do, their friends will all see it and have the opportunity to become fans as well.

·  Then as you get more accustomed to it:  Use Fan Gate and Landing Pages to track your fans and be able to communicate with then, this is a private application.  You can buy many, but I have one you can use for free.  Iframe and you can download it at http://mattgarret.com

·         

10. If you have a brick and mortar business with a location you should also be on Facebook Places

· Here you can reward people for “checking in”.  Have special deals for check ins.  Great tool as then all of their friends will know they are there and encourage their friends to stop in or frequent your establishment also.

11.    You Should also have a blog attached to your website, for Multimedia marketing, some of your clients or guests are going to want to read, some people write blogs and others read them. Some geeks and consultants recommend WordPress.  I personally recommend Blogpot as it is owned by Google and I don’t think that Google is going to not categorize its own products.  Also there is an ease of using Blogger and I think WordPress requires a little more computer prowess.  However there are advantages as WordPress will allow you to host your own blog on their site for a small fee.

12.Audios or TalkCasts like this show if you do them on a regular basis.

13.In the must-have online marketing checklist for your business: you’ve checked off “website,” “search engine optimization,” “email marketing,” and “social media” (hopefully some type of social presence relevant to your audience). So what other online tool can you use to make an impact?

14. Add Video to your social and digital media marketing plan.

Video:   video capability is the fastest-growing website feature for small-business advertisers--here are some places to post your videos

• Tube Mogul
• Vimeo
• YouTube
• 
  
  
  
  
   

According to Web Strategist Eric Tsai, “Instead of trying to reach broad targets of demographic groups, investing in paid media we find valuable organic content becoming more powerful, ranking higher by search engines and shared by passionate communities.”

Go Figure, the popularity of Reality TV has reached the internet.  At Each One Teach One Conference in Pittsburh, Pa.-----------------------Thornhill spoke that Hollywood is looking for real life stories and places like YouTube and Vimeo have become the place to tell those stories.

    From blog by Eric Tsai, Business Coach and Web Strategist

    At the 2010 Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo, Greg     Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR revealed that:

·  Americans watch more videos a month on YouTube than they conduct searches on Google

·  A video is 50 times more likely to get a first-page Google ranking than a text page

If those finding aren’t stunning, coming from an SEO perspective check out Pew Internet Research’s recent study indicating that “7 in 10 adult internet users (69%) have used the internet to watch or download video. That represents 52% of all adults in the United States.”

 Video is an incredible way to connect with people online.  Until the Internet, the only way to get your video message to a mass audience was to pay for a TV commercial.

·  Storytelling with Video

·  tell a story,

·  provide product demos,

·  customers testimonials

·  Videos can be hosted on your website or these other platforms that can help you go viral: 

• Screencasts —Sometimes You can even create these for free.  Great for online explanations of applications and website. 

Screencast Applications that you can try

·  Camtasia

·  Screenflow (Mac only).

·  http://www.screenr.com-- this one is free

 This is an excerpt from my book.

To purchase the book,

 "Folly of Marketing Plan in Your Head, 101 Compelling Reasons to Write One" 

Click Here:  

This blog post can be reproduced in its entirety with the following information:
© Joanne Quinn-Smith 2011, Monday Morning Marketeer™ 412-628-5048
Listen at:  http://mondaymorningmarketeer.com
Blog:  www.mondaymorningmarketeer.com
Or on its unique radio channel at:
www.positivelypittsburghlivemgazine.com

Joanne Quinn-Smith is the Creative Energy Officer of Dreamweaver Marketing Associates in Pittsburgh,Pennsylvania and an expert on Web 2.0 Branding.
Joanne has also been designated by the 2009 U.S. Small Business Administration as the Small Business Journalist of the Year for her work with information relevant to and advocacy of small businesses.
Follow at:  https://twitter.com/monmornmarketer

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/mondaymorningmarketeer
Phone:  412-444-5197