What’s Your Social Media Plan?
social media QA June 18th, 2010
When I first started my journey with social media, I really wasn’t sure how I wanted to use it and what I wanted to do with it. The more I actually interacted with people, I saw a value in following experts in my industry to gain insight from their knowledge and experience. I watched who they interacted with, and I saw value from reading their posts and questions. From all this I have a short marketing plan (finally!): to use the social media to increase my knowledge while educating the viewers about my company.
Sounds simple? It’s not, really. Using social media is not much different from face-to-face networking or client interaction> The only key element missing is the physical human interaction; meaning, being able to see the person’s reaction to your elevator speech, the head nods of comprehension, and even a dog-lopped head turn of “huh?” when they’re not exactly following the same logic.
This may turn into a series of explorations, but for now I’ll ask a question: when you started your journey in social media, did you develop your marketing plan before or after you began using SM? Please feel free to type a quick note – I look forward to learning from you!
Cheers,
Lisa
June 24th, 2010 at 5:02 PM
Lisa
I don't really have a social media plan and I've been told to follow the leaders in the industry… the more I search the more leaders I find. There are a lot of very successful people out there. How do you determine whom to follow?
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:35 PM
Hello, Ruthan,
First, I apologize for getting back with you so late. I recently moved my blog to Wordpress because I wasn’t getting notified when someone posted a comment! I know you posted a month ago, but I still want to give you my take.
I am a member and advocate of asba, arizona small business association, and within this group there are several classes, or exchanges, the members can take advantage of. One such class is all about social media. I started following this instructor (@jenn_ex), and honestly, some of her friends who are also social media gurus started following me! In finding people to follow, what I try to do is ask other people, “hey – who does your social media?” and see who they recommend. I agree, up front it looks like there are a lot of very successful people, but when you peel back the onion skin you find the same core members are being referred over and over.
One of my criteria is the Twitter page; if someone follows me but they haven’t tweeted in the past week, or if they don’t have a lot of tweets, or if their profile doesn’t look interesting, I may not follow back. Another is the content they are tweeting about; if it doesn’t appear relevant, I may not follow. Another is participation; if it looks like the person is only tweeting about their business and not trying to engage the public besides directing the audience to their latest post, I may not follow.
Since your post, have you come up with your own criteria for following social media folk? If not, I can recommend four people right off the bat: @dbarnhart, @wk4coffee, @jenn_ex, and @cwaterhouse. All excellent social media gurus, all knowledgeable in their field – just great, phenomenal people!