Rise has delivered success to its clients in many different areas of internet marketing: search engine optimization, pay-per-click, display, email marketing and more.  Recently, we’ve turned our eyes to social media and it’s an area we’re very excited about.

Social media isn’t all that new, but the topic is still one that stumps some businesses and is shunned by others.  Many businesses today know that they need to have some kind of social media presence, but beyond that, many are clueless.  Here are some simple guidelines for deciding how to implement social media and what to do before and during that process, both generally and for internet marketing agencies.

1. Know Your Audience

Rather than pushing content out until you’re blue in the face, stop and take the time to figure out who it is you want to reach.  This will inform your larger strategy.  There are optimal times to tweet to reach the general audience and get the most impressions possible, but if you’re trying to reach students who are in class all day, or busy professionals who only check social media sites during lunch and at the end of the day, these are things you need to consider. Your audience should determine what sort of information you’re putting out there.  While many people have diverse interests, people following Jeep aren’t looking for weather updates, unless you have a creative way of incorporating that into your brand.  Say for example, a post that says “For stormy weather like today, the Jeep Wrangler with 4-wheel drive and on-board navigation is perfect.  Check it out here.”  You shouldn’t be pushing out content just to have something to put out.  Strive to make connections between your audience and your brand.  Don’t talk just to make noise; no one will listen.

2. Know Yourself

In line with knowing your audience is knowing your own brand: what you stand for, what you want to stand for and what you excel at.  Just because other brands are doing something in social media doesn’t mean that you have to.  If it doesn’t line up with your core values, your brand or your expertise, you likely shouldn’t adopt it.  Instead, focus on who you are as a brand or company and incorporate that into your social media activity.  It’s a sure-fire way to stand out from the crowd and stretch your creativity to trends that work for you, which will make for more engaging posts and thus, more interested followers.

3. Make Relationships Count

It isn’t enough to have 1,000 friends on Facebook or 3,000 Twitter followers; you have to engage with them.  These are not just people there to receive your message and disseminate it amongst their friends for no reason.  These are potential customers with whom you want to have a relationship.  Don’t just focus on pushing out content and leave it at that.  If someone retweets your post or comments on something on Facebook, acknowledge it!  Thank them for what they said or for sharing your post with their friends.  Each and every follower or friend is an opportunity to build a relationship and expand your reach; if you’re not engaging with them, you’re wasting both time and opportunity.  Bottom line: if you’re not going to interact with your social media audience, you shouldn’t bother to have a presence.

4. Get Corporate Buy-In

Many businesses have realized how valuable it can be to have a social media presence and have hired people dedicated to managing this presence.  They post updates to Facebook, Tweet to their followers and write blogs for the masses.  So why isn’t it working for them?  In many cases, it’s a question of corporate buy-in: getting everyone in the company to embrace the idea of social media for the brand.  It’s a challenge for one person to just manage the comments on a business’ Facebook page, let alone create all of the content for it.  Take the time to explain to everyone – not just the marketing department – the value of social media and create ways for everyone to get involved.  If every person in the company embraces social media and is encouraged to bring ideas to the table, more compelling content will be generated, which will bring in a greater audience.  New opportunities for social media strategy will be created that just one person couldn’t have thought of on his or her own.  At Rise, every single employee is encouraged to blog, from interns to our CEO, Jon Morris.  It makes everyone feel involved and invested, spurs new ideas and ultimately, is good for business.

5. Reach Across Channels

Social media is not just about posting to Facebook or Tweeting.  It’s not even just about engaging with consumers and targeting the right people.  To make a truly successful social media strategy, you have to reach across channels and incorporate ideas and insights from other sources you might not have thought of.  Keyword research is not just for SEO and PPC.  Research keywords that are relevant to your brand and consumers to use in your material.  If your target audience is searching for them and you’re not using them, you’re not as relevant as you could be.

6. Control Yourself

Teddy Roosevelt once famously said, “Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”  This quote actually originated as an African proverb and was used by Roosevelt to encourage peaceful negotiations without violence, while making the unspoken threat of a strong military (the “big stick”), but it applies here as well. Twitter is different from Facebook in that you can post much more content without overloading followers, but that doesn’t mean you should Tweet all day long—even if you do have interesting, relevant things to say.  At a certain point, messages become lost and your audience doesn’t have the chance to engage with you.  Some businesses create editorial calendars, which allows them to plan ahead on what content and how many posts should go out each day, but you don’t have to be this formal about it.  So even though you can tweet 50 times a day and find sources that support this kind of behavior, it’s not always the best thing for your company.  When in doubt, refer back to “Rule 2” and realize that there comes a time when you need to back away from the “Tweet” button.

Tags: Facebook, Social Media, Twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 9th, 2011 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Facebook, Social Media, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.