Here’s a recent presentation I did with fellow Social Media Club Niagara colleague, Robin McPherson, titled “How Twitter Changed Our Lives and What This Means For Your Business“.
Topics included:
- Top Twitter Strategies
- Best Practices (with examples)
- Tools and tips to increase @replies, RT, and click-throughs, and followers
- Tons of research, metrics, and resources on Twitter.
It pulls from real case studies, including our own experience. To advance slides on the presentation, just hover the mouse over the right-hand side of the displayed slide and click. Also, if you weren’t able to attend our the meeting in September, here is the video (see below).
About the Author:
Mitch Fanning is VP of Strategy & Business Development for Fruition Interactive, a professional member of Social Media Club, and founding member of Social Media Club Niagara. He’s spent 10 plus years working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands – to B2B companies – to some of Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100. Follow Mitch on his adventures in new media here at [mitchellfanning.com].
At today’s Social Media Club Niagara meeting we’re exploring the topic of online community building. So in honor of the great panel we’ve got lined up who are:
I’m going to share my list of 38 bullet-proof community-building tips. For starters, I’m not going to get into the reasons why you need to build an online community.
I’m going to assume that for those of you who are reading this or attending tonight’s meeting you see the value in this. For those that don’t, ignore the following at your own peril. Feel free to repost all or any of this, but if you do, please give credit to this link.
I’ve broken them done into 3 categories: mind-set, foundation, social media. I’ve only given myself an hour do bang this off so here goes.
15. Forget about monetization and SEO (for now). However, if you must experiment with SEO (and you’re a complete “newbie”) this free 27-page report (affiliate link) by Copyblogger founder Brian Clark gives you a basic strategy for creating content that ranks well in search engines.
BUILD YOUR FOUNDATION
16. Build your team: Strategist, Community Manager, Legal, Privacy/Security, Employees. If you don’t have the resources see #2.
17. Educate yourself: Permission-based marketing, content creation, email, search, blogs, micro-blogs, podcasts, social networks, wikis, widgets, apps. Before you say “why this or why that” learn about all the available tools. The bell has rang, it’s back to school for you.
18. Listen: Join a club, start listening to what really smart people in the “space” are saying and doing, get yourself setup on Google Reader Pay attention.
19. Determine strategy: After listening and finding out where your customers play online decide on what you want to accomplish. How will things be different afterwards? Imagine the endpoint and you’ll know where to begin.
19. Build a home: Before you even think about Facebook or Twitter build your home. Your home is the hub where everyone comes to visit and chat. Your home could be a website with a community forum, a blog, video blog, landing page with social media integrated into it. Bottom line, it’s something you control (via hosting and branding), is relevant to your audience, can generate discussion, and be easily shared.
20. Be ready to put in the time: One thing that’s often overlooked when discussing community-building is the work that’s involved. It’s a slow process and takes work (but it’s worth it!). Get an egg timer and be disciplined with your time spent online as it can be addictive .
22. Adopt a company-wide publishing model: Change the way you think about content output. Start delivering content through multiple outputs and creators – tweets, photos, podcasts, content packages, etc. Instead of one output (you), there should be 5, 10, or even 20 pieces of content being created by multiple people (you, community manager, freelance writers, employees) at the same time. What if your entire company told your brand story?
23. Repurpose, Repurpose, Repurpose: Too many companies reinvent the ‘content wheel’ for every content outpost they maintain. A better approach is to create a content ecosystem that allows you to repurpose and cascade your best information.
24. Be consistent with your content.
GET ‘SOCIAL‘
25. Choose a global user name for all social media channels (i.e. mitchfanning, your company name, NOT coolguy63). First impressions count.
26. Choose a good picture of yourself and keep the same picture for all profiles.
27. Before setting up any social media profile, go to other people’s blogs you follow and add to their conversation. Remember, using social is about having conversations. Does it really matter where they are started?
On Facebook Pages & Communities (compliments of Mari Smith)
28. Monitor your mentions: As part of your routine brand monitoring efforts, experiment with www.youropenbook.org, www.kurrently.com and Facebook’s own deep search feature to search for your various keywords and company name.
29. Appease the naysayers:Look for any negative mentions of your brand and, depending on the severity of the negativity, reach out to these individuals. See how you can listen to their complaint, take remedial action and turn them into fans.
30. Find your Super-fans: Email them on Facebook and/or search for them on other social media channels, and contact them as well. See how you can reward, incentivize and empower these individuals to become you super-fans.
31. Just follow Mari Smith – if anyone knows Facebook it’s her .
34. Just make money, then the boss won’t ask about ROI any more.
35. Your customers might not be on Twitter. Use rapleaf to find them.
36. Spamming us repeatedly is okay. We just unfollow you.
37. For more, read this post – 50 Power Twitter Tips by Chris Brogan . When it comes to Twitter, I like his approach. Just don’t tell him I said that.
38. Based on where your audience is and what they find useful, use as many social tools as you can manage properly with consistent, regular, and useful content creation (i.e. 1-2 blog posts per week, 5-10 tweets per day, 2-3 updates on Facebook). Re-purposing content will help in this process.
What have I missed?
Update: Here’s the video of the panel discussion (length approx: 24 min)
About the Author:
Mitch Fanning is an online marketing and social media practitioner. He’s spent 10+ years (and put in his 10,000 hours) working with businesses of all sizes, from global brand (NBC.com, Nestle) to Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100, creating, selling, implementing both traditional and digital marketing opt-in strategies.
Okay, so you’re eager to harness the awesome power of the Internet and social web to connect with your customers, increase brand awareness, and generate sales.
Great! Now what?
Well, in a crowded marketplace, you need to convert awareness into trust, conversation, and loyalty. To be successful, you must learn how to ‘be social’ online and deliver compelling branded content that encourages action.
‘Being’ social is not about the media or tools you use. It’s about being authentic, helping others get what they want, and empowering individuals who connect with your message to spread it further.
Now that blogging and social media have become popular methods for connecting and sharing content, your ability to ‘be social’ and deliver compelling and unique branded content is what will set you apart from the crowd.
The Same Rules Apply in Both the Real and Digital World
Over time, you start to get a sense of what works and what doesn’t (…I think this is called “wisdom?!”) For me, It all started back in 2003 when I became self-employed as a marketing professional.
I immediately ran into two hurdles: 1) I had little experience (only 3 years out of University) and 2) the end of the month was coming very quickly! I scraped by financially in my first year because I was able to build a small, but strong circle of influence through networking (this was before Facebook and Twitter existed).
My network didn’t just build itself overnight.
It was a slow process (I’m still working on it). However, I realized something important very early on. Most people whom I met through networking events just handed me their business card or tried to ‘pitch’ me their goods. This approach made me want to turn and run as quickly as possible.
I decided to take a different approach.
I would first help others get what they want (yes, even the ‘snake oil’ salesman). Once I understood their business I’d try to help them anyway I could. Using this approach, I developed a small, but strong network that focused on the quality of the connections and the conversation and less on the quantity.
What does this have to do with social media?
Everything.
If you jump on a Blog, Facebook Page or Twitter account and spam everyone with useless content or your sales pitch people will run away – fast!
If you use new media, however, as a way to help others and deliver compelling branded content you will make friends, fans, advocates, and ultimately, loyal repeat customers.
As the pace of technology and the social web landscape increases, it’s imperative that you develop your own platform, audience, and micro community by consistently providing them with infectious branded content and value.
Hopefully, my enthusiasm has come through and you feel inspired to join us at our first meeting today for free (May 27th) at 5pm at Dom’s Pasta & Grill.
If not, follow the conversation here on Twitter –> #smcniagara
About Social Media Club Niagara:
Social Media Club Niagara brings people together from the community who ‘get social media’ to share with everyone who has a passion to learn, share and network. It’s fun, casual and informative. Like other Social Media Clubs around the world, we‘re excited about Social Media and we care enough about this growing medium to encourage a high standard of practice among industry professionals, as well as end users.
SMC Niagara meets monthly around the Niagara Region at some of the trendiest and hip locations in the area to socialize (we have to have a bit of fun too) and share the up-to-date information concerning social media strategies, case studies, best practices and resources.
Mitch Fanning is an “available-for-hire” online marketing and social media practitioner. He runs three6media, a “new marketing” consulting firm that advises small to mid-sized businesses how to use content marketing and social media to encourage members of their target audience to become advocates and join their tribe of loyal repeat customers.
He’s spent 10+ years (and put in his 10,000 hours) working with businesses of all sizes, from global brand (NBC.com, Nestle) to Canada’s fastest growing Internet companies ranked in the PROFIT 100, creating, selling, implementing both traditional and digital marketing opt-in strategies.
Click here to contact Mitch directly. Or skip right through the garden and grab Mitch’s RSS Feed right here.
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