50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice
You’ve told the boss that you’re going to implement social media stuff for your organization, and in your mind, you’ve decided that means an account on Twitter and a blog. Maybe there’s a bit more to it than that. For instance, what are your goals? Are you there to show customers and prospective new customers that you care? Are you there to solve customer issues? Are you building awareness and attempting new forms of digital marketing? Knowing this up front makes a world of difference.
In the mean time, here are some things you might consider for when it comes time to implement. They range from ideas for starting out, things to augment your efforts with, writing ideas, next steps, and metrics. You’re welcome to share this with others. Please link back to [chrisbrogan.com] and especially this post if you use it.
50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice
- If you’re blogging, make that a home base for all your other efforts.
- Re-read the “passports” section of this post and use it to think about your blog promotion efforts.
- Pick 3 social networks to join based on where your customers might be. 3 might sound like too few, but it probably will be too many.
- On those networks and on your “passport” accounts, make sure you link everything back to the blog.
- Get a second (maybe even a 3rd) person in the company to build accounts on these places. Nice to have backups, in case you get busy.
- Build an editorial calendar to think about your posting schedule and subject matter.
- Subscribe to 50 or more blogs in a similar space as yours, including competitors, and any industry blogs.
- On all your presence points, be human, and write a human-sounding profile. Use a human-seeming profile picture. (Did I mention “human?”)
- After you’ve written your first blog post, take some time to comment on some of those 50 blogs, but NOT about your first post.
- Set up a few searches as explained in this post.
- Make sure it’s easy for people to subscribe to your blog, via a reader and also via email. (Nearly 50% of my blog subscribers are receiving [chrisbrogan.com] in email).
- Run periodic checks of your blog/site using Website Grader to see if you’re technically sound and findable.
- Use tagging and other metadata to improve your blog’s search features. Most newer blog software has this built in. If not, look for plugins.
- For whatever reason, graphics in posts improve audience. Check out Flickr’s Creative Commons pool for how to use which kinds of graphics appropriately.
- Consider a nice clean theme for your blog’s design. There are many free themes for different blogs, and some inexpensive ones like Thesis that are worth every penny.
- Outside of your blog, be sure to update/refresh the information on your social networks every two or three weeks. USE the networks more often, but refresh your profiles and other info.
- Seek out opportunities to guest post on more popular blogs in your space. Don’t be spammy and over-link to your own site/posts. Add value.
- On social networks, look for ways to contribute, even when it’s not directly related to your company/product.
- Continue building relationships outside of having a specific need. Don’t ONLY try to build relationships with customers, for example.
- Remember that social networks are a great place to look for hiring prospects, competitors, etc.
- To create consistent content, read daily, and not just for your industry. Skim, synthesize, and post.
- Use notepad files to jot post ideas down when you don’t have a moment to write. Return frequently.
- Riff off other blog posts you like, and add some value beyond linking back to those original posts (and always link back to those posts).
- Go to the grocery store news stand and find popular magazines. Convert their story titles to blog post titles for your field. (Hat tip Brian Clark, who taught me this).
- Skim news aggregator sites like Reddit or Digg (or what’s appropriate to your industry), and create posts from there.
- Ask your audience what they need, what they’re struggling with.
- Revisit a month of posts and see what you’ve covered the least.
- Think about things your customers/stakeholders/prospects might need and write about that, even if it’s a bit off-topic.
- Check your stats to see what people are searching for, and address it.
- Use these blog topics posts for inspiration. (Wow, I write on that a lot).
- Look into creating additional materials like an ebook or online course from your best materials.
- Branch out your blogging into video and audio where appropriate.
- Look into building a community platform around your content platform.
- Invite your audience in to guest post where appropriate.
- Add social bookmarking plugins like Add This to your blog to improve distribution.
- Look for cross-promotional opportunities for like-minded blogs in your space.
- Consider starting groups on your social networks (such as a Facebook group) to further discuss the space you’re covering.
- Remember to comment on other people’s blogs frequently, and show your participation in the communities where you have presence.
- Occasionally produce PDF versions of your better posts and email them to customers and prospects to encourage growing your audience.
- Consider a conversion engine like a free offer to help sort prospects from fans and audience.
- Move towards measurements quickly, as these are often where companies decide their vote.
- Create a simple report on how you will report what you’re doing for upper management.
- Work out which numbers might matter. Comments received. Links in. Times bookmarked?
- Rank each blog post on effectiveness based on your own criteria. Review weekly and monthly.
- Figure out a “downstream” metric that drives real business value. Reduce costs to call center? Sales leads?
- Never count # of friends or # of followers as a valuable metric. It’s quality in that case.
- As soon as you can, find ways to tie your numbers to marketing and sales numbers where appropriate.
- Move to automate the numbers collection parts early. Keep the sentiment reporting parts human.
- Set 3 month goals to review progress with upper management. Determine if this is having any impact.
- Though these last 10 tips are about numbers, NEVER treat people like numbers in social media.
Your mileage may vary, and some of this advice ranges from dead simple to over-simplified. It will also require some customization, depending on your industry, goals, and interests. But consider it a starting point.
What else would you add?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Comments
PS here’s ten more not sure if they are on the list - but ten things in ten minutes
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/04/nptech-tag-su-1.html
I would add setup listening tools (mentioned plenty in this blog) to consistently monitor the conversation to step in where appropriate. Google Alerts for web, delicious subscriptions for bookmarking, tweetscan for twitter.
Really well-put together post. Not much else I can think of, only to add something like using Tweetstats and tagcrowd.com (or something similar) to more effectivly monitor what you are talking about most frequently, and how this compares with you’re blogging aims before you started.
I agree with Cameron on the listening tools point. In many cases you can use these as an early warning device for issues that would otherwise blind-side you and/or your organization.
I noticed the majority of these steps relate to blogging (or at least they seem to me to be related to it.) I think this makes a lot of sense because blogging is such a good entry point into using social media tools. Plus, if done effectvely, can show the human-side of businesses/organizations. I think that people trust people not companies. Thanks for sharing.
This is certainly an excelent checklist. I would add that succesful bloggers/social media mavens have a high “relational coefficient”. They are people you would certainly like to meet and talk to.
Tactics would not compensate for a dry or bitter personality because the moment of truth comes when the audience decides to continue reading and come back.
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Hi Chris,
I’ve really enjoyed reading all your posts in this series–super valuable info….
One thing though about upper management. Upper management may have unrealistic goals for their social media. They may be expecting tons of comments and lots of “readers” (interpreted from page views) pretty early in a social media campaign. They may not understand the amount of time it may take to build traffic and interest. So, it’s important to help upper management understand the time it takes to develop soc. media and to set realistic goals. Don’t allow upper management (or p.r. firms or marketing firms with no soc. media experience) to set numbers-oriented goals.
And always ask them if they’ve seen a change in their business! If they’ve seen a change in their business (more inquiries with a few converting to sales) then they have made their impact. Doesn’t matter if they have 1,000 readers/commenters a day or 100 or even 10. It’s more a matter of the overall effectiveness, not numbers.
I’m usually pretty critical of you because I think you spend too much time on the conceptual and not the practical or the execution. This was an EXCELLENT post and got me thinking about things that I need to add to strategies I am developing for people.
Great Post - I particularly like point 11. We haven’t really promoted subscribing by email on our blog - it’s probably about time we did!
This might seem obvious but make sure you link to your social media profiles on your blog as well as the other way round. We have got some Twitter followers this way that probably don’t subscribe to our RSS yet but get all our updates through their Twitter so they’re still involved.
Hey Chris, despite what Amanda Chapel thinks…I still love your 50 lists! You must be giving Tom Peters a run for his money…soon he will be quoting you! Hope you are well…
Excellent list…love that it is centered around building relationships…truly the only way to ensure sustainability. It is called “social” media for a reason. I am currently creating a method for linking a company’s strategic plan to their social media efforts. Find it helps reduce the black hole factor…as in “wow, it is 3 pm and I haven’t done anything but tweet and plurk!”
Great list Chris.
For #21, consider Hittail. It does a nice job of showing you what people are searching for and even suggesting topics. The topic suggestions are usually a bit off base, but they sometimes serve as idea starters.
~Jim
Nice. This is an awesome list. The inclusion of the discussion of metrics is an important part, because we need to be aware of it.
In a corp environment, management wants to see RESULTS, ROI, and some other R. The important part of that discussion is pegging the right metrics.
Good food for thought.
Excellent article, I will refer my readers to this.
Thanks again Chris!
Dr. Wright
Wright Place TV Show
http://www.wrightplacetv.com
http://www.twitter.com/drwright1
Chris, stop it. RIGHT NOW. You’re going too fast. Putting out too much good stuff. I can’t process it all. I have too many things of yours bookmarked.
Just kidding, man. Drinking from your fire hose is a blast, pun intended. Keep it up.
Wow that’s a long list, but very detailed, and extremely helpful. I also send out emails to some bloggers I think are doing an awesome job. When commenting, I would suggest using a popular post as your URL, and not the actual index.
I’ll definitely be featuring you in social media week over at DD, so check it out.
Love tip 3. The shotgun approach so many people use with social networking sites is for one too difficult to manage in reality. Any suggestions of one place where you might be able to research different types of audiences on different types of SM sites? Or is it best to go with your gut/personal experience?
Great list and I especially like the blog comment about keeping it visual whether with a photo of your own or a CC photo via Flickr.
[…] 50 Steps to Establishing a Consistent Social Media Practice | chrisbrogan.com - Nice post from Chris Brogan summarizing steps to put a social media strategy into practice for your company. […]
Extensive useful list for every blogger. Some ideas like profile updating helps enormously. Link building should be a continous process. Web 2.0 helps in this regard.
[…] establecer una estrategia consistente en el mundo social media. Link. Estas leyendo “Social Media: Paso a paso” publicado el Lun, 28 Julio 2008 por matias y […]
Excellent post. Great tips…I especially love #5, because in the day-to-day operations, it’s easy to get bogged down. Two (or three) heads are better than one.
Chris, this is some awesome stuff, and I want to add my two cents with an article I wrote for PC World about how to get up and running with business social networking. It’s really a beginners’ guide for people who haven’t event started.
http://www.sparkminute.com/?p=305
Plus, a presentation I just posted up on Slideshare is featured on its front page. It’s entitled “The Social Media Fallacy” and it debunks the traditional way social media is being sold and offer a more sane and logical approach to developing industry voice to grow your business.
http://www.sparkminute.com/?p=391
Great list, Chris. I plan to print it and utilize the ideas on my personal blog.
One small thing, however: Instead of using Notepad “to jot post ideas down when you don’t have a moment to write,” I recommend a free online tool like Google Docs or Google Notebook. That way you have access to those ideas whether you’re at home or work, on your own computer or not.
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Interesting list Chris but in my experience so many companies here in the UK are so behind when it comes to social media. Many cannot even see social networks or blogs at work because of really restrictive firewalls. And a key concern for them is the time it will take to staff up all these new ventures. Not all companies are dragging their feet though and I think it will take an online crisis or two to jump start a lot of organisations.
Great list!
I especially like tip 3. In fact, I work with small nonprofit camps that can really benefit from social media. But they are so understaffed I recommend focusing on just 1 platform at first (not even 3). They can choose based on where their alumni and other constituents are already active. If successful, they can add other social media sites to add a presence, if it makes sense.
Keep up the great work,
Kevin
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You touch on this with your “be human. . . HUMAN!” point, but I’d go as far as saying be entertaining. Humor has remarkable power in communicating information in the social media world.
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Good list, Chris. I would add: get your co-workers/employees involved and participating on at least one of the three SNS you picked. Good example: Zappos. http://twitter.zappos.com/ (Repost because I stupidly commented on a Google Reader share instead of here or on your blog)
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Chris -- I need to borrow your brain for a few weeks. You the man!
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Thank you so much for all of your great posts on social media. I like the various suggestions on measurement, the focus on the networks YOUR customers hang out and remembering email. So many posts seem to forget not everyone prefers Twitter or RSS feeds. I know I tend to forget. :) I agree with Hao Chen, remember co-workers and employees involvement. The front line folks have great insight to customers and will probably be a great resource in learning what social networks are important to your customers. Also, employees may already be involved in these networks. Take advantage of that passion. These tend to be the best human voice for your company. Great job and look forward to more on this! Jill
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Could you be less productive? I've listened to 8 of your podcasts in the last 8 hours, plus reading your blog and clicking all the links...downloaded Adobe Digital Library to store your free reports and ebooks, referred my blog readers to your blog.. and that's one top of reading the 20-some other blogs I'm addicted to... I'm exhausted... Must get sleep...
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Excellent stuff
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Great job! Thanks for taking the time to make such a detailed list.
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very well written Chris!
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favorite - Pick 3 social networks to join based on where your customers might be. 3 might sound like too few, but it probably will be too many.
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There's that word I love: consistent. ;-)
Let’s see if nonprofit folks can add to your list
http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2008/07/50-fabulous-ste.html