Social Media Where Do You Start?

“Recently I asked a simple question to my community:

“What would be your best advice for someone brand new to social media?”

The response was huge! So here in no particular order are some of the many responses I got!

Gianluigi Cuccureddu, Web Marketing Strategist & Tactician: “Start listening and learning right now.Social Media/participatory marketing is here to stay, start researching how your target audience behaves and how it can help your business to achieve objectives. Start now because these insights aren’t created overnight, it takes time, patience and efforts to learn.”

Roxanne Weber, Principal , Dimension Solutions: “I’ve told business clients in the past to just start out slow. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will your social network.
Start with one major social media effort (such as Facebook and/or Twitter), then build that up as best you can. Then move on to the next site; ideally you’ll be able to hook all these sites into one (although this is impossible to do 100%). Lastly, don’t expect connections to come to you – most people with 500+ Twitter followers get them by following others first, or joining groups designed for follow-sharing. In the digital world it is NOT true that “if you build it, they will come”. Like the real world, you have to actively work at building your network following.”

Jennifer Hoffmann, Manager, Customer Engagement for Dow Jones & Company: “Lots of great answers here! If your aim is to specifically build a community around issues relevant to your customers, listen first to what is being said and explore different forums that your customers participate in. Some interesting areas might emerge that you hadn’t considered before. In a funny example, my husband recently became a fan of “bacon” on Facebook. There is an entire fan page devoted to plain old bacon, the pork product. Now wouldn’t it be brilliant if that page were run by Oscar Meyer or Hormel? Unfortunately, I don’t think it is. Simply creating a group doesn’t mean all your customers and prospects will flock to it – start by adding value to other groups and build your network, then ask people to join your party.”

Scott Halstead, Manager, Event Marketing at The Boston Globe:”My best advise is not to be a talker, but respond to the hard work that people put in to pulling information and providing good content. Twitter has attracted some very smart people and given them the opportunity to share ideas, but the best people also comment on other peoples good ideas.”

Josh Chernin, GM at Web Industries: “Be as helpful to others as you can. It will come around…”pay it forward”. (I love this one!)

So, what I see as the common theme in most of the responses: Listen and be helpful. I could not agree more!

What is your advice?