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 people’s good ideas. For example, if you saw the success of a Truck Advertising NYC campaign on social media, it might be wise to reflect upon that in your own social media space.”
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?
Great insight, I love the way you gathered it from other experts ๐
I have gone into a bit more detail with my mini-tutorial Social Media 101 Basics
http://ims-seo.blogspot.com/2009/01/social-media-…
Thanks! Why listen to me when there are so many smart people out there!
Victor thanks for the link! You nailed really well in your post!
My advice would be build a strategy first , map communities and THEN listen.
Just listening or "opening a social media window and let people" in a very risky bet and to me a wrong approach.
Let's explain with an example.
Take "personal computer":
If you got some experience with the social COMMUNITIES in this domain, you already know that the open source/ linux community is much better networked, organized and vocal than any other.
If you just listen, you may be overwhelmed by the volume of conversations around this topic and, if this community is not your target market, you're missing the point.
(Look at Dell Ideastorm and you will realize that the Linux community represent a huge share of the voice in this portal although it's just a small fraction of the market).
Another example: in the Cosmetic sector, in France, the most vocal community is the "bio / hand made". This is a great community to listen to … if you're selling bio products or ingredients and it's a huge market. However some people sell other products, specially when they are exclusive brand. If you digg deeper you can find out where this different audience hangs out, but it takes much more that listening. (I've done it ๐ ).
I see many companies that do not realize that selecting who you listen to is a strategy and that for most of them, listening to the most vocal or the better organized is a wrong starting point.
Social Media like Marketing starts with strategy.
Dominic, nice take on that. I like what your saying, you have a very good point about listing being overwhelming.
Great Examples! Thanks for sharing and good points
I have to say I agree to some extent with Dominic — I riffed / spoofed on "A Day in the Life" behind the TweetDeck earlier today on my own blog. Purpose before action. The consequences of missing this step can be overwhelming, confusing — and will leave too many with the "deer in the headlights look." Just like we used to define our target market demo before going off and buying lists (remember those days?) now we have to define their communities… understand those communities' issues, and start to build credibility authority slowly. Not for the In-Grat (instant gratification) crowd!
Nice spoof by the way! I saw that earlier today!
Social Media is complex. I would say decide what your goals . Listening is part of it but to effect change you need to know the rules of relationships and the role of your brand. Are you part of the conversation or hosting the platform on it? This advice is very generic and may not produce results. Sometimes limited disruptive actions produce a great result. You need to decide your intention. Social media is media and can be used in a variety of ways. The number one mistake that companies make is making a dull ineffective attempt at building a community when they should be taking action.
You said it great with your last sentence! "The number one mistake that companies make is making a dull ineffective attempt at building a community when they should be taking action." Well put