Perspectives & Strategy

Here is your thirty day plan for leveraging social networks to build your business. This is a core part of getting an on-line presence established. It is probably the first thirty days that are the toughest, you are after all getting used to a strange new world. After this period it is largely about maintaining your presence, building a following, responding to people and continuing with your marketing and customer service activity.

1. Sign Up and Settle In to your chosen network
2. Set up your profile and start to define your Social Media image
3. Read around – know what others are doing
4. Connect with some people you know
5. Start posting something
6. Connect with some people who have a large following (super-connectors)
7. Answer a question or comment on someone’s post
8. Add some more connections (find some people in your own specialist area)
9. Have a little fun
10. Ask a question and interact with everyone who responds
11. Follow some of the web links people provide – understand their thinking, likes/dislikes
12. Seek out active people (key users/evangelists) in your field
13. Communicate with active people (answer their questions, comment on their updates)
14. Find comments about your product/brand/company & categorise them
15. Identify the right way to respond to those comments
16. Do some Customer Service (and respond to the comments)
17. Post an update with a link to a web article you like.
18. Manage more questions and answers
19. Combine some on-line and off-line activities
20. Post something challenging for you and of value to connections
21. Have some fun – try some of the features you have never used before.
22. Identify another Social Media site which may is consistent with your goals
(2nd presence)
23. Drive connections to blog posts
24. Build subscriptions on you blog site – this ensures readers come back
25. Concentrate on the elements of your time-line for your second presence
26. Answer questions, debate and introduce blog posts
27. Automate some of your activities
28. Spend a little time each day looking at how to build connections
29. Update your profile, learn from others
30. Connect with people you do not know
31. Have a little more fun

In connecting with people the first port of call is your own contact list – try to find some people that you already know, you will be surprised how many people are already here. It is important to obey the site rules. On some sites a presence must be personal, on others a business or brand persona is permitted. Obey these rules. In connecting to people who have a large following you should be looking for people in your domain of interest – don’t follow stars for the sake of it.

When posting updates it is preferable you link them to a website. There are plenty of strategies about what to post and frequency. Initially it is important just to make a statement to let people know you are present. Sometimes you may need to repeat a post, not word for word, but general ideas. Linking posts to blog pages is a way of adding more information than would be possible in a social media message.

Answering questions, or commenting on someone else’s contribution is important as it is about demonstrating you own knowledge and expertise. If your presence if brand based then the questions/comments must be relevant to the general marketplace of the brand. It is always important to build a dialogue with those who respond to your questions, this builds trust.

The customer service aspects are as important a part of building on on-line presence as any marketing message. At first you must understand people’s motive for commenting on your brand, not everything will be a complaint. Initial analysis is important as it will determine the response given. It may seem daunting at first, but appropriate responses will come naturally over time and they must not appear to be a marketing message. It is important to be honest – if there is a problem admit it and tell them when it is expected to be fixed. Ultimately you should aim to respond quickly (within a couple of hours), but at first it is necessary to understand the best way to respond, so take your time. This is ultimately about intelligent intervention.

Automation is an aspect that can be important – Every blog post I write is automatically posted to a number of social media sites – this informs my followers that I have something new for them – this makes my publication mechanism more effective. Saying one message in multiple places can take up quite a bit of time.