John S. Wolfe

Ten miscellaneous ideas from the recent Social Media AZ and Social Media Club events:

1. Greg Chapman of Sitewire: Objective in marketing (and social media) is to be found, be liked and be known. For each medium, engage customers in a way that creates: Awareness, Consideration, Interaction, Loyalty and, ultimately, Advocacy.
2. Would you like to be considered an authority in your field? Cultivate it as a “thought leader” on issues facing the industry. Then identify the influencers in the industry and interact with them.
3. Identify your target audience and understand the user experience you want to provide. How will you reach them? Is there a way to invite your customers to engage with you on Facebook? Twitter? Foursquare? YouTube?

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4. Matt O’Brien of Mint Social: Have you considered your marketing strategy based on your customers’ psychological profile? Individuals’ dominant characteristics can be separated into four groups (and the media most likely to resonate):
   1. Emotional buyer: Likes success stories, testimonials, helping, humanistic, solving problems (Likes blogs, forums)
   2. Spontaneous buyer: Wants to be entertained, looks to influencers for guidance (Wants visuals like PowerPoints, videos, and photos)
   3. Analytical buyer: Wants information, details, features, data (Needs case studies, white papers, charts and graphs)
   4. Competitive buyer: Wants to be empowered, to get an advantage, get control, get results, improve the bottom line (Wants any information to be short and to stick to the facts)
5. Understand the “long tail” of rankings in Google. A simple white paper on an industry topic can be turned into a video, then a blog, then an audio file of the blog, then ezine text, and then a PowerPoint to put on Slideshare. From there, bring it to the social networks.
6. Blogs + Stats + Photos = Massive social relevance
7. 5 Parts of ROI: Increase mentions and links, Increase traffic to a Call for Action, Increase keyword rankings, Build an online community, and Increase in-bound inquiries.

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8. Cindy Kim of JDA Software: In planning a content strategy for your organization, do an audit to know what you have and don’t have.
9. Create your content and then syndicate across all channels. Use an editorial calendar for the year that identifies these channels and incorporates additional outlets like email and a LinkedIn presence.

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10. Mike Corak of Tallwave: You can find your customers’ demographics with a program like Flowtown. Understand how each medium differs in tone and frequency and identify which one is the most effective way to reach your customers.
11. In planning your search strategy, use Google’s Keyword Research Tools to identify words being used by your customers in searches. Create an Excel file that lists the words to help create a “long tail” for your content.

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12. Sheila Kleifkorn of KEO Marketing: Search is going nuts! Now there are these search segments – just in Google: Web/Universal, Personalized, Local, Images, Video, Social, Caffeine, Instant.

13. Make sure you use keywords that your customers care about and then repeat them on your Twitter profile, LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, and YouTube profile.

14. Onsite strategies:

• First word/Any words in the title tag
• First word/Any words in the H1 tag
• Internal link/external link in anchor text on the page
• First 50 to 100 words in the HTML on the page
• Meta description tag
• URL structure and single URL for each page
• Other headline tags (<h2> — <h6>)
• Image alt text (labeling images)
• Number of repetitions in the HTML text on the page
• Keyword use in image names

15. Don’t forget “backlinks“: Sources include your partners’ sites, distributors, online PR spots, blogs, articles, social media sites, product review sites, and directories.

16. How to incorporate search into social:

• Listen. What are people saying to competitors? Where do I need to be?
• Analyze the audience: What are the keywords and phrases being used? Where?
• Determine the objective and the metrics to use: Is it brand building? Lead generation? Buzz? Sales? Customer service? New hires? Engagement? Influencing?
• Create outposts (i.e. Facebook or consumer forums) where the company will be an active participant
• Engage, listen, dialogue. Repeat.
• Monitor and analyze.

17. Paid ads on Google can be effective but use them only when you need them. If your product is one customers typically buy on the weekend, only advertise then, not during the entire week.

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18. Derek Neighbors of Gangplank: Some people get caught up in numbers, like followers. But you should think in terms of effectiveness, if you are really trying to tap the power of a social network. For instance, he was trying to recall when and where a child’s soccer game was. He didn’t post a request on Facebook; his daughter sent a mass text to 13 teammates and within minutes they had the information. It’s the quality of the audience, he noted.

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