Social Marketing – The 5 Critical Preliminary Steps For a Successful Social Media Marketing Plan

You would need to be living under a rock not to notice the Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube icons everywhere. It seems like the whole world is jumping on the Social Media bandwagon and this is wonderful news if you are an entrepreneur! Social Media Marketing is the perfect platform for businesses that would like to market their products and services online.

Social Media Marketing is based on building connections and relationships with people who you resonate with. Then it can be used to market your products and services in a conversational way like we used to in times past when everyone gathered together on the front poach on Sunday afternoon to talk about their week.

The technical term is Word Of Mouth Marketing. Word of Mouth Marketing is the old fashion kind of marketing that has worked since the beginning of time. Studies show that this kind of marketing is 3 times more effective than other forms of marketing because people are jaded by traditional marketing. They believe less than 17% of the marketing messages they see but 78% of recommendations they get from their peers.

But STOP, before you get excited and just jump in and join all the social networks willy-nilly it is important that you do some research first. Each site will ask you to create a profile and you want to make sure that what you write will speak to the people in your target market. You want to attract those people who need and want your products and services.

Here are the 5 steps I take with all my clients to make sure we create profiles on the Social Media sites that do their job correctly.

Step 1 Decide – You need to decide who your Target Market is. This is one of the most important steps for any successful marketing plan but many entrepreneurs avoid it. Most marketing experts say it is impossible to market successfully to everyone. The sooner you narrow your focus and pick your specific target market the sooner you will see results.

Step 2 Discover – Discover the pain that keeps the people in your Target Market awake at night. What problems do they need solutions to? This step will help you decide what products and services you need to provide. This could also stop you from creating a product or service that your target market does not care about which could save you tons of time.

Step 3 Determine – What products and services do you offer that will be good solutions for the pain in your Target Markets? If you don’t have a product or service that will address this problem maybe you should consider creating one.

Step 4 Develop – Now it is time to create your Social Media Marketing Plan. Be as specific as possible. List the 3-4 social networks you will join, how much time you plan to spend joining the conversation and what kind of content you plan to submit. You also need to decide how you will measure your success.

Social Media is a long term marketing strategy so be prepared to stick to your plan for at least 3 months and then measure your results. Then you can decide if you will continue on your currant path or change directions.

Step 5 Do – The final step is to do your keyword research. Keywords are the glue that holds the Internet together so it is very important to have a clear picture of the exact words you need to use in your profiles and content sour sites y will be indexed by Google. Once you have your list of suitable words keep them by your computer and refer to them whenever you are writing anything for the Internet.

Lots of business owners skip this step because keyword research can be boring and it is somewhat of an art to do correctly. But if you take the time to do this step (or better yet hire an expert to do it for you) you will be rewarded with your site listings on the first page of Google!

I invite you to connect with me on my social networks by clicking on the Social Media icons over on the right of this page. A great place to learn more about Social Media Marketing is my Facebook Fanpage . You can also access it by clicking on the Fanpage box on the right. Here I post links and tips that will help you improve your Social Media Marketing Plan.  Also I welcome your comments so please feel free to write one below.

Social Media Management Tips – What You Can Automate on Your Social Networks to Save Time Online

Social Media is taking the world by the storm and studies now show it is becoming one of the best ways to market your products and services online. This is because it is based on Word of Mouth Marketing. Statistics show that people prefer to do business with other people they know, like and trust and Social Media allows you the opportunity to build those relationships.

The only real downside of Social Media Marketing is it can take a lot of time so this post will help you automate as much as possible so you can spend your time on the most important part of Social Media which is conversations, engagement and building relationships.

When you add these automation tips to your Social Media Marketing plan  you will get the largest return for the amount of time you are able to invest online.

For the purposes of this post I am going to assume you already have accounts on the 4 biggest networks which right now are Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and YouTube.

Twitter

• Automatically Tweet when you post to your WordPress blog using the pluggin Twitter Tools
• Automatically follow back everyone who follows you using http://SocialToo.com
• Automatically add your Tweets to Facebook using facebook.com/twitter – You need to be careful with this one though. If you Tweet a lot it will fill up your steam with too many weird looking updates and this may annoy your friends.
• Automatically send a Direct Message to everyone who follows you using Socialoomph.com . Be careful this is not a sale type message or it will annoy your new peeps. It should be something useful and relationship building

Facebook

• Pull your Blog posts (or any blog of your choice) into your Fanpage stream using the Networked Blogs App
• Pull your blog or any RSS feed into your Fanpage stream using the Notes App
• Connect Twitter to your Facebook account using facebook.com/twitter

Linkedin

• Attach your Twitter stream to your Linkedin Profile so your latest tweets show up in the sidebar
• Attach your WordPress blogs posts so they show up in your profile

• Attach your Amazon.com account and pull in all the books you have read and any reviews you may have written. This will allow people to get to know you better.

WordPress.org Blog

• Twitter Tools plugin Tweets each blog post automatically
• Facebook Connect widget in the sidebar allow people to see and join your Fanpage right from you blog.
• The http://Ezinearticles.com widget in the sidebar shows your most recent articles and allows people to click through to read them
• Google Connect allows people to connect with you using your Google Profile
• The Tweetmeme plugin allows others to Tweet about a post with 1 click
• Install the Facebook Like plugin so people can “Like” a post right from your site
• The Sexy Bookmarks plugin allows people to add your blog post to over 30 different social networking sites with 1 click

YouTube

• Make sure you allow embedding in your settings so people can grab the code and put your videos on their sites
• Make sure your videos are set to public not private
• Make sure you allow comments so you encourage conversations about your videos
• Make sure you allow notifications so there is a Tweet generated automatically every time you subscribe to a channel or comment on a video

Ezinearticles.com

• Enable automatic Tweets for every article that you publish in your settings
• Connect your WordPress.org blog to create an article from every blog post
• Make sure to add the links to all your Social Networks so they show up in your bio

Posterious.com

• You can email a post to your account and it will update all the social networks you have set up access to such as Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. It is also a great way to add picture from your iPhone to your social networks.

Gravatar.com

• Create an account with your profile picture so it automatically shows up when you comment on blogs that have gravatar enabled. Good for your visibility.

WordPress.com – the free WordPress blog site (I don’t recommend using this for your business blog but I do recommend you have an account here for the visibility)

• Create an account so your profile information will automatically show up whenever you comment on another wordpress.com blog. Good for your Visibility.

Book Review of Socialnomics by Eric Qualman

I just finished reading the book, Socialnomics about Social Media Marketing and in it Eric Qualman does an excellent job of explaining the fundamental changes in how conscious business owners communicate with their prospects and customers online.

The world is changing at a monumental speed and businesses who chose not to keep up will be left in the dust because the consumer is now in the drivers seat. They get to decide which marketing messages they want to listen too and they expect the opportunity to make their concerns know.

One of the best parts of the book are the Key Points sections at the end of each chapter. The author uses this section to summarize the important points of each chapter and this is a great place for me to go and get quick information points to use in my business.

If you are still not convinced that social media is something you need to invest in for the future of your business this is the book for you! It will definitely change your mind.

Social Media Marketing – What Are the Most Important Social Networks to Join?

Social Media Marketing can be very time consuming so this is a question I get asked all the time. What and how can I outsource Social Marketing tasks and how do I find the right person for the job.

This is one of the questions I get asked all the time and so I thought I would do a Blog post about it. This will also be one of the questions I answer in my FREE Summer Teleseminar series. To sign up for the next Teleseminar go to http://budurl.com/zwdm

Social Media Marketing is a long term strategy so it is important to create your accounts and build out your profiles completely and then spend the first 4-6 months developing relationships and giving your friends and followers as much useful and relevant content as possible.

You can not give too much so don’t hold back in the beginning and you will be rewarded in the future.

Everyone always wants to know how they will be able to sell there products and services on the social networks but what you need to remember is Social Media Marketing is actually word of mouth marketing so you need to build relationships before you can expect to sell anything

The are literally 100s of Social Media Sites so how do you decide which ones are the most important for you and your business?

First don’t forget that the Internet is lays changing so what may be good to day may not be 6 months from now. The number one rule for success online is embrace change. If you don’t change with the times you will be left in the dust.

That said I recommend all of clients maintain a presences on Facebook. Facebook has almost ½ a billion users and that is just too many people to ignore! Chances are pretty good that your target market spends some time on Facebook everyday. Statistics show that most users log on to Facebook at least once a day and spend an average of 30 minutes.

My next pick for all of my clients is Linkedin because it is the number one site for professionals and it is a perfect place to find joint venture partners. Even if your business is not at that stage yet you need to think ahead. Linked in s more formal than all the other social networks and it takes time to build up your connections and get fill out your profiles.

If you spend and 30 minutes on Linkedin 2-3 times a week you will grow your connections and start to accumulate the all important recommendations.

Twitter is the next site I usually recommend even though most people don’t get it in the beginning. It seems frivolous and a big waste of time to most people. Most people come away after their first visit to the site confused commit to at least 15 minutes a day on Twitter for 1 month you will see the point eventually.

My last must join pick for newbies is You Tube. Join even if you say you will never make videos because trust me on this when you see the statistics you will come around if you want to be successful online.

You tube is owned by Google and if you want to make it to the first page for your keywords, video is the way to go. It is the second most popular search engine and it really is just a video sharing site. If you want to learn how to do anything just go to You Tube and type it into the search box.

Successful businesses leverage this by making videos about the the questions their prospects ask most often. Then when they do a search they find their business!

Would you like more information about joining these top sites plus some recommendations about what your next choices might be?

To sign up for my next Teleseminar go to http://budurl.com/zwdm

And then join me on June 23, 2010 at 4pm ET, 3pm CT, 2pm MT 1pm PT for my FREE Summer Social Media Teleseminar Series.

Social Marketing – Do You Wonder if it Works? Just Ask Facebook Users!

This is the $100,000.00 question! Hundreds of Blogs everyday talk about Social Media Marketing ROI (Return on Investment) and usually what they  mean by that is return in the form of dollars and cents made but I think they are looking at it from the wrong point of view.

I think businesses need to look at it from the point of revenue lost or LOI (loss on Investment). What does it cost a company not to be involved in Social Media?

This week Facebook announced a policy change that impacted the small businesses the profess to want to help. They decided that you can no longer create a Welcome page that your new visitors land on, so you can encourage them to “Like” your page. This option would be available only to customers who spend $10,000.00/month.

Whoa! That leaves out most of the people who helped to make Facebook what it is today! This proved to me they have become to big for their own good.

Outrage overtook the Internet with sites like this one by Lori Randall and Mari Smith’s Blog.

But Guess what? I just found out after less than 24 hours Facebook has reverted back to the original settings!

Yea Social Media works! and what would have happened if Facebook had not listened? They are huge but all it would take is a mass exodus to some other platform and they would be out of business.

And they get it!

Here is another example for you:

After months of problems with my Dell Inspiron computer, I finally started to Tweet about it an how disappointed I was with their customer service.

Several people from Dell reached out to me on Twitter and then I got an amazing email.

Dell was inviting me to attend  a new CAP advisory panel in Austin TX. They will fly me out and cover my expenses so they can get an accounting of my problems. I told them it was a little late because I have already bought a Mac but they still want me to come.

This is another example of how companies and brands use Social Media for Return on Investment. Because they  had company reps listening online they were ready to nip potential problems in the bud.

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