Social Media Marketing – What to Automate in Your Social Media Management Plan

How to Save Time with Your Social Media Marketing Plan – Part 1

Social Media Marketing is taking the world by the storm and studies show it is becoming one of the best ways to market your products and services online. This is because it is based on the principle of 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 hose kinds of relationships with people in your target market.

The only real downside of Social Media Marketing is it can take a lot of time. First you need to set up your accounts in Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and You Tube. Then here are some tips on how to automate as much as possible in your marketing plan so you can focus your time on the most important parts of a successful plan which are conversations, engagement and building relationships.

Twitter

• Automatically send a Tweet when you post to your WordPress blog using the pluggin Twitter Tools
• Automatically follow back everyone who follows you using http://SocialToo.com or http://Socialoomph.com
• Use #in to automatically post to Linkedin from Twitter
• Use #fb to automatically post tp Facebook from Twitter
• Use Ping.fm to syndicate updates across many different social networks
• You can 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 follow back everyone who follows you
• Automatically send a welcome Direct Message to everyone who follows you using http://socialoomph.com. Be careful this message is not a sales 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 posts of your choice) into your Fanpage stream using the Networked Blogs App
• Pull your blog or any RSS feed into your  stream using the Notes App
• Connect Twitter to your Facebook account using facebook.com/twitter

LinkedIn

• Import your Blog RSS feed to your profile page
• Connect your Twitter account so your most recent tweets show up on your profile page
• add the Amazone.com app to pull the books you read and review into your profile page

YouTube

• Make sure you allow embedding in your settings so people can grab the code to your videos and put them 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 upload a new idea, subscribe to another channel or comment on another video

Do you need help managing your Social Media Marketing plan? If so you can check out my “Do It For You” Social Marketing Solutions.

Social Marketing – 3 Twitter Tools to Increase Your Effectiveness

Here are 3 power Twitter Tools to help with your Social Media Marketing plan.

The first tool is Twaitter http://www.twaitter.com

Twaitter (soon changing their name to Gremln) allows you to schedule the same Tweets on a reoccurring basis. While there are many other tools out there that do the same thing this is the first one that is a free application.

The next tool is Tweetchat. http://tweetchat.com

Tweetchat allows you to follow the conversation around a specific hashtag in real time. Let say you find a hashtag that people in your target market are tweeting, then you can go to Tweetchat and follow the conversation in real time and click on each of the different people and decide if you want to follow the.

Finally there is Blastfollow http://www.blastfollow.com/

Blastfollow allows you to follow everyone who is tweeting  a certain hashtag in one click. For example lets say you realize that everyone who tweets #AESauthor is potentially in your target market. Then you can follow all of them with one click using this tool.

I invite you to check out these 3 Twitter Tools and let me know by commenting below which ones you find useful for your business.

Engage by Brian Solis Here is the Trailer to one of the most important books of 2010

Here is the Trailer for the book “Engage” by Brian Solis

Watch this video trailer for the book by Brian Solis about the importance of the Social Media phenomenon. This is one of the best books of the year. Brian makes a case for  how impotent Social Media actually is. For the first time in history people (in the free world) actually hold the power. This is huge!

The only danger is we may not recognize it or use it correctly. We truly could change the world now  if we are not too selfish. That is the danger.

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.

Create a Conscious Business – Align Expand Succeed – Shifting the Paradigm of Entrepreneurial Success

I am honored to be one of 40 authors of the anthology book, Align Expand Succeed – Shifting the Paradigm of Entrepreneurial Success

Join 5 authors on August 31st for the Teleseminar “Creating and Building a Conscious Business”

To Kathleen Gage, Lauren McMullen, Michelle Cochran, Sue Papadolis and Sue Ann Gleason go to
http://consciousbusinesstips.com

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