The 5 Step Social Media Process

by Devon Zimny on June 30, 2010

social media planImplementing a social media plan for your business has many benefits, from expanding your reach online, to building credibility to drawing new clients and customers.  The social media tools available make connecting and sharing your expertise that much easier!  It is important to remember when implementing a social media plan that it  is a process.  To make it simpler to understand, I have broken it down into 5 steps:

Step One – Strategy – This is an important one.  You need to think about who you want to reach and what your goals are before you start to implement anything.  This will help you narrow your focus and use your time wisely.

Step Two – Set-Up – Before you can engage with anyone, you need to have your profiles and accounts created and maximized.  After completing step one, you should know what communities to participate in, and now is the technical job of setting everything up, making sure it is easy for people to find and connect with you – and do business with you.

Step Three – Listening – Now that your accounts are created, it is time to start listening.  Pay close attention to how the community works.  And spend some time searching and observing it all.  You will learn a lot about the community, and by listening first you can create content that is specifically for that community.  Again saving you time in the long run.

Step Four – Reaching Out – You need to make a conscious effort to reach out.  People will not always come to you – you need to find them.  This is where your strategy and listening come in handy.  Find targeted people on your networks and begin to connect and engage with them.

Step Five – Continued Maintenance – you can’t just set up a social media presence and forget it.  It has to be consistently nurtured and grown to benefit you.  So, you must update your accounts and continue to connect with others.  Also continue to search for new connections and build those relationships.

As you can see, social media is an on going process.  So try not to expect results overnight.  But, if you are consistent and continue to work on your social media presence, you will see some incredible results.  And if you need help implementing any of the steps listed above, contact me :)

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Tools for Social Media Listening

by Devon Zimny on June 15, 2010

One of the most valuable benefits that social media offers is the ability to listen.  There are many tools available to allow you to keep track of who is talking about your business, as well as any keywords relating to your business.

There is so much knowledge to be gained just from listening and paying attention to what your customers are saying about you and your industry.

Here are some cool tools to help you listen and learn:

  • search.twitter.com ~ This allows you to search twitter for specific phrases or keywords and see real time results.  You can also use the advanced search to narrow down the results by location or time period.
  • Kurrently.com ~ this website allows you to put in keywords or phrases and will search both Facebook and Twitter, as well as the major search engines
  • Google Alerts ~ You can set up alerts based on your company name or specific keywords and Google will email you daily with the latest results that include those terms.  You see articles and blog posts.
  • LinkedIn Answers ~ You can research the types of questions that are being asked related to your industry.  As well as answer the questions and build your expertise.
  • Board Tracker ~ allows you to search discussion forums for specific terms.

By taking some time to follow specific searches, you can gain really valuable information about your industry and customers.  All of the above are great tools to help you!

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REBarCamp Sacramento

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Integrating Social Media with Offline Marketing

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Creating Online Content: Where to Start?

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The Key to Social Media Marketing

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The key to social media marketing really has nothing to do with social media.  In fact, it is about customer service.   It is the little ways that you go above and beyond that give your customers a reason to talk about you.  I started thinking about this recently after listening to a great podcast [...]

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What the Olympics Taught Me About Small Business

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Like many of you, I watched quite a bit of the Olympics.  I loved watching all of these amazing athletes at the top of their game, doing what they love, and achieving their goals.  Throughout the Olympic games, I kept thinking about the similarities between business success and success as an athlete.  Many of the [...]

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