I was a part of the “Social Media Strategy” session at Inman News’ Blogger Connect conference in August 2009. The room was packed as everyone seems to want to know more about social media these days. I was fortunate to be paired to present on this topic with Dustin Luther, founder of the RainCityGuide blog and prolific consultant on all things social media.
I went first, including some broad groundwork on social media strategies in presentation, then Dustin gave some excellent advice on using Facebook (I think I’ll finally break down and make a Page as a result of his info) and the power of Friend of a Friend marketing, and then we ended with open question/answer.
My half of the social media strategy presentation focused on the following items:
- Primary difference between social and non-social media is control. Controlling social media is a challenge. Become comfortable with this lack of control.
- When using social media for marketing, the reach -> acquisition -> engagement ->conversion -> satisfaction customer life cycle is changed. You will need to be engaging to your audience before you acquire them to your site or cause.
- Instead of trying to integrate a lot of social tools into your existing marketing plan, consider going further and changing the way you do business. Become a social business by using social tools for non-marketing operations things like customer support, internal feedback/HR, public intranet etc. Build “social” into your company’s DNA.
- Meet the challenge of web analytics in the social media sphere to learn how to engage your audience.
Following the presentation, I had the opportunity to lead a section in the “Live Lab” where conference attendees could come up and ask any question about web analytics, SEO, site development or social media strategies and tactics. This session was exceptionally lively and fun, given that it was hands on with real world problems and not simply a rehash of “best practices.”
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