Social media rules

We keep hearing about Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and social networking for business. How do we get it right first time?

1. Agree your objectives
What do you want out of social media? Decide what you want to achieve and your tone of voice (professional, funny, personal?)

2. Agree your identity!
Personal, corporate or both?

3. Organise landing pages
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Slideshare all want your URL. To measure the traffic from these sources set up dedicated ‘arrival pages’ so you can welcome visitors from these different sites and give them the info they need. Click here for an example.

4. Use 1 photo for all your profiles
Build up personal brand identity – you would not change your company logo every 5 minutes, so do not change your photo.

5. Claim your brand
Even if you are not going to be a regular user of some social media, it is worth claiming your brand or company name and posting / tweeting occasionally.

6. Don’t change your Twitter user name
Someone else may take it! Decide what your identity at the start.

7. Repurpose your content
Whenever you create a press release, write an article, say something, make sure it is on LinkedIn (share with Twitter), on your blog, website news area and Facebook.

8. Don’t use auto responders
People hate them and they are not that useful unless you are offering something of value, free!

9. Manage your communications
Pick a tool that suits your business. Lots of options; Tweetdeck, Ping

10.Measure and monitor
Use analytics to see traffic to your website, blog from social media. Make sure staff are aware and always ask ‘how did you hear about us?’

To stay up to date why not link to us? Become a fan on Facebook or Twitter?

SlideShare Channels

SlideShare has added Channels which are branded spaces on SlideShare for companies and brands.

Some of the early channels are:

• Microsoft Office has setup a channel focused on parenting topic (project done in collaboration with our partners, Federated Media)
• Ogilvy has setup a concept channel for Pharma
• Razorfish Marketing uploads about interactive marketing & technology
• Pew Internet has shared a lot of their research reports about the internet & internet usage
• Whitehouse is sharing almost 1000 presentations and documents

Slideshare is also rolling out topical Channels such as Cloud Computing and Social Media.

If your company or organization is interested in channels, then get in touch by going here.

Institute of Directors – Quick Win Marketing

Many thanks to all the IoD members who attended the Quick Win Digital Marketing event last night. Here are some resources you may find useful on our blog.

Please feel free to invite me and my colleague Joanna Akins to connect with you on LinkedIn

Follow us on Twitter
http://twitter.com/annmariehanlon
http://twitter.com/joannaakins

LINKEDIN
LinkedIn tips
LinkedIn profile in another language

TWITTER
The Twitter Handbook
Top tips for using Twitter
Followers on Twitter
Twitter aims at businesses
Twitter Lists
Measuring Twitter effectiveness and gaining your Twitter Statistics
Twitters 12 Golden Rules
Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Facebook logos

FACEBOOK
Facebook profile, pages or groups?
Facebook Usernames Update
Facebook tips for businesses

SLIDESHARE
Benefits of SlideShare
New Account Types on SlideShare

If you need more on social media, why not buy the book “Quick Win Digital Marketing, Answers to your 100 top digital marketing questions” direct from the publisher http://www.oaktreepress.com/ or from Amazon- who take longer to deliver!

Facebook tips for businesses

We're thinking of using Facebook in our business, any hints or guidelines?

1. Secure your company name e.g. www.facebook.com/Evonomie rather than www.facebook.com/pages/Evonomie/35487704369 by getting 25 fans or more, see http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php to create company name.

2. Decide if Facebook is right for your business or not – it is not right for everyone.

3. Allocate someone to manage Facebook, it takes time to actively engage your audience and encourage interaction.

4. Do add items to the wall etc on a regular basis.

5. Provide special offers just for Facebook fans.

6. Add events and ask fans to spread the word.

7. Competitions work well on Facebook where you can encourage viral marketing to take place.


What's your favourite Facebook page? Do let us know.
Why not become a fan of Evonomie too?

WiBA event – Social Networking for Business

Many thanks to all the WiBA members who attended the Social Networking for Business event last night. Here are some resources you may find useful on our blog.

Please do invite me and my colleague Joanna Akins http://uk.linkedin.com/in/joannaakins to connect with you on LinkedIn
Follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/annmariehanlon

LinkedIn tips

LinkedIn profile in another language

The Twitter Handbook

Top tips for using Twitter

Followers on Twitter

Twitter aims at businesses

Twitter Lists

Measuring Twitter effectiveness and gaining your Twitter Statistics

Twitters 12 Golden Rules

Twitter, LinkedIn, Slideshare, Facebook logos

Facebook profile, pages or groups?

Facebook Usernames Update


In case you spotted the branded chocolates I gave away with the books, here are details of where you can obtain these – great service, very delicious and order quantities can start as low as 10 bars of chocolate! http://business2businessmarketing.blogspot.com/2010/01/chocolate-for-business.html

Benefits of SlideShare

New Account Types on SlideShare


If you need more on social media, why not buy the book “Quick Win Digital Marketing, Answers to your 100 top digital marketing questions” direct from the publisher http://www.oaktreepress.com/ or from Amazon- who take longer to deliver!

Top tips for using Twitter

Twitter is a fast growing social networking site. It limits your sentences or comments to 140 characters.

Top tips for using Twitter:


1. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays are the days when tweets are most likely to be re-tweeted.

2. Decide what you want to tweet about!
a. Hard sell approach does not work
b. Tips, facts and figures do
c. Repeat other interesting tweets (retweet)
d. Focus on your local area, or sector

3. Decide which identity to use – personal, corporate or both.

4. Make an effort to get over 1,000 tweets, then you get taken more seriously.

5. Use autofollow settings after you have got a few followers, see http://www.socialoomph.com/ which is free or http://socialtoo.com/ which is a paid for service.

6. Create a Twitter landing page in your website, so you can see how effective it is for your business.

7. If you want to be re-tweeted make sure your tweets are shorter than average – especially if you have a long Twitter name…

If you have Twitter hints to share, do let us know!

Do follow us
http://twitter.com/annmariehanlon
http://twitter.com/joannaakins

LinkedIn tips

If you're using LinkedIn these tips will help to improve your profile which means you'll appear in searches more often (opportunities for enquiries)

1. Complete your profile (you can restrict your Public Profile content to people you know).

2. Add a photo. Surprisingly, many people don't!

3. Get recommended - these are mini case studies that will get reviewed.

4. Make recommendations where you are happy with a service or product.

5. Join groups (up to 50).

6. Ask and / or answer questions.

7. Update your status.

8. Build connections, say when you are at an event, ask people if they are on LinkedIn and connect to them after the event.

9. Personalise emails and connection requests in LinkedIn, do not use the standard templates.

10. Treat LinkedIn the same way as you would face to face networking. You need to work at it to get results.

Do you have LinkedIn tips to share? Let us know (remove the spaces from this email address!) evolve @ evonomie . net

Do connect to us on LinkedIn too
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/annmariehanlon
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/joannaakins