5 Tips for Getting More from Social Media Marketing

Everyone is telling business owners to jump into social media, but not enough people are stopping to ask why or how. Learn 5 ways to make sure your social media activity supports your overall strategic objectives.

Written Oct 26, 2009, read 3562 times since then.

Everyone is telling business owners to jump into social media, but not enough people are stopping to ask why or how.

It's not enough to join social networks and embrace the new set of tools, you must first understand how to integrate social media in a way that helps you meet your overall strategic objectives.

1) Integrate – Don’t treat your social media activity as something separate from your other marketing initiatives. Feature links to your social media profiles in your email signature, on your business cards, in your ads, and as a standard block of copy in your weekly HTML email newsletter. In addition, make sure that links to your educational content are featured prominently in your social media profiles and that Facebook fan page visitors and blog subscribers are offered the opportunity to subscribe to your newsletter and attend your online and offline events. Make your social media profiles a part of your address copy block and you will soon see adding them to all that you do as an automatic action.

2) Amplify – Use your social media activity to create awareness for and amplify your content housed in other places. This can go for teasing some aspect of your latest blog post on twitter or in your Facebook status, creating full blown events on Eventful or MeetUP, or pointing to mentions of your firm in the media. If you publish a bi-weekly newsletter, in addition to sending it to your subscribers, archive it online and tweet it too. You can also add social features to your newsletter to make it very easy for others to retweet (tweetmeme button) and share on social bookmark sites such as delicious and digg. I would also add that filtering other people’s great content and pointing this out to your followers, fans and subscribers fits into this category as it builds your overall reputation for good content sharing and helps to buffer the notion that you are simply broadcasting your announcements. Quality over quantity always wins in social media marketing.

3) Repurpose – Taking content that appears in one form and twisting it in ways that make it more available in a another, or to another audience, is one of the secrets to success in our hyperinfo driven marketing world we find ourselves. When you hold an event to present information you can promote the event in various social media networks and then capture that event and post the audio to your podcast, slides to Slideshare, and transcript (I use Castingwords for this) as a free report for download. You can string 5 blog posts together (like this series) and make them available as a workshop handout or a bonus for your LinkedIn group. Never look at any content as a single use, single medium, act.

4) Lead generate – So many people want to generate leads in the wide world of social media, but can’t seem to understand how or have met with downright hostile reactions when trying. Effectively generating leads from social media marketing is really no different than effectively generating leads anywhere – it’s just that the care you must take to do it right is amplified by the “no selling allowed” culture. No one like to be sold to in any environment – the trick is to let them buy – and this is even more important in social media marketing. So, what this means is that your activity, much of what I’ve mentioned above, needs to focus on creating awareness of your valuable, education based content, housed on your main hub site. You can gain permission to market to your social media network and contacts when you can build a level of trust through content sharing and engagement. It’s really the ultimate two step advertising, only perhaps now it’s three step – meet and engage in social media, lead to content elsewhere, content elsewhere presents the opportunity to buy. To generate leads through social media marketing, you need to view your activity on social sites like an effective headline for an ad – the purpose of the headline is not to sell, but to engage and build know, like and trust – it’s the ultimate permission based play when done correctly.

One glaring exception to this softer approach for some folks is twitter search. I believe you can use twitter search to locate people in your area who are asking for solutions and complaining about problems you can solve and reach out to them directly with a bit of a solution pitch. People who are talking publicly about needing something are offering a form of permission and can be approached as more of warmed lead. The same can also be said for LinkedIn Answers – if someone asks if “anyone knows a good WordPress designer”, I think you can move to convincing them that you are indeed a great WordPress designer.

5) Learn – One of the hangups I encounter frequently from people just trying to get started in social media marketing is the paralysis formed when they stare blankly at twitter wondering what in the world to say. The pressure to fill the silence can be so overwhelming that they eventually succumb and tweet what they had for lunch. If you find yourself in this camp, I’m going to let you off the hook – you don’t have to say anything to get tremendous benefit from social media participation. If I did nothing more than listen and occasionally respond when directly engaged, I would derive tremendous benefit from that level of participation. In fact, if you are just getting started this is what you should do before you ever open your 140 character mouth. Set up an RSS reader and subscribe to blogs, visit social bookmarking sites like BizSugar and delicious and read what’s popular, create custom twitter searches for your brand, you competitors, and your industry, and closely follow people on twitter who have a reputation for putting out great content. And then just listen and learn. If you do only this you will be much smarter about your business and industry than most and you may eventually gain the knowledge and confidence to tap the full range of what’s possible in the wild and wacky world of social media marketing.

John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine (May 2010)

Learn more about the author, John Jantsch.

Posted by Leslie Best, Mill Creek, Washington | Oct 27, 2009

Thank you John for a clear description of social networking basics. It was helpful to us to have insight and advice as well as specific links to additional tools. We're glad we joined biznik.
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Oct 27, 2009

That's a pretty good endorsement for Biznik as well - thanks, I hope you keep digging into this social medial stuff!
Posted by Bill Doerr, Berlin, Connecticut | Oct 27, 2009

John, I commend you for the clarity you bring to a topic that, while wildly popular, is equally overwhelming.

'Social Media' is a term that everyone recognizes, few understand and fewer still seem able to apply to their business. Your post here is a huge step forward in the right direction of practical application and results.

Thank you.

Converting competence into compensation
Posted by Stacy Karacostas, Seattle, Washington | Oct 27, 2009

Hi John, Great article! Thanks for sharing. I do many of the things you mention here and have had wonderful success using social networking to grow my community and my business. Plus I picked up a couple of new tips and ideas I plan to incorporate ASAP.

I highly recommend anyone reading this follow your sage advice.

Best, Stacy
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Oct 27, 2009

Thanks Stacy - glad you found some actionable items.
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Oct 27, 2009

Hey Bill - practical and social media - those are two terms that need to go together more often.
Posted by Judy Dunn, Seattle, Washington | Oct 27, 2009

John,

Good to see you on Biznik. Your article was partly a reaffirmation that I'm doing some things right and partly, "Oh, look what else I could be doing!"

All your tips are excellent, but I particularly like "amplify." I recently noticed how I could be doing a better job there. We added a "Share" button to our weekly marketing e-tip. And I can say, it really helped with the viral effect. It makes it so much easier for others to pass your content along.

And best of all, when beginning with social media, and even if you've been using it for a while, I like "just listen and learn." It's good advice for all of us.

Now I need to go and follow some of the links you gave us.
Posted by Kevin Donnigan, Rio Rancho, New Mexico | Oct 28, 2009

Nice article John! Thank you...
Posted by Shaun Lawrence, Irvine, California | Oct 29, 2009

I have alway wondered about social marketing but have never pursued heavily. Thanks for the informative article as I will look to make part of my online markeing campaign. Shaun Lawrence, Long Beach Tax Prep
Posted by Timothy Maloney, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania | Oct 29, 2009

Every week Im learning a little bit more about Social Networking and your comments were very helpful. I'm intrigued by the integration concept, but isnt it overkill if you allready have your website listed in your e-mail signature. I'm trying to figure out the benefit of adding a link to a social media page?

Thanks for the tips!
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Oct 29, 2009

Hey Judy - thanks - we all need some reminders and boy could I be doing more of some of the things I mentioned as well.
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Oct 29, 2009

@Timothy - no, I don't think it's overkill at all, we're finding that people are gravitating towards their preferred method of communication so that some are reached via email, some phone, some Facebook and some others only by a DM on twitter. The trick is letting them know you're open for business in those places.
Posted by Michael Hartzell, Seattle, Washington | Oct 29, 2009

John, My takeaways... Transcription services and BizSugar for search.

You emphasize the importance of time on the calendar to keep up with the changing marketplace and while the new tools may seem daunting, you prove "Things are not always as they appear".

Thanks for taking the time to share.

Mike

Guerrilla Marketing Ideas that Rock!
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Oct 29, 2009

@Michael - just takes getting into a rhythm and like all things in life, once you see the value, you can find the time.
Posted by Carolyn Higgins, Fairfield, California | Nov 01, 2009

John,

Thank you for the article- excellent advice (as usual). The small businesses I meet are so overwhelmed with marketing in general and then they're bombarded with all the "hype" about Social Media that they get stuck and paralyzed with fear. We need to keep reminding them to start small and create a plan. Building a foundation on which to grow is the best marketing strategy there is for busy, overworked and overwhelmed small business owners!

Carolyn Higgins - Fortune Marketing Company
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Nov 02, 2009

Carolyn,

Excellent advice - knock one action step off a day and at the end of a few months you'll start building momentum.
Posted by Keith German, Pflugerville, Texas | Nov 03, 2009

Thanks John. I'm working on developing a blog next. I want it ALL done yesterday, but your tips and those of some responders are helping me stay on track with incremental actions. Also, I just joined Biznik and look forward to making mutually beneficial connections. Take care!
Posted by John Jantsch, Kansas City, Missouri | Nov 03, 2009

That's the spirit Keith - just make your blog the theme for November and get it done right, then move on to the next thing.