Now that I'm getting a better idea of what social media is, how do I actually apply it? Where do I start? Start here, The P's of Social Media. The P's are; Profiles, Propagate, Produce, Participate, and Progress.
The first of the P's are Profiles. There are basically two types of Profiles, your personal profile or your company profile and a group profile. Personal profiles can be; in LinkedIn, in FaceBook, in MySpace, in Flickr. An example of a group can be Social Media, The Social Media Bible, or Innovative Thinking.
Go fill out and lock in your name, company name, and group names in every social networking site you can think of as soon as possible. If you've got a particular subject matter that you can think of that you or your company is going to participate in, make sure you get that group name so that you can have control over it.
The importance of filling out your profiles right now, is to make sure that you lock in your names under that profile before someone else gets it and precludes you from doing that forever. We're beginning to find cyber squatters. These are people who are going out and taking people's and company's names, claiming ownership and then trying to sell them back to you or your company later.
The second P is Propagate. That means that after you've created your accounts and filled in your profiles in Flickr, PodBean, or YouTube, you need to begin to propagate those accounts. You've got photographs, you've got company photographs, you've got product photographs, service photographs, you've got customer photographs, you've got video and you probably have audio files.
Get out there and get all of your digital files collected and get them uploaded to these websites. If you want to win the game you have to play. You've got to be able to participate by propagating all of these sites. You need to be there when your customers and more importantly, your prospects are there looking for you (or, better yet, your competitors)
The third P is Produce. If you don't have a lot of content, or if you just want to add new content, then create it, produce it! It's really not that hard. Your computer, more than likely, has a built in microphone and free sound editing software (if not, go get Audacity, a free audio recording and editing software). You can create podcasts. The creation of this content is essentially 100% free.
The best part of all this is there is no associated cost. Just sit down, get familiarized with it, practice it a few times, and start talking. The most important thing is--if you're going to produce video or audio, or even text in a blog format--remembering to include a strong "What's in it for me?" message for the consumer of your information.
For the same reasons that you began reading this, you want to know about how to get started with social media. You want good results in exchange for the time you spend reading this. If you don't come away with good usable suggestions, you won't come back. There has to be a strong, what's in it for me--message. Your message is that you are going to, just by giving me a few minutes of your time, understand how to begin to implement social media.
So make sure that when you're creating your video, or you're creating your audio, or even writing your blog, that there's going to be a strong, "What's in it for me--message"
The fourth P is Participate. Participate means that you need to get out and actually participate in other people's content and in their blogs. Begin commenting, but don't just jump in and comment. You need to listen. You need to understand. You need to participate.
It's like going to a party or a networking event. You walk into a party and there are little groups around the room that are all participating in their own conversations. For you to walk up to any group and just say, "Hi, my name is Cynthia and I sell and consult..." and interrupt everybody would be completely inappropriate. Proper etiquette would dictate that you walk up to the group, you listen to the conversation for a while, you wait until you have something of value to add, then you simply add that value by commenting. Whether is at a party, a networking event, or on someone's blog, video sharing site, or on their photograph sharing site, it always works the same.
Participate first, and remember, if you're not participating you're not in the game, and you cannot win.
The fifth and final P is Progress. The old saying goes, "You cannot manage what you don't measure," so be sure you measure and manage your progress. Measuring means, how many views has your video gotten on YouTube? How many downloads were there of your podcast? How many views of your Flickr photographs?
These are ways that you can manage your progress, but you have to measure it in order to manage it. It's really simple to get out there, and almost all of these tools are absolutely free; like Google Alerts are really valuable! Albert Einstein once defined "insanity" as doing the same thing the same way and expecting different results. That's really true. When you get out there and you're looking at your progress, and which videos are being viewed the most, and which blogs are being linked to the most, it's got to give you an idea of what your customers, your prospects, and your followers are most interested in.
It's really simple. The videos that aren't getting any views well stop it. The ones that are, simply do more. The same thing goes for your blog. If posts aren't getting traffic stop writing those kinds of posts and try something else. So get out there. I want you to complete your profiles, create your groups. Propagate your accounts with good content, produce good meaningful "What's in it for me content," whether it's just a simple photograph, an audio file, or a video. Participate in the conversation. Comment on people's blogs and, of course, measure your progress.
Do these five tasks and you will be on your way to successful social media marketing.
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