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In Part 1 of this series, I suggested you look at your existing marketing content to see how you might re purpose this for social media.  We created 5 new pieces of content from your company’s Frequently Asked Questions. For Part 2, let’s work on what you can do with this new material.

Creating social media accounts  – its about people

Next, let assume that you aren’t currently on any social media site – you will have to create a couple of accounts at some social media sites.  Remember these are not anonymous business accounts.  Decide what staff person is interested and willing to participate on social media sites and is ready with your support to do this long term. Allocate a set amount of time each day or each week, create guidelines and policies for this individual that support your business goals.

1. Create accounts at Youtube.com, pitchengine.com, Ezine or doc.com, Slideshare.net, and Itunes.

2. Write and edit your article

3. Edit your video clip with free, simple video editing software. Windows Movie Maker and Flip Video editing software are both free products.

4. Build a PowerPoint presentation of less that 10 slides. use only 1 intro slide with contact info on it and repeat as first and last slide.

5. Create an audio file from the separate digital recording of the Q&A interview (should be done at the same time as the flip video recording.

Tips: Brand your video or slide set with a title, your website and contact info to the beginning and end of clip/presentation. Also make sure you introduce each person in the audio recording prior to the interview so you capture that in sound.

Add appropriate content to social media sites

1. Post article on enews sites, pitchengine.com, event on your website, trade website, online news site and local news paper.

2. Post video on Youtube.com and your website/blog.  Share the link with your connections.

3. Upload audio to Itunes.com in the podcast category. Share with your connections.

4. Add the PowerPoint slides to Slideshare.net.  Share with your connections.

Tip:  Make sure you use the tag features for each social media site.  This is especially important for the video, audio and slide content.

Then make sure your customers know about this free information by

• Send email out to your mailing list giving them the links to wherever you posted content.
• Update your status on any active social media sites.
• Ask every employee at the company (and yes, they are on social media) to do the same.

For traditional marketing efforts, add the link into your next print newsletter, add as note in your invoices, add as signature in your emails and on any letters.

Next month, pick another piece of marketing material, previous article or interview and start the process over again.

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Related posts:

1. How can social media help my business? Part 1
2. Why I am Thankful for Social Media – Business Relationships Part 3
3. Reality check for Twitter and Business Use – Part 2

This is a good question and one that I have been asked at every meeting I have with a business.  You are not

alone in asking. As business owners, we are concerned with the return of investment of our time, any costs involved and we want to see change and sales revenue increase right away.  If this is a hard question for you to answer even to yourself, perhaps, you are asking the wrong question.

The start of customer engagement

If you are interested in true customer engagement, I believe your question should change to “How can I use social media to help others?”

I define social media this way: It is a two-way conversation via the Internet (from many to many) bringing shared knowledge that benefits and brings value to the people involved.

What value can the knowledge you have of your business, products, personal passions, or favorite activities have to others?

What if you freely shared that information?

Social media works by sharing your content via text, images, slides, video or audio. Businesses win by solving problems.  Customers win by educating themselves using the media that best suits their lifestyle, time availability and depth of knowledge. All this is done in the space/place that each individual spends his available time.

So then, what should I do?

First, its OK to take baby steps with social media. You have my permission to do little things.

Second, don’t make a sales pitch and this is not just free advertising.

So, lets get started.

It helps to take marketing materials already created and just re purpose them.  For example, most every business has a list of frequently asked questions or could come up with this pretty quickly.

Using this material as our knowledge base, here are some ideas:

1. Collect frequently asked questions used in your business
2. Write it up as an article between 300 and 500 words.
3. Video yourself or others answering each question (video each question separately and make answers between 60 secs and 1 1/2 minutes max).
4. Have someone else record, separately, the audio for the interview /answer questions video, with digital recorder( mp3) Length should be the same as the video.
5. Create a slide show of the Q & A with good product pictures. Answer the questions using product pictures or step by step pictures and limited text.

You have just created 5 pieces of original content that can be placed on no less than 5 different types of social media sites as well as being added to your very own website.

Stay tuned for Part 2 where we will talk about what to do with this new content in the social web.

Do you have content you can already use?

Related posts:

1. How can social media help my business? Part 2
2. Why I am Thankful for Social Media – Business Relationships Part 3
3. Reality Check for Twitter and Business Use – Part 3

Social Media Academy’s NCP Model

I follow the Social Media Academy’s NCP model which stands for Network Contribution Participation.

Network provides the reach for your message and connection to people in your social ecosystem.

Its about growing your network by connecting with people in various places.

Contribution is the active engagement and content contribution over such networks. Conversation is the currency in social media.

It can be blogs, articles, pictures, videos or podcasts.

Participation is the positive or negative reflection of the contribution and the actual conversation.

So you have to speak up in new areas, comment on others blogs, and add to the color of the conversation with your very own twist in the fabric.

Networking

You start the process with Networking.  I do great at networking and growing my network. At first it was slow on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.  Now, they each have a mind of their own with an almost organic growth that has taken over.

Since I do a lot of public speaking on social media, this has provided added stimulus to the growth, maybe greater than most users would find.  I have not done much with TopLinked or some of the speed networking opportunities yet on LinkedIn, rather I wanted to work hard at this myself and truly know the work involved.

Now I can expand further my network in several new areas such as YouTube, Flickr, Picasa, and Slideshare.  These will provide a different type of space and I am looking forward to who I connect with there as well. Some will be professional, but I suspect it will allow me to enter new relationships that aren’t the same as those that connect with me and the written word.

Contribution

The contribution part of the NCP Model is likely the most difficult for many.  This means writing, folks.  Creating original thoughts and getting them posted in the social space. I wrote community opinion pieces first for my local paper. Then I started with book reviews in a metro business publication, which then transferred to an online forum for greater reach.

I was asked to provide quest posts on several social media blogs.  This was the hardest step because I was offering knowledge to my peers.  I am not sure anyone is listening to those posts yet, but I find that I do have a unique perspective that provides another facet of conversation in the business community.

Then came my own blog (Network Mindshare).  This is hard work – no doubt about it.  Being creative in coming up with ideas is not the problem, it’s deciding what to write about the idea!

Last but not least, I also took on the challenge of a social media column in an online newspaper.  More deadlines, a different writing style and another shift in the audience. Good for the network.

Participation

Participation in the social web is the final piece of the NCP Model.  You just can’t shout out your opinions in a one way megaphone.

You need to actively search out and read others who have shared their opinions on topics that are of interest.  Don’t just read these, you must comment.  Your thoughts can support, express a contrary point of view, offer explanation, share examples, express frustration, ask further questions, offer solutions or just compliment the post.

The key is engagement and you can’t do that without putting those thoughts in writing.

Thoughts on Blogs

I am trying a technique to make sure that I continue effectively on the participation side of the NCP Model.  Each week I have set a goal to comment on at least three different blogs.  In order to find the blogs, I have Google Alerts set on keywords that I researched using the Google Keyword Tool.  I share comments on these blogs and keep track of them using the Social Relationship Management tool www.xeesm.com/wendysoucie, which lets me search for all references I have made (after using that link) and I will pick out several and post them.  I will include them in a new blog category called “Thoughts on Blogs.”

Perhaps you have a blog that I should read and on which I should offer my opinion?  Comment here with the link and I will check it out.

Related posts:

1. How to Simplify Your Social Media Links
2. Want a social media education? Five reasons you should!
3. Thoughts on blogs|Week of October 4, 2009

As you can see from my twitter update this week I spent some time at the Midwest Internet Marketing Super Conference investing in Internet Marketing and Social Media education. I attended because the CEO and VP of Integrated Alliances were presenting on “How to Make Money Using Social Media with LinkedIn.”

Mike O'Neil and Lori Ruff of Integrated Alliances during their presentation

Another reason that I wanted to attend was to hear one particular speak named Joel Bauer.  The benefit I got this weekend was also hearing Perry Belcher talk about Twitter and his approach as well as Dr. Harlan Kilstein talking about NLP Copywriting. This was my first opportunity to tweet live during a meeting about key points.  By following the Twitter hashtag #MSC I could follow what points others were making as well.

I can see where some of the new Twitter conference applications coming out can really make this more of a social experience and let the group attending exchange even more thoughts before during and after a conference of this type.  Recently OmniPress in Madison introduced Conference 2.0 – a community conference Web 2.0 introduction that should bring an improvement to the conference circuit on a communication level.

I recently had the opportunity to view a demo of this new software and was impressed  with the feature that lets you connect with the speakers ahead of time as well as to ask questions afterward.  The benefits of that feature are pretty obvious.  Have ever been to a large conference with multiple presentations that you feel you must attend?  Plenty of times I have been unable or unwilling to wait in the line to ask a more private question of the speaker. This would give me the chance to send it later, or for those of us who might bring our laptop, Iphone, or smartphone to the conference – email, tweet or post a question for the speaker immediately.

Back to the conference, and of particular interest to me, were the variety of approaches and ways to incorporate social media tools into a particular business strategy. The top point everyone made was absolutely to have a strategy that fits your business goals, pick the tools that help you, and build your network in a meaningful way.

Related posts:

1. How does cause marketing benefit business?
2. The Olympics & Social Media Marketing | Thoughts on Blogs | Wendy Soucie Social Media Examiner
3. How to Simplify Your Social Media Links

First class for Inbound Marketing University – I couldn’t login to the class. Perhaps too many people trying to attend. Preregistered yes!

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