How to get started in Social Media Marketing: Start Listening

The following is a list of activities I've learned from personal experience, as well as, reading books such as Web Marketing for Dummies

Unlike other forms of advertising and promotions, social media marketing is not interruption based, but permission based. We have been social creatures since the days of cavemen and one of our earliest inventions was language development. Knowing how to effectively communicate begins with active listening.

In order for your strategy to make an impact it needs to follow trends, know where your target audience spends their time online, and how to communicate about your products and services without spamming people or getting blocked from networking platforms.

Step 1: Become open-minded.

Understand that assumptions are not facts. Most businesses end up speaking to their existing partners and co-workers online. This is great if your goal is peer-building, but it’s not going to increase your online presence. Do not use offline data to market your brand online. Do not assume that everyone is like you. Do not treat your online activities as a waste of time or insignificant. (Most people can pick up on negative or passive-aggressive attitudes and it is not a good first impression.)

Begin your research understanding that you know nothing- that way your current opinions can’t cloud your judgement and lead you down the wrong path.

Step 2: Put your ear to the ground.

The easiest way to start listening is to create a listening desktop. I recommend that you use iGoogle to manage all of the blogs and RSS feeds you follow in relation to your company and category. If you don’t have a gmail account it’s easy and free to set one up. Once you’ve logged into your iGoogle homepage you can start adding blogs and RSS feeds to keep track of on a daily basis. You can also add keyword searches to iGoogle.

Other examples include: competitor names, individuals in your company, product names, etc.

Other things to track include:

• Twitter feeds or search results
• News search results
• YouTube
• Flickr
• Yahoo Answers

Step 3: Keep a log

Using Excel, create a worksheet that tracks audience data and social media sites where your brand and category is being discussed or commented on.

Audience data:
What kind of people are in your audience?

• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Children
• Regions
• Ethnicity

Other notes to log: Why are they participating in the community or group? What communities or sites do they most often use? How big is this audience? How often do they participate? Who is most influential? Who has the most followers and participants?

Keyword data:

• Phrase
• Age
• Male/Female

Examples of online communities to research:

• Google Groups
• Yahoo Groups
• Facebook
• Digg
• Blogger
• Wordpress

Other resources for free research:
adCenter Labs http://adlab.msn.com
Quantcast www.quantcast.com

Other resources for paid research:
Nielsen Online www.nielsen-online.com
Hitwise www.hitwise.com
Compete http://compete.com
Comscore www.comscore.com
Forester www.forrester.com

Step 4: Start asking questions

There are many free tools to help you ask questions. Yahoo Answers allows anyone to ask and answer, but they don’t necessarily reflect your target audience. LinkedIn allows you to specify the category of your question and narrow down whom you’d like answers from within the LinkedIn community.

Another great resource for creating a free online survey is Google documents. If you’d prefer to have a more professional service conduct a survey on your behalf is to use something like www.surveymonkey.com.

Step 5: Review Google Analytics

Look at how visitors are behaving on your site. Note which pages are popular and visitors spend time on. Begin to think about how the topics of these pages can be incorporated into your social media marketing plan.

Step 6: Compile findings

Take all of the data and research collected and decide how to start engaging in social media to extend your brand presence online.

Step 7: Design a Digital Social Media Policy

Your social media policy serves, in its simplest form, as a guide to how a business, its employees, and anyone else speaking on behalf of the business should share opinions, beliefs, and recommendations with customers online. It is important to have this in place before you engage your staff to represent your brand. Learn more from WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association).

Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne

I'm a HUGE fan of Girl Geek Dinners- for those who haven't heard of the group before it started in London. The original founder of the London Girl Geek Dinners and Girl Geek Dinners concept was Sarah Blow and she ran the events in London up until August 2009 where she handed over the events to the team that run them today. The reason for the handover was due to the increasing demand for Girl Geek Dinners globally and this needed central co-ordination. Sarah, not being based in London decided it was about time to hand over the events to the Londoners!

Nearly every city around the globe has their own chapter and I'm really excited to be involved with the group here in Melbourne.

All our events are run as not for profit and any funds left over are ploughed back into the group to provide the website, labels etc and sponsorship covers the cost of food and drinks as well as the venue hire where applicable. We are always happy to hear from potential new sponsors and you can contact me
jessica.lowry@gmail.com

What story are you telling online?

I had the great privilege of attending Film Xtended organised by X Media Lab at the ACMI in Melbourne yesterday. It was highly inspirational and enlightening. I didn't take a ton of notes, but I did write down a few that I'll share with you now.

Promoting a film is not dissimilar to promoting any brand or product. A tip is to spend time thinking about the platform you're using to promote the brand- because, "the medium is the message". It's important to remember that online is all about interactivity, real-time communication, and customisation.

Re-purposing offline content does not a website make (love your inner Yoda).

Other notes I scribbled down were:

"snack media"
"measure everything"
"The shortest distance between two people is a story."
"radical media"
"personal cinema"
"psychographic"
"your network is your greatest asset"
"focus on the hooks"

Transmedia Storytelling

A CMO's Guide To The Social Media Landscape

via cmo.com

Women in Tech Rule

OK, so it's not quite that women are dominating, but we are adding our own little 'touches'. It's no huge surprise to me that women are of the higher participants of social media - it's in our DNA to be more social then men. I've read from biological researchers that our socialisation is linked to our survival instincts.

Anyway, I'm glad that more women are finding their niche within digital technologies and I predict that once more women realise there's something in it for them we'll see a massive influx of women working in digital media.

A change that will improve things significantly because we can hear from both voices in equal volume. Publications such as Wired, are heavily male-centric - the articles are mostly gender-neutral, but the ads are assuming that only men are reading the mag; which is not the case.

I reckon women will be leading in the new roles associated with social media; which is very exciting. Roles such as: Online PR, Online Community Manager, etc.

in reference to: For Women, Social Media is More Than "Girl Talk" (view on Google Sidewiki)

Are you thinking of buying an iPad?

I'm a HUGE fan of Apple - my Mac Book is the best laptop I've ever owned and I can't live without my 2 iPods. I would own an iPhone if I weren't living out of country - being a foreigner means most phone plans are totally unreasonable (i.e. minimum 2 year contract when my visa is only for a year, etc.).

Anyway, I think most people are gaga for Apple, but I wonder if the iPad is really a necessary device. Is this a case of product for the sake of a new product, or is this a technological revolution?

As a marketer I have to make a choice about the work I produce. If a potential client comes to me and wants help selling a product I need to be 100% behind the value of that product. Because I need to believe that there are people who will benefit from it.

I believe that we live in an overly populated world of gadgets and junk. A trip to a local garage sale will give you a taste of it or a journey across the vast garbage dumps of the world with little to no ability to cope with Western society's obsession with over consumption. We buy too many things we don't need, and there is a very real price to pay for it.

Reading this article by Eliot Van Buskirk from Wired Magazine I'm still not 100% convinced about the value of the iPad. I think music LPs is a very interesting concept and digital magazines have always intrigued me, but do we need yet another device for these types of digital possibilities?

What if instead of an iPad we had a macbook air with a twistable display? You could turn it into a template or use it as a notebook- I'm holding out for the hybrid that does both.

in reference to:

"By Eliot Van Buskirk"
- Can Apple’s iPad Save the Media After All? | Epicenter | Wired.com (view on Google Sidewiki)

Other articles on the environment implications of our techology:
The Story of Apple's Environmental Footprint
The Ecological Footprint of eBooks
Knowmore.org