Hey, hey! It is the LAST session of Day 2. Congrats on sticking with us. I can’t lie. I can feel myself starting to drag a bit here. Totally counting on this social media session to be high-energy and stir up the juices. I have faith it will. Up on stage we have Jennifer Laycock, Matt Siltala, and Chris Winfield. Jen’s doing double duty and also acting as the moderator. Let’s hop right in.
Up first is Chris Winfield.
He laughs that the session is called 60 Minutes Per Day For Social Media Success… and the session is 75 minutes. Hee! Chris tells everyone in the room to follow Outspoken’s blog coverage and I turn about 18 different shades of red. In fact, I almost took my laptop and hide under the table. While I’m under there, you should subscribe to the blog. You’ll feel so much better when you’re done.
Social Media Can Be Overwhelming
Chris was watching Sports Center trying to get away from the Internet and he heard them mention Twitter three times in the first segment. He couldn’t believe it. A lot of people think that because they hear about Twitter all the time that THAT’S where they should be spending their time. That’s not always the case.
Social media doesn’t have to be overwhelming. You have to simply it. To show us how this is done he picked a random paintball company and he’ll be using them as his example throughout the session.
So, how do you simplify the process?
Locate Your Audience: It’s not just Facebook or Twitter. Look where you’re getting traffic from. Use Google Analytics. Run it, check it, and look at it again. There may be niche social networks, other blogs, retailers, etc, that you don’t even know about. Test things yourself. Don’t just focus on the sites you think people are using. Google Analytics will even allow you to set up filters so you can exclude certain sources to help you get a better idea of where exactly people are coming from based on blogs or social media.
Your clicks and prospects know where they spend their time online. ASK THEM! Ask the trust ones and use polls/incentives.
He says to create Google Alerts. [I love Google Alerts.] Set up Comprehensive Searches on Brand terms and get Alerts every time the brand is mentioned to discover new networks and sites. Do the same thing for your competition. Find out where they’re getting mentioned.
The Importance of the Niche Community
Find out what the most active blogs, forums, Twitterers, Facebook groups, etc, are in your industry. How can you do it free and quick?
- Blogs: He mentions using All Top. I grumble because I hate All Top on principle (I call that principle “Guy Kawasaki”), but he’s right. It’s a great resource. They aggregate nearly every type of content into what they consider to be the most influential blogs on a topic. If he’s the aforementioned paintball Web site, he can go to All Top, type in “paintball” and find they have a whole section dedicated to paintball.
- Forums: He’s a huge believer in forums. He thinks they get ignored because they’re not that sexy anymore. They’re powerful because they have people in there who are so passionate. When he was getting married, his wife was on LIWeddings.com and she knew a member that had 90,000 posts in a year. That’d be a great person to connect with. [Though, Chris says, you probably wouldn’t want to have a real conversation with her. Ha!] He mentions using Big-Boards.com, which tracks the most active forums and threads.
- Twitter: Find the influential Twitter users. He likes using WeFollow. It lets you find people based on tags. Twellow is another great directory.
- Facebook: Look for active Facebook groups or Fan pages. Create a Fan page for your local community to get people involved. See how active people are on your topics. Do searches for them.
- Yahoo Answers: A nice way to create different touch points and get people to your site. You want to become the expert.
- Niche Social News Networks: More targeted than the big dogs like Digg, Reddit, etc. Easier to have success because there’s less competition. You can see his list of the best niche social media news sites.
Use easy-to-use desktop application tools to monitor and scan multiple popular social media networks for given queries in real-time to stay ahead of mentions.
Final Tips
- Find out the ACTUAL sites your audience is using. Don’t use a site just because someone told you it works.
- Get very involved in the most active communities.
- Be active and helpful but still focus on ROI.
- Be a damn human!
Next up is Jennifer Laycock.
If you only had an hour a day, here’s where Jennifer thinks you should spend your time:
- 10 min a day: Schedule Tweets: Use a tool like HootSuite to help you schedule your tweets. Build a name for yourself by being the person who finds the great content. Schedule the content so its being released all day so it looks like you’re there even when you’ve moved on to something else.
- 10 Min a day: Upload Content: She mentions sites like Flickr, etc.
- 15 min a day: Scan & Respond: Use Social Mention to go in and see what people are saying about you each day, check in on your FB page and get back to people.
- 25 min a day: Blog post: She thinks small companies need to spend most of their time here. This should be your keystone and where you drive everyone back to.
Why does social media matter?
- It delivers traffic: Focused, high value and emotionally-invested traffic. Traffic is powered by word of mouth
- It delivers links: Lots of topical , credible links
- It delivers conversions: Registrations for an event, a newsletter, etc.
- It delivers credibility: You can get out there and demonstrate your knowledge and collect third party vouchers
Concentrate Your Efforts
You need to find new ways to tie it all together. She thinks you need to tie it all into your blog. Your blog is your best opportunity to put multiple types of content into the same location. Your blog is the only place where you can integrate all these forms of content into one place. You have a lot more control when you’re on your blog in terms of pulling people in to susbscribe. You can link to all of your social media channels so they can find the places where they can connect with you.
Your blog is your best chance to track conversion potential. You can somewhat track Twitter and FB, but you have a way better ability to follow your customers if you can get them on your blog. That’s how you can see how they’re interacting with your site.
It’s also about control. If you have a tool like Twitter and you can send them wherever you want, why wouldn’t you send them to your own? She thinks the blog should the keystone to everything that you’re doing. just because it’s been around for awhile doesn’t mean its boring. f you’re looking to seel, there’s a lot of potential..
Next up is Matt Siltala.
Matt took the Chris Winfield Approach to presentation writing – which means he let Twitter help him write it. ;) These are some apps Twitter says they can’t live without:
- Ecofon
- Twitdroid
- Foursquare [boo! hiss! throws things!]
- Tweetie
- Tweetdeck
Mobile Social Media Success Starts Here:
- Mobile Apps = Friend
- Have a Plan
- Time Management
- Make Sure And Set Goals
- Non Mobile Tools That Help
- Focus
Have A Plan: Use time savers to help you appear on multiple channels. If you upload something to Posterous, it will automatically upload it to Flickr, which will post on Facebook. If you check into Yelp, it will post on Twitter or Facebook. If you have a WordPress blog, you can post using the WordPress mobile app –> which will autopost to Twitter –> which will post to Facebook.
It all depends on how you have it set up and how you’re using it. He likes doing things from the phone because he’s always on his iPhone.
Time Management
Facebook and Twitter take up the most of his time. You have to limit yourself to the essentials.
- @replies
- DMs
- Lists
- Messages
- Wall Postings
- Industry Alerts – (keywords you are monitoring)
Twitter Time Management Tools
- TweetDeck
- EchoPhone
- Lists
- TweetBeep
- Alerts
- Twitter Search
- Multiple Accounts
Make sure you set goals. What do you want to accomplish. How much time will you spend on Twitter or Facebook? Voting & Sharing? Relationship building? Networking? Branding? Traffic? Sales?
Non Mobile Tools
Have the appearance of always being social by setting up all your feeds and working the tools. Using Google Alerts, Friendfeed, Twitter Feed, etc.
Stay the Course
Don’t let these things get you off course. Stay focused. The time you spend needs to be focused on things that matter. You can’t be on all of the social networks at all the same time. Pick five for your industry and become experts on those.
