Hilinsky Consulting Social Media Blog

By Anastasia Hilinksy

The world of social media is growing fast. Real fast.. Businesses are jumping on board in record numbers. Are you being left behind?

The key to a successful social media campaign is the SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING PLAN. It is very important to realize that social media marketing is still marketing, and if you don’t integrate it into your overall marketing plan, you will stray from your goals and spend a lot of time with little results. Your social media initiatives need to be nurtured, so how do you start?

The first step to developing a strategy is to listen. You need to be able to gauge and analyze the current buzz about your brand before embarking on social media initiatives.

Some of the easy to use tools that I utilize in my day-to-day client relations are:

1. Google Alerts- Email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic. Monitor your brand (or your competitors) right from your inbox! Google Alerts can be set up to notify you as information comes in, once a day, or once a week. This is really handy for tracking and I cannot tell you how many times I’ve found useful information by reading my Google Alerts.
2. Technorati- Real-time search for user-generated media (including weblogs) by tag or keyword. Also provides popularity indexes.
3. Twitter Search- Search Twitter in realtime – see what the world is doing right now. Twitter Search is essential to your Twitter strategy. This allows you to monitor what people are saying about your brand and enables you to interact and engage with your audience and write meaningful and relevant tweets.  You can also install Twitter Search as a plugin.
4. My new favorite- Pipes: Social Media Firehose: a social media search for tracking brand or product mentions on a slew of social media sites, including flickr, twitter, friendfeed, digg etc. It taps into their search APIs directly, so it’s much more immediate and comprehensive than say, Google alerts. This tool is great for tracking buzz and incredibly easy to use. It allows you to view product/brand mentions in either list or map form so you can track where your mentions are originating from. While you’re at it, explore Yahoo Pipes, it’s a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.

Step two is stay on top of the latest trends. Create a list of resources so you keep up with marketing trends and don’t get stuck using outdated technology. New marketing resources are being developed daily and usability is always at the forefront of these efforts. As much as I love the resources I’ve listed above, I’m sure there will be a newer and better resource that I will be using for monitoring and tracking in a month from now.

Here are some of the resources that I use to keep myself knowledgeable about the newest and greatest in social media-

1. Mashable- Mashable is by far my favorite resource for all things social media. It is the world’s largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news.
2. Alltop: the social media news section- This site considers itself an “online magazine rack” which is updated every hour. It provides you with the most popular headlines on the Internet.
3. Hubspot Internet Marketing Blog- Hubspot is a genius and their blog covers all that is Internet inbound marketing and provides their audience with case studies, news, and tips.

Now that you are knowledgeable in what your customers are saying about you and have gotten yourself into the habit of keeping up with marketing trends, step three is to begin preparing your plan-

Your plan should be composed of several different steps:

1. Identify your strategy- in this step you need to make many different decisions. Remember to start slow and work your way up. Pick a few social media networks to start with. It would be overwhelming to jump right into all the networks at once. After you have identified the networks you will be utilizing, identify your goals and your rules for employee engagement. Rules are important, remember this when you are drafting your plan. Social media means transparency, and transparency means that you have to be careful what you say. Every time you engage on a social media network you are representing your brand and all employees responsible for this must be aware that they can potentially cause irreparable damage. This requires a deep understanding of your brand and a great appreciation for honesty.
2. After you have identified your networks and your rules for engagement you also need to set goals. This is the most important portion of any marketing plan. Set direct goals that you can achieve over the next few months, make sure that you aim high but I cannot stress the importance of setting attainable goals. Remember that all community building and inbound marketing can take some time.
3. After analyzing your strategy and your goals you need to allot an appropriate number of employees (if you have them) and set a realistic budget. Budgeting is important!

Step four is putting your plan into action. Finally! Time to engage. Get yourself out there and follow the guidelines that you’ve created and remember to be witty, relevant, and most importantly; have fun!

Step five: Analyze and assess. Remember that the goal of social media engagement for your brand is to learn new things about your customers as well as your brand. There is no other form of marketing that will provide you with an open communication forum like social media. Use it wisely and always ask yourself a few questions:

1. Is my brand growing and adjusting our strategy due to customer feedback and two-way conversation?
   
2. Is my brand engaging our client base and staying on top of the latest buzz and social media trends?

The Hilinsky Consulting team is always available via email for questions and we rather enjoy responding to comments, so don’t be afraid. Comment away!

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