Jessica L. Owens

You’ve chosen to begin using social media as a solution to solve your marketing gaps, or to build your personal brand online. Now, how do you decide which channels to begin sharing content on?

Whatever you do, do not just sync up the same content in 5 different areas. Just because you have a Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn account and a HootSuite account that can publish to them all in one swift click doesn’t mean you actually should use that power for every single message. People follow or friend you in different channels for a reason. Understanding how your audience (or potential) audience uses their social channels is critical to being successful in the digital world.

With that said, each channel may be an appropriate home for the exact same story, yet, just told differently based on capabilities of the technology and the allowance of the type of media considered acceptable on that channel.

There are various ways to measure your influence online. Notably, the most popular: Klout and another favorite of mine: FollowerWonk. While I don’t find the actual scores of these tools all that critical, I think it’s good to understand and use as an option for bench marking. But what does it really mean? To understand your impact online, you must understand what influence actually means. Among various other pieces in the algorithm, these tools use the value of your followers to help determine your overall score.

Now, bringing me to my original question: Will spammers lower your Klout score?

Yes.

Maybe not. But think about this: I’ve never blocked spammers that followed me, only those who mentioned me. I also have something in the neighborhood of 1000 followers and I was pretty excited to get to that number, but what does that number mean if an unknown number of them aren’t even decent Twitter members.

On the flip side, I’m going to go ahead and guess that the number of followers you have is somewhat related to your score as well.

Is it safe to say that you’re damned if you do block your spammy followers and damned if you don’t block them?

In the end, the people that follow you are very important, whether or not you look at any influence score. They’re the people that are seeing most of your content and committed to seeing your ideas on a regular basis. You need to know who they are, what they want from you, and what they’re sharing as well. Here is how:

• Use FollowerWonk to do a general analysis
• Find out their time zone/when they tweet. Mirror it.
• Use SocialBro and/or ReFollow to see who follows you back.
• Use all 3 of these tools to understand who follows you is most influential. Make a Twitter List to easily keep an eye on them all the time. Respond to their stuff. Retweet it. Comment on their blog. Get known.

I’m going to first assume that you’ve identified a need to be online discussing a particular topic to an identified audience. It could be very targeted and well thought through like, “I’m using Twitter to host Twitter chats with educators about the advancement of STEM education.” It could also sound like, “I’m  going to review and share my favorite local places, events and restaurants online.”

If you haven’t identified a reason for existing on various channels, you’re going to find your self feeling like you don’t have anything to talk about and struggling with growing an audience.

We’re also assuming that we’ve identified Twitter to be the social network of choice when reaching out to your audience. This isn’t always true but since I think it’s probably the best social network that connects with broad audiences at this time, it’s not a bad place to start.

There’s probably also a need for longer content creation. This really depends on what you’re doing and how you want to do it. For example, are you demonstrating something via video? YouTube might be your channel of content creation and Twitter is your channel of content curation. Or if you’re a writer, Tumblr or WordPress might be your source of content creation. If you’re reviewing local venues, perhaps Yelp is the answer. You get the idea.

1. Who are you going to talk to?

Make an “engagement wishlist” – probably on Twitter – of people you aspire to be or to interact with. One of your top goals for participating should be to engage with these people. Expand this list to include people they follow, people they’ve recently engaged with, and blogs they use. You’re identifying their social graph and you will soon make this your primary network.

2. What need or gap are you filling for your followers?

You’re going to need to know this in order to properly craft your content. If your goal is to be the go-to resource for the best things to do in Chicago, you need to position yourself to people who are looking for something to do and then give them something to do that they didn’t already hear somewhere else. You’d be the new event calendar for people in your area.

3. Who else is talking about this?

This could be a group of business competitors or some of the people on your “engagement wishlist.” Either way – the user should be something in relation to your content and share similar social graphs. You’ll use this to look for content opportunities and other users to engage with.

4. Compare accounts

Use a tool like Followerwonk.com to assess your followers and compare them against your competitors or others who are talking about your topic. Look for progress in the amount of followers your share with those on your “engagement wishlist”

Let me tell you how the fire started… Today while I was scanning my social feeds I saw a post by @Garyvee with a video from one of his speaking engagements.

Truthfully it was nothing overly special or new to me, but I really enjoy his raw honesty and it lightened the day a little for me. I took a moment to like it and share it with some of my friends on Twitter and not long later.. I get a response!

Considering Gary is the author of one of my all time favorite social media books and one of my favorite spokespeople on the topic (and.. I love wine) I was completely starstruck!!

This isn’t the first time I’ve been mentioned by an influential profile/person/brand but I’d have to say it lit a fire for me for some reason. Plus, I realize I wasn’t the only person he responded to. I realize he probably spent a couple of hours that day just responding to people that shared his link or mentioned it. Maybe he lit a fire under every other person he responded to?

Regardless, it was completely unexpected and my pure excitement got me thinking… What if brands did this more frequently? How can this be replicated on places other than Twitter? What if I spent 20 minutes each day responding to 5-10 people that my brand follows and respond to their posts to light a couple of small fires to create a more passionate fan base?

I’m going to sleep on it. Maybe even build it into my 2012 goals… But who else does this? Not just brands.. but celebs? reporters?

I recently participated in a #SMCGLB panel on personal branding and online profiles. It was rather useful, however, I realized that as a recent job seeker, I could have easily stood up there and participated on that panel as an “expert.” There are some simple steps to start an online presence whether you’re unemployed and looking for a job, an entrepreneur, or simply looking to increase online reputation:

Be available

To be found, you must be available. Have profiles across many platforms:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn <<A must!!
• YouTube
• Emurse.com

It is important to have a presence on several platforms, but have one main “hub.” This could be a Google profile with links to all of your various profiles or a blog.

Be an Expert

Subscribe to newsletters or RSS feeds that write about the subject matter in which you intend to find a job in. Join discussions on Twitter with professionals in your field and list them for easy access. By subscribing to discussions, you’ll have the ability to share useful and recent information in an interview or while networking with potentials.

Make Your Resume Digital

You will have variations of your resume, but it should always include your url – probably to your “hub.”

Also, have one variation of your resume be a digital resume. Whether it’s actually an html page, PDF, or a word document, it should contain links to your work in it’s actual environment.

Post an Ad

Use Google Ad Sense or Facebook Ads to target specific companies or recruiters. Link it to your “hub” or digital resume allowing potential employers to accidentally find you by targeted advertising. Talk about differentiating from the competition!

Propel your career or business with social media

Register Today!

Learn to use social media to build a personal brand at 6:30 p.m. on Oct. 27 at Central Michigan University (location no longer in Grawn and will be announced soon).

This free seminar hosted by Social Media Club – Great Lakes Bay and CMU’s American Marketing Association will feature a panel of three well-known speakers who have successfully built brands for themselves and other companies/

Learn how to build your personal brand online

The panel will consist of Hajj Flemings, Nikki Stephan and Becks Davis. They will discuss how to build a brand using social media tools – such as Twitter, Facebook, blogs and more – and will answer your questions about personal brands. Use hashtag #smcglb to tweet about this event. 

Afterward, join us for drinks and networking at our afterglow event (location to be determined).

About the panel

Hajj Flemings (@HajjFlemings) has been featured on ESPN.com and BusinessWeek.com. He is the founder of Brand Camp University and the author of “The Brand YU Life,” which was selected as one of Fast Company Magazine 2008 Readers Choice Business Books of the year. His branded clients include Walt Disney, Ford Motor Company, Skechers Footwear and U.S. Department of Defense (Telecom Division).

Central Michigan University alumna Nikki Stephan (@EstrellaBella10)  is a public relations professional and social media strategist at Identity Marketing & Public Relations. Nikki is a member of PRSA Detroit and Social Media Club Detroit. She also leads a weekly Tweetea discussion group in metro Detroit. She’s a frequent contributor to Identity’s blog, id tags, and maintains a personal blog, Essential Elements, where she shares stories related to creativity, happiness and success. 

As the founder and editor of detroitmoxie.com, a website focused on Detroit, Becks Davis (@BecksDavis) has built and fostered a community organically using social media tools. She also is active in the Detroit digital community, working on projects such as TEDxDetroit and 140 Characters Conference Detroit.

Social Media Club – Great Lakes Bay is sponsored by:

Platinum: AGP & Associates, Inc. and Dow Chemical
Silver: Think Marketing and Design
Venue: Apple Mountain and Midland Center for the Arts
In Kind: CMU Career Services 

Interested in becoming a sponsor? E-mail SMCGreatLakes@gmail.com for information. 

Creating Organizational Change to Support Social Media Integration

The Speaker: Shannon Paul

Shannon is the Social Media Manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and she writes about social media for business at the Very Official Blog, a blog listed in the Advertising Age Power 150.

Prior to her current role, she managed social media for PEAK6 Online, parent company of several web-based businesses in the financial services sector, and the NHL Detroit Red Wings.

Shannon has experience creating and implementing social media programs, policies and workflow systems to help businesses participate in the social web, including those in regulated industries.

The Afterglow: Apple Mountain

Stay after the seminar to network with others. There will be a cash bar at Apple Mountain

What to post?

When designing your social media strategy, a lot of companies find themselves stumped in what to post. Granted, you can promote sales, perhaps your bestselling products, or continue to talk about how awesome your company and employees are, but lets be real… nobody really cares.

Instead- post information that people want to read and that they can relate to by telling success stories of your companies or employees. Make it interesting and something that the reader could relate to or wish to share with a friend. It’s important to ask “what’s in it for the reader?” each time you post something.

How to post it

Also, it’s important to post in an easy to read format. Include charts and pictures and summarize by using lists.

However you write and present it on your site, make sure that the text that gets placed in social media is intriguing enough that the reader at least just wants to finish the sentence he or she is reading- but what the hell, they’ve already clicked through so lets keep them there for the whole article– better yet, complete a sale before they leave. Because that’s what the whole point is right? Well, that’s up to you and that’s what your strategy will determine.

Where to post it

Sync your accounts using tools like perhaps HootSuite or using the options that the social media service provides.

Make it available on all types of services such as Facebook and Twitter. Also be sure it’s available on multiple devices and utilize RSS so that no matter what the reader is utilizing (mobile, tablet, Google Reader, etc) they have the chance to find it, read it, and share it.

A lot of people tend to struggle with the value of social media for businesses, especially if they’re not really social marketers, they’re business people. I saw a great example today of exactly what business want to see as they begin to interact with consumers through social media. I’ve removed the names to protect privacy.

Two years ago, nobody would have ever posted on the internet their mid-afternoon snack choice. Today we do and we’re sharing with hundreds and maybe thousands of friends and followers. Tomorrow we will tag that image and post not only to our followers and people who we know, but we’ll share with our brand’s followers and those that we don’t know.

The influence users have over purchasing choices while using social media has been documented many times over. If this doesn’t convince you, I’m not sure what will work… and in that case, you probably will struggle to compete in a complicated market place.

I was reading Unleashing the Ideavirus by Seth Godin yesturday and I started to think about the future of marketing and how we interact in a time when there is more content available than ever before. Seth talks a lot about how there are more and more competitors and the need to infest the “hives” with “ideavirus” in order to be successful.
As the world comes together on the internet, content grows drastically. We’ve only been in this era for a short period of time but we are already bombarded with more information than any of our previous generations could fathom.
Many see a future where the internet connects the world and the people all become a unified “hive” as Seth would put it. But after reading about Seth’s “ideavirus” and the need to infect specific “hives,” I beg to differ. He clearly states that there is no way to infect everybody even if your product could impact everybody.
So as we enter an era with unlimited content, we have learned to aggregate content in a way that is focused to only our needs. As marketers, it is unbelievably essential to understand this. As our world starts to evolve electronically, everyone will be segmented into hives. Marketers will have more success by focusing on hives and understanding the targeted hive instead of the traditional mass media.