How to Implement a Social Media Marketing Strategy

Again, thank you to everyone for the support and enthusiasm for the presentation. Certainly this is something that has hit a nerve and I’ve heard you loud and clear. Over the coming weeks and months I will be devoting more time documenting the approach we are deploying at Alterian and sharing insights on what is and isn’t working.

To download a copy of the presentation, please visit the Alterian site:

http://www.alterian.com/smleadgen/

Growing understanding of what is Inbound Marketing

A colleague of mine Connie Bensen (you can read more about her thought leadership in the social space at http://conniebensen.com) asked me to comment on an article by Blaine Mathieu on how email can be used in combination with SEM to drive synergistic results.

http://www.adotas.com/2009/10/email-yin-and-search-yang-a-symbiotic-relationship/

I like the direction for sure, but from my perspective, though, Baline is just scratching the surface of what is a well formed inbound strategy. As more and more interactions continue to flow “off deck” into the vast social-sphere the traditional, siloed campaigns will continue to decline in effectiveness. The focus needs to shift to the content. Invest in developing something valuable to the community and then use every possible avenue to make it available to them. Yes, I think the collision of CMS/SEM/Email can be effective – in so far that they can work in combination to make your content more accessible and findable by those that seek it. Everything must be done with an eye towards what’s happening outside your walls and how you can best contribute to the conversation.

How do you “be Interesting” and “be Findable” in Social Media

Q: In terms of being findable, how to you apply this to the assets on Social Media?  Is that done through being interesting to your audiences?

I wanted to make sure I followed up your question with a little more detail.  In terms of being successful in social media it really is about following the 4-B framework.

1. Be Interesting. As a starting point, yes, you need to make sure you are producing content interesting to your core audience.  Nothing can replace good content.
2. Be Accessible. Again – this is about leveraging all the free points of distribution to deliver your brand experience.
3. Be Findable. A lot of stuff to potentially cover here, but if I were to summarize, the idea is to structure your content in a certain way to make it show up in the searches that people run via Google, Yahoo, etc.  I’d think of this “certain way” like the rules to writing a good research paper, or news article.  A few simple rules to keep in mind are:

• Keep a list of key words handy – use them throughout everything you do
• In terms of titles and even file names (e.g., “MyFile.doc”) use the keywords first – the further to the left they are, the more bang you will get
• Use bold – this calls out a section for being important

4. Be Accountable. Of all the rules, this one can be the hardest to execute because it is technically the most difficult. Recommendations here are to learn about redirects (e.g., Bit.ly) and always remember the goal is to tie your marketing activities to revenue.