“Social Media” for Dummies
Jul2
Social Media is no longer the future of advertising - it IS advertising (in my humble opinion).
So, let me back up a little bit. Right now I am contracted with some clients as the “social media” consultant (a confusingly ubiquitous title I am not so fond of) . I run the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN, YouTube and Flickr sites for the clients. This means my interns pipe stories,photos and videos to me and I will post them on the sites, hoping for interaction. Facebook is very helpful for judging interaction because they give you an insights page that tracks things like likes, wall posts and comments. Twitter is cool to me for a few reasons, but the BEST way for an entity to USE twitter is to use the search function. In one minute you can find out ANYTHING that is being said about you and your brand. And you can respond to the individual immediately and officially. Very cool.
Twitter:
* Easy to use. Literally: 140 characters. Tweets & ReTweets.
* Effecient ways to promote new products and services to your core fans.
* EXCELLENT for customer service [http://www.search.twitter.com].
* Very likely to continue EXPLODING for a long time. The earlier you JUMP ON and STAY ACTIVE the more credibility you will have down the road.
Facebook:
* Everyone is using it.
* Ability to send out products and services into thousands of fans’ feeds. A powerful way to do “product placement” advertising. Meaning that a user of Facebook that is subscribed to your fan page sees your updates just like he sees John Smith. That is a powerful way to sell something.
* Ability to monitor interaction [likes, comments, wall posts. Once you have enough data points (enough Fans) you can start focusing on trends. Males/Females? Ages? Everything is right there for you to do research on. This is SO VALUABLE for targetting and research.
* Paid ads on Facebook are for BRANDING only. They get very poor REAL click-thrus.
I highly recommend you read this post by Brian Solis. Brian is a leading PR guy, and is basically planning on turning the entire industry up-side down (and SAVING it in the process). Let me know what you think.
Boris
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2:23 am on July 16th, 2009
Boris,
It’s been 2 weeks since you’ve posted, I’m dying here. I hope its a result of you being busy but nonetheless, I miss your blog. I actually picked up the Carnegie book you mentioned and it is without a doubt in my top 5 favorite books ever.
I think I mentioned “How to Get Anyone to Do Anything” but I soon realized that it is essentially a quick reference guide for the Carnegie book. It’s nice to have it all condensed and clear cut, but I prefer Carnegie’s writing style better: more stories, more fun to read, etc.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to moving down that suggested reading list and also future posts!
be easy.
11:46 am on July 16th, 2009
Hey Devlin,
Thanks for inspiring me to do the post today! Check it out.
Boris