By Pam LontosSocial Media Marketing (called SMM) is the newest buzz in public relations and marketing. As with any new tool, people have lots of questions about how to utilize it.
Just as you can forward your favorite jokes by e-mail to friends, with SMM, people can spread your message for you with a click of a button.
To ensure SMM works well for you, employ these keys to success:
Put your message on the right sites.
With so many social media sites available, you need to determine where your market is, and post your messages on those sites. Being on the wrong site wastes your time and could hurt your credibility. If your topic is business growth, for example, you don’t want to be on a site for people whose hobby is baking. With SMM, being anywhere and everywhere is not the answer. Be strategic: target your market for the best results.
Also realize your market might change. Just because a certain site attracts your market today doesn’t mean it will tomorrow. People are fickle in SMM, and they get bored easily. For example, LinkedIn almost fell out of existence in November 2008. If it had not moved to where its market shifted, it would not be here today. But LinkedIn had to make a huge shift in services it provided, because its market moved. And when the market moves, it tends to go in mass.
So if you don’t watch your market, it may leave the site you’re sending messages to. Now your messages are going to the bakers again.
Understand the purpose of each site.
To post to the right SMM site, you need to know the focus of each site. Even people new to SMM have likely heard of the Big Three: LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
LinkedIn is the leading business networking site -- think of it as a corporate boardroom. Facebook is for keeping tabs on personal and business contacts -- think of it as entertaining clients in your living room. Twitter is for short, sound-byte updates -- think of it as a billboard.
A couple of others that are useful for business are Naymz and Plaxo.
Naymz is a reputation site. By registering, you essentially do a background check on yourself and post it to the Internet. It’s a well respected site among corporate decision makers, who often use Naymz to check people out.
Plaxo is a hub site. It lets you link multiple Internet resources in a single place. People can go there and find their way to everything about you, if you choose to allow that.
For business purposes, you should probably stay away from MySpace, which often worries executives. Why? Because there have been more corporate scandals and sexual harassment suits in the past year over things posted on MySpace than on any other social networking site. If you have a MySpace page, hide it.
Think in sound bytes.
Anyone who has done any type of PR knows the importance of the sound byte, which is also important in SMM. You want your message to be original, useful, valuable, fun, problem solving, and interesting. And brief: 140 characters or less. Characters, not words. So your message must be succinct.
That character limit is not set randomly. In fact, 140 characters is the convention for text messages to cell phones internationally. You don’t want the end of your message cut off because it was too long for the cell phone to display.
And don’t think you can take your long message and split it up into two or more feeds. That’s called giving a double message or a split, and people are annoyed by such tactics. Do it too often and you’ll quickly lose your followers.
Remember, your goal is for people like your message enough to pass it along.
Post responsibly.
A common question is: “How often should I post messages onto these sites? Daily? Twice a day? Hourly?” Unfortunately, many people post too often. Sending too many messages produces two negative effects.
First, you become an interruption rather than a welcome interlude. People who are having your messages forwarded to their cell phones are constantly being interrupted by you. Now you’re a nuisance.
Second, search engines are designed to ignore these 140-character messages. But there are strategic ways around that rule so your messages become alerts. But if a search engine sees too many posts from you during its standard interval, it could flag you as a spammer and lock you out.
The best posting interval is 48 hours.
When you combine SMM efforts with traditional PR avenues, you can create a publicity campaign that gets you noticed by prospects, clients, and key decision makers. The sooner you put SMM to work for you, the more profitable your business will be.
Guest blogger Pam Lontos is president of the PR/PR public relations firm in Orlando and will be the featured speaker at the chamber’s October luncheon.
Those of you who don’t already own a copy of Kevin W. McCarthy’s book The On-Purpose Person: Mark your calendars, because you’ll be able to get a copy for free April 24-28.
