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Great advice from the new book:  Power Friending Demystifying Social Media to Grow Your Business-

1. Act authentically. A few years I worked as a social media consultant with Tony Robbins. As a leading speaker, entrepreneur, and coach, he is one of the busiest people I know. Still, today, Tony has time to manage many of his own social media efforts. As an active Twitter user (@tonyrobbins), he shares honest and compelling personal and professional messages. When he recently celebrated his 50th birthday, he took the time to record a friendly audio message for his fans. Being honest, accessible, and authentic is a key ingredient to social media success.

2. Make time. People complain endlessly about not having time to roll social media efforts into their lives. Let’s face it, many of us are short on time. As many highly effective people will attest, you always have time for the things you put first. Take the Tony example, I’m quite sure he doesn’t have time to record friendly audio and video messages for an audience but he makes time because he knows it’s important for his business.

3. Be consistent. As much as you want to run away from your email and the web for a few days here and there, to ensure that your online marketing efforts are getting results try to participate in the social media world on a regular basis. That doesn’t mean that you have to stay glued to your computer 24-7, but try to respond to comments within twenty-four or forty-eight hours during the work week.

4. Tell stories. If you’re looking for content ideas, there is nothing better than a good story. Whether you’re sharing photos on Flickr or blogging on Blogger, people love to look inside the lives of people at home and at work.  Although you don’t want to share anything that makes you uncomfortable, a little personality goes a long way online.

5. Plan ahead. When I interviewed the face of Ford’s social media efforts for my book he explained that a strategic plan kept his company on top. “A solid social media strategy meant that we had a plan and were well prepared for the newfound attention we received,” said Scott Monty.  While you might not be experience a huge wave of social media activity right now, six months down the road this could change. As a result, you should be prepared.

6. Embrace criticism. No one likes negative comments, but may times this feedback can help your organization make appropriate changes. The worst thing you can do when someone lashes out with a complaint is to ignore them completely. Often times, the individual simply wants a reaction and someone to listen to their problems.

7. Listen well. To pick up on the last point, be aware of what people are saying about your brand or business. A free and easy way to do this is to sign up for Google Alerts, so you can monitor online conversations on a regular basis.  Depending on what you hear, look to your plan to figure out how you want to engage.

8. Create a policy. As social media continues to grow quickly, and more than 400 million people worldwide continue to flock to Facebook, now is a good time for your business to develop a social media policy. This document can help your team determine what’s appropriate to talk about online, and how they should interact in various situations. For example, Coca-Cola’s social media policy includes a few smart guidelines, including advising employees that the Internet is permanent and that local posts have global significance.

9. Go mobile. Remember how quickly the mobile world is exploding. Within more than one million iPads sold since launch, the demand for apps on the go shouldn’t be ignored.  Consider developing your own application, either now or put it on your project plan for the future.

10. Have fun. Although the technology is constantly evolving, and often frustrating, there are lots of exciting opportunities in the social media environment. A few weeks ago I hosted a workshop where attendees were tasked with developing an online video campaign for a fictitious airline in under thirty minutes. Many groups pitched pretty traditional ideas, but one group dragged their chairs up on stage and acted out an online skit with “Amelia Earhart” leading the audience through their plans to go viral. In other words, the most creative and original ideas have the best chance to stand out.

Interesting read from SMT:

Though social media marketing is rapidly advancing in terms of adoption and sophistication, many marketers and business executives still struggle with it. They wonder if their organizations are doing enough, if they are doing things right, even if they should be involved in social media at all. This confusion is partly due to some still-common misconceptions about social media marketing, this post will attempt to de-myth-ify it.

1. Social media is so easy we can hire an intern to do it. Because social media is fundamentally about conversations, the individual(s) behind your social media activities is often perceived as the public face of your company. This person is answering questions about your products and/or services, responding to or redirecting complaints, sharing interesting content, providing more information…you’ll probably want to be a bit careful about who gets this responsibility. ->

2. Social media marketing is really hard. True, there are techniques that work better than others, guidelines that are good to know, rules of etiquette to follow and common mistakes to avoid, but the general skills called for aren’t all that uncommon, and the specifics are teachable. It helps to be creative, curious, articulate, friendly and helpful. Okay, so not just anyone can do it, but it’s not rocket science either.

3. Social media is only for the young. Argh, no! On the consumer side, the largest cohort of Facebook’s user base is the 35-54 age group, and the fastest growing is the 55+ cohort. On the producer side, the most important attributes are interpersonal skills and industry knowledge. Age is irrelevant in social media usage, and life experience is a plus for social media marketers.

4. Social media is free. Um, no. While recent studies show that about half of marketers say that social media reduces their overall marketing costs, it is by no means without a price. The primary budget effect of social media marketing is to shift costs from media buying to labor. The tools of social media are (mostly) free, but the time, effort and expertise required to make social media marketing effective has real costs.

5. Since social media marketing is labor-intensive, we should offshore it. Ooh, not a good idea. While offshoring works well for tasks like IT consulting services and software application development, it tends to be less efficacious for market-facing activities. Thoughtful companies keep their SEO efforts local (to avoid link-spamming, for example) and after evaluating all of the costs, many are even moving call centers back onshore. And see myth #1 above.

6. Social media marketing success is all about rules and best practices. Not really. True, there are guidelines as to what works well (being sincere, helpful and knowledgeable) and what doesn’t (trying to use social media sites as one-way broadcasts of your marketing brochures), but the field is new enough that many of the “rules” are still being written. While there are some techniques that seem to work well and are worth replicating, and others that should clearly be avoided, there’s also a great deal of space for creativity in this rapidly expanding and evolving area.

7. Social media marketing has no rules. Now, just because there isn’t an established cookie-cutter approach to social media marketing success doesn’t mean there are no rules. Don’t be excessively self-promotional, don’t try to automate everything, be sincere, add value—there aren’t a lot of rules, but these are a few very important ones.

8. Social media marketing gets immediate results. Almost never. Sure, you may run across an example somewhere of this happening, just as you may hear about a couple who got married three weeks after they met. It can happen, but isn’t common and shouldn’t be expected. Social media is about building relationships and influence. It takes time, but the payback can be much more lasting than a typical “marketing campaign” as well.

9. Social media marketing is too risky. This fear is most common in the medical, financial services, and other regulated industries. And it’s certainly true that there are situations where a company has to be somewhat cautious about its social media participation and content (another reason to keep myths #1 and #5 in mind). By all means, be aware of your specific industry and regulatory environment and put necessary safeguards in place. But people in your marketplace—customers, prospects, analysts, journalists, shareholders and others—are talking about your company and/or industry across social media channels right now. The real risk is in ignoring those conversations.

10. Social media marketing is new. Not really. Certainly the tools are new: Twitter has only been around since 2007, Facebook since 2006, and even blogging has been popular for less than a decade. But social media marketing is fundamentally about participating in and influencing the direction of conversations about your industry and brand. Those practices are timeless, but social media has increased the velocity and magnitude of such conversations.

11. Social media marketing doesn’t apply to my business. There are isolated niches where this is true. For example, if you build weapons systems for the U.S. military, you not only don’t need social media marketing, it would probably be best to avoid it. And there may be a few other such situations. For virtually every other type of business however, someone, somewhere is discussing your brand, your industry or your competitors in social media. You’re missing out if you’re not listening and participating.

Maybe it’s because you’re in marketing. Maybe it’s because you’re from the younger generation assumed to be digital natives. Or maybe it’s because you’re already been experimenting with social media and your success has been noticed.

You have chosen you to write a social media plan, now what? Where do you start?

Here are some ideas

1. Opportunity Backgrounder

Start your social media plan with some startling statistics and pithy quotes about the huge shift away from traditional publishing towards social media.

If you wrote this plan two years ago, you would have leaned on the endorsement of old media with quotes like this:

“Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind.” – The Wall Street Journal

But now you can tell the big opportunity of social media by just relying on social media’s accomplishments. Include nuggets like:

* 4 of the top 7 highest-traffic websites (Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Blogger) are social media websites
* Two-thirds of the global internet population visit social networks — Nielson, Global Faces and Network Places
* More than half of all people in the U.S. over 12 have set up a social media profile
* With over 400 million users, if Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world
* Twitter now has 110 million users and is adding 300,000 a day

Add with a flourish a quote or two from a top social media book, such as Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, or The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott.

2. Define Social Media

Because social media is such a nebulous thing for many, you need to put concise parameters on what it is. However, don’t start your plan with the definition of social media because it’s not as exciting as the first section about the big opportunity. Get their attention first, and then you can go Webster on them. Include something like this:

“Social media is user-generated content on the internet. It’s created with free or inexpensive technology, is easy to update, and can reach a niche audience or millions. It can be mere words in a blog, but also user-generated videos, photos, and audio. It can be interactive with unfiltered comments from visitors. And as user-generated content, it does away with controls associated with traditional media – and most of all, it removes the need for big media.”

3. List Tangible Business Goals

If you don’t already have a social media plan, it’s very possible that your top management fears that social media is only a plaything. You have to show them you mean business. Tell them how you will use social media activities to:

* Build awareness
* Strengthen relationships with clients, prospects, and influencers
* Better understand your buyers
* Improve customer service
* Identify new product ideas
* Increase web site traffic
* Improve search engine rankings
* Drive traffic to your trade show displays at events
* Generate leads
* Generate sales

You don’t have to promise to do all these things. And preferably your goals will match top management’s goals. But whichever goals you choose, make them attainable, and include a measurement plan. Ask for a grace period (at least several months) for learning and experimentation until you have to start proving tangible results.

4. Plan A Timeline Of Steps

You can’t just push a button and have a full-fledged social media marketing program running full-swing. But management won’t wait forever, either. Give them an idea of what your steps will be, which may include:

* Time to define goals, objectives, and strategy
* Time to get trained on social media
* Time to determine team, either internally, choosing a social media consultant, or both
* Setting up accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and YouTube
* Finding your existing community of clients, prospects, and influencers on the main social media sites listed above, on niche social media sites, and on established industry blogger sites (if you determine your clients are not yet on social media, you may not have a plan!)
* Time to set up your own blog
* The sequence of social media sites you will concentrate your efforts
* Time needed for listening to each online community
* Time to develop a following
* Time to create content, such as a blog (which is ongoing), videos, white papers, podcasts, and more
* Time to learn time-saving tools such as RSS feeds, Technorati, Hootsuite, Bitly, and more
* Dates of pre-scheduled progress reports

Write this timeline of steps on paper, not in stone. This is a working plan that you use every week, and change as you learn what works and what doesn’t.

5. Set Realistic Expectations

Because social media revolves around so many free tools, and because it has become the darling of marketing hipsters everywhere, expectations run high. So you also need to help your team understand there’s no guarantee it will be a silver bullet. Tell them things like:

* Social media is not a panacea: if your company or product sucks, social media is not going to make that go away
* While many of the tools are free, it can take a substantial investment in time and consistent effort to build up a loyal following on the main social media sites
* Social media is not just another advertising channel – old-school product messages will go down in flames
* There is a substantial learning curve of the technology, language, and culture of the various social media sites
* Social media is always evolving, so successful methods can stop working
* Success may require effort from a team, not just one person

6. Ask for Resources

Getting this plan accomplished will require resources. Don’t be shy, ask for help, be it training, people’s time, or budget to pay for consultants, website hosting fees, a video camera, or useful web applications you later determine you need. Because social media requires near constant attention, tell them you need a laptop with broadband access, and a smart phone with an unlimited web access plan, too.

And ask for something free but priceless: For your top management to share their buy-in with your plan to help you get more cooperation from the rest of your company.

7. Recommend Who Does Social Media For Your Company

The first step of choosing who does social media for your company is deciding between doing it internally, hiring a consultant to do it, or a combination. You can shorten your learning curve with social media consultants who can train you and help identify online communities where your clients already gather. But ultimately, your social media activity really should be done by people who work for your company. It’s just too hard to hire an outsider to be the authentic voice of your company.

Then figure out who does social media within your company. Just remember that while the youngest member of your marketing or customer service team may be the most familiar with social media, they may not be the best choice to represent your company in social media. You want someone who has:

* Deep knowledge of your customers, industry, products, and company
* Exemplifies the personality of your organization
* Insatiable curiosity
* Integrity
* Good people and communication skills
* A quick study on technology
* Very strong work ethic

That person, of course, may end up being you.

8. Finish with an Urgent Call to Action

While similar to how you started your plan, you want to finish with some more strident points that create a sense of urgency. End your plan with things like:

* “We no longer control our brand – it is being shaped by our customers in social media with or without us, so we must engage with them to protect and enhance the brand.”
* “Social media is where our communities are shifting their attention; we ignore them at our peril.”
* “If we delay our entry too long we risk being left behind by our customers and our competitors.”

Social Media is a vast universe of communities, cultures, and ultimately, for the marketer, choices. I hope these 8 parts of a social media plan will help you to inspire your organization to get engaged with your clients, prospects, and influencers via social media.

Many brands are feeling the pressure to keep up with the times! It’s no longer sufficient to offer “one size fits all” content to consumers. So what’s the secret? Social networking seems to be the hot topic, so maybe that’s the ultimate solution. In this is day and age, it is essential for brands to embrace a practical and achievable action plan for their digital future.

Brands must ensure their content is not just clutter on the Web. Well-defined, relevant, fresh knowledge is a tremendous magnet for prospective consumers.  This may sound like preliminary Web 1.0 advice, but surprisingly, many brands still aren’t doing Web 1.0 correctly. So, that’s the first step — go from Content to Knowledge.

The next step is to extend value by creating community connections around the knowledge.  This aspect of the brand digital strategy is centered on people and their ability to connect to the things that are meaningful to them.  Interaction is the key ingredient of any community Web site and group forming can be a powerful exercise.  This is web 2.0 at its finest, not just social networking, but professional knowledge sharing.

Finally, the brand can extend to web 3.0+, relevant and semantic user experiences in an interactive marketplace. Brands can facilitate the knowledge, connections and business of its category. Consumers collaborating online, exchanging ideas, sharing and contributing knowledge.  Effective social strategic planning and measurement will lead to better ongoing results.

In summary…

Step 1: Knowledge (Web 1.0)
Strategy: Convert content to knowledge
Tactics:
* Harvest existing knowledge assets into central repository.
* Use analytics to determine which content is most popular. Analytics is a fantastic tool. With authentic social interaction you can learn about the tastes and demands of your members.
* Keep content easily accessible and fresh/current.
* Keep design/layout intuitive and consistent.

Step 2: Connections (Web 2.0)
Strategy: Turn member data into community of connections.
Tactics:
* Allow for user generated feedback to ensure content (knowledge) is meaningful: ratings, commenting.
* Facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing through integrated professional networking solution with features including member profiles, messaging, groups and resources.
* Connect outside organization walls with Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr).

Step 3: Marketplace (Web 3.0+)
Strategy: Create a “community beacon” through relevant knowledge, connections and products.
Tactics:
* “Brand” all Content.
* Deliver Relevant/Targeted Content.
* Offer Personalized User Experiences.
* Distribute and Connect with Video, Mobile, RealTime.

1. Profiling/Foot-printing/Mapping

• Identify social network channels, e.g; social media neighborhoods, third party influencers, etc

• Identify activists target habits – online by segment

• Identify Opinion leaders in the group – This is done by targeting activists who frequently offer or are elicited for category-related advice

• Identify the best “Social media marketing” practices against each group and their habits

• Listen and monitor the tone of the communications online, so any social material we create is in the “tone and speak” of the online communities.

2. When in Rome!

No social media campaign should be undertaken without due diligence. The community not organizations owns the social channel. Due diligence in social media is to “listen”. Providing a clear insight into “What’s on our minds”; “What’s our emotive triggers”; “How are we speaking – tone and language” ; “Where are we hanging out online – What is the online social neighborhood?”.

This research and preparation grounds any strategy and recommendations, it is also a process of ongoing analysis to keep up with our society and their thoughts to best serve the right message, the right engagement, at the right time, for maximum viral input.

3. Monitor

* So you can use blogs for ongoing research and, following the conversation threads to track influencers and engage with them as advocates
* Posting feedback, helping your client through training to conduct an ongoing, resource light post back strategy and implementation
* Providing snap-shot tracking reports
* Monitor the activity with access to your own analytics to see where the uptake and successes are to prove:
* Measure the volume of traffic
* Breakout the volume of uptake generated by the social media marketing activity as opposed to the normal traffic
* Measure the impact of the social media marketing activity

4. Engage Meaningfully

We will engage with specific elements of the blog community to create new highly emotive conversations and useful content pieces to the online wider audience than the traditional activist base you already has. We will create debate to the broadest reach of audience who may not even be aware of the issues. We will put the issues front of mind through powerful emotive commentary that they can connect with. We will understand the emotive arc through the initial research phase of the activity, because we will ask them.

5. Enable the Discussion by:

* Listening to online conversations
* Identifying opinion leaders
* Developing content based on what is learned
* Participating, commenting and generating interest
* Becoming a resource
* Supporting your client to build your online personality through the training program
* Syndicating RSS content
* Using your social media user generated content, cut up and repurposed for Online Consumer Relations.

6. Optimize By:

* Increasing your linkability
* Making tagging and bookmarking easy
* Rewarding inbound links
* Helping your content travel
* Encouraging the mash-up
* Implementing “Keyword” strategy incorporation
* Developing contextual links within the body of the content
* Citation strategy

7. Report KPI’s

1. Pre-activity word of mouth benchmark report will be supplied at the start of the research,
2. Ongoing snap-shot reports to measure results. The reports will measure social media marketing & advocacy success
3. Ensuring Check’s and Benchmarks are enabled by: 1.Using ‘control areas’ where the word of mouth campaign is run in order to measure the effect of the campaign, 2. Measuring changes in word of mouth pre-and post-actions and track online word of mouth to measure changes of the ratio of word of mouth, 3. Tracking recommendation rates and how they change over time, 4. Including an online element that allows use of web statistics and online feedback to measure reach and participation levels, 5.* Reporting on the brand behavior within the environment and the impact on the brand as a result of the new social contact methods
4. Final Report: In Summary What Should be the Outcomes of the Social Media Marketing?
   * Speaking the voice of the individual
   * Targeting influentials
   * Encouraging engagement with the community
   * Being sensitive to “social speak”
   * Creating critical authenticity
   * Becoming highly interconnected
   * Make news travel fast
   * Enabling feedback and interaction as a fundamental core of your activities

The majority of today’s “traditional” marketers use outbound marketing to reach their audiences. For
message distribution, they use print media, radio and TV. For lead generation, they use direct mail, cold calls and email blasts. These methods may have worked in the past; however, by using tools like
TIVO/DVR, email spam‐blockers and caller ID, consumers block messages they don’t want. People now
control how they consume media and what messages they care to hear.
But all is not lost! Consumers still want to learn about the best products and services for their needs.
The key is they want to find this information on their own, most often by using the Internet. For
example, someone might peruse the blogosphere to read first‐hand experiences with a particular
product. Maybe that person will also search for reviews online or engage with others in social media to
learn other views and opinions.
Instead of continuing to push marketing messages out, effective marketers adapt to this consumer
behavior by creating marketing campaigns that pull people into their business. This strategy is called
inbound marketing. Inbound marketing is marketing focused on getting found by customers. In other words, instead of taking the time and resources to go out and find customers, you set yourself up in such a way that the right kinds of qualified leads find you. Inbound marketing, focused on areas like search engine optimization, content and social media, is cheaper and better targeted than traditional outbound marketing like advertising, cold calling, direct mail and email blasts. Inbound marketers offer the public useful information, tools and resources to
attract people to their site, while also interacting and developing relationships with consumers on the
web. Inbound marketing tools include blogging, content publishing, search engine optimization, social
media and social networks.
As 2010 approaches “being found” should be on the top of this list of any effective marketing plan.

One of the number one complaints about social media is that it takes too much time.

Companies considering the leap into the land of blogs and tweets often run screaming into the night after they glimpse the reality of what it takes to launch and maintain a worthwhile social media presence.

I don’t blame them. The onslaught of digital information is overwhelming, but there is hope. The key is in being selective.

We all know that it’s the kiss of branding death to try and be all things to all people.

The same goes for social media engagement. Unless you have a dedicated staff ready to spend all day, every day monitoring every inch of the Web and churning out top-notch content, you need to be choosy about how and where you spend your time.

This isn’t rocket science, you say? You’re right. But it’s amazing how many people - even professionals - fall into the trap of trying to be everywhere, all the time. In this highly competitive market, it’s easy to start making judgments based on the fear of missing out on something.

The 24/7, real-time nature of social media sets businesses running faster and faster on the proverbial hamster wheel. You start by monitoring here and there, then you launch a company blog, set up a facebook fan page, start tweeting, create a professional group on LinkedIn, develop a collaborative community for crowd-sourcing industry-specific solutions, and so on and on and on. Before you know it, running your social media efforts takes nearly as much time as running your core business.

Instead of jumping on every shiny, new wagon recommended by the so-called gurus, take control of your social media journey. Here are six steps for making sure things don’t get out of hand:

1. Strategy first:  You want to make sure the plan is custom-fit to your needs and capabilities as well as the needs of your target audience.

2. Have contingencies: Even the best strategy sometimes goes awry. Your project is going to be a huge success, but - just in case - make sure you are prepared for anything.

3. Roll-out in phases: Get your toes wet before you attempt a backwards triple somersault with a half pike and a twist. Start small and grow your presence in as organic a manner as possible. Listen well, and your audience will tell you what your next step should be.

4. Enable : In the best case scenario, social media becomes part of your company culture, not a specialty that’s handled by a few select members of your marketing department. Deputize people across your business to monitor and engage, but be sure to keep an overall eye on the conversation, watching for consistency and balance.

5. Target,Target,Target: Finally, narrow your focus. Be brutal. Though it’s highly unlikely that your company can stand out everywhere, if you concentrate on a few key areas, there’s a better chance for greater impact. Even if you wind up with a smaller audience, you’ll be able to have a deeper dialog, and it’s the deeper dialog that leads to actual relationships, a perception of leadership, and business deals.

Are you already engaged in social media? How did you get started? What worked for you, and what was an utter failure? What advice would YOU give to a business getting ready to take the plunge?

Audience>Objectives>Strategies>Tactics>Measurement

Audience: Who are you trying to reach?, Where do they congregate?, What motivates them? Clearly define demographics, psychographics and life-stream profiles.

Objectives: What your are trying to achieve?. Is it increase awareness?, drive traffic?, gain trial? Defining your desired goals upfront determines everything else. Social media is NOT a “build it and they will come” tool.

Strategies: This step is your action plan for accomplishing your social media objectives(Content creation, community functionality on site, network outreach, etc.)

Tactics: These are the actual initiatives and implementation programs developed from you strategies (UGC efforts, contests, Apps, etc.).

Measurement: The all important ROI metric. Social media brings a wealth of new metrics that correlate to you social media initiatives. Things like topic velocity, continuity, virality and engagement.

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