Social Media Marketing

Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media
Liana “Li” Evans
Que; 1 Original edition (June 28, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0789742845
ISBN-13: 978-0789742841
360 pages
$16.49 (on Amazon)

Author Li Evans has been active in social media and search marketing for more than 10 years; who better to write a book that guides companies through social media solutions that actually work.

Divided into five sections (see below), Social Media Marketing is all about being social in the marketplace; from Twitter and Facebook to LinkedIn, YouTube and Flickr. Evans shows readers how to make the most of social media, including

• • customizing your social media strategies
  • understanding the quirks of your social media audience
  • managing and executing your strategies (don’t let an intern be in charge of the program!)
  • building trust among strangers

What You’ll Learn About Social Media

Section I:  The Basics of Social Media
This is the section that sets up the rest of your strategies; know your goals, know your audience and understanding what social media can and cannot do.  Great section here on ROC (Return on Conversation) not ROI (Return on Investment).

Section II: It’s About Conversation
If you think social media is about selling, you’re forgetting the “social” part.  People don’t go on Facebook or Twitter to buy something, they go to have conversations.  Fortunately Evans saves social media newbies from making the big “let’s go sell something” mistake when they first get involved in the networks.

Section III: Social Media from the Inside Out
Here, Evans helps readers convey the value of social media to the company. It’s all about ethics, interns, consistency, transparency, trust, and defining social media policy for employees.

Section IV: It’s Not About You
Evans writes astutely about keeping your customer’s needs in front of you at all times.  I suspect she’s seen a lot of crash and burns from the “my ego is more important than your needs” crowd.  As she so wisely states “for it to work, you have to be social.”

Section V: How Social Media Fits into the Online Marketing Picture
Don’t fall so in love with social media that you forget it’s just one slice in the marketing pie.  Here, you’ll learn how to create a social media-friendly pressroom, align your offline efforts with your online, and why you really need to be on YouTube (seriously).

Summary Points

1.  If you work for a company that’s just getting started in social media, this is a must-have book.

2.  If you’ve done a little with social media, but more of a shotgun than a laser, this is a must-read book.

3. If your peeps think social media is all about sales, this is a must-read book for them.

4.  If for no other reason, buy the book to read the section on conversations.  If you don’t, you’ll be sorry.  (I’m just sayin’)

I sat in on an interesting webinar thrown by the 60-second marketer.  The presenter gave these anologies for our favorite social media marketing sites.

Facebook is like a pub, an informal place where people get together, hoist a beer and shoot the breeze.

LinkedIn is like a Tradeshow – very business-like, watch your language, dress up a little.

Twitter is the famous cocktail party, with lots going on and very high energy

YouTube is like Times Square on New Years Eve – anything goes!

MySpace is like Woodstock - populated by the young and the crazy!

Click the horizontal buttons to learn more about social media marketing.

An online quipster poised the question: "How do you measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media marketing (SMM)?"  He then answered his own question with "You don’t."

Fortunately, that’s not exactly true.

Where to Start Measuring?

As  authors, businesses, solopreneurs, and entrepreneurs scramble to set up Facebook, Twitter and MySpace pages, analysts are scrambling to discover how impactful their company’s SMM has been. For some, the answer is "we can’t measure this," but others believe there are statistics that reflect their SMM’s effect.

As Aaron Uhrmacher, the guru of SMM, recently said in an article on Mashable,   "Social media measurement is one of those topics about which everyone has an opinion, but nobody agrees on the solution."  His suggestion – - as a beginning point – - is to simply decide on what to measure.

What’s Your Social Media Marketing Goal?

If your goal is to increase your reputation-get potential readers or clients talking about you in a positive manner – -  then get out onto the social media sites and monitor what’s being said about you. In a brief run-through searching Twitter, I found some very mean-spirited comments about a specific author’s e-mail campaign.

What to do? The author could have reached out  via direct message or e-mail and turned a damaging situation into a win-win. After all,  social media is about "social" – - building relationships.

If your goal with your SMM is to measure traffic, then setting up a solid analytics program that tracks incoming links will tell you if your visitors are coming from Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Although Google Analytics are excellent (and free), we also suggest Xinu, a free site that tells how your website is doing in terms of search engines, search engine optimization, social bookmarking, RSS, and other social indicators. Measuring ROI on social media marketing isn’t a precise science; but what I know for sure is that authors and entrepreneurs need to have a success metric in mind before jumping into the game.

Authors – do you need help with your book project? Contact me for information about my coaching programs. Get started today and get that book out into the marketplace.

I’m a book geek, and among my favorite reads are the following Internet-business books

1. Facebook Marketing
    
2. Content Rich
    
3. Get Content, Get Customers
    
4. Twitter Revolution
    
5. Facebook Me!
    
6. Waiting for your Cat to Bark?
    
7. Don’t Make Me Think
    
8. Letting Go of the Words
    
9. Killer Web Content
    
10. Tribes

I read a great article at PC World about the 10 most overrated products. Some I agreed with (XP vs Vista), some I did not (Google Apps vs OpenOffice)–but the one that really hit home for me was Facebook. As the editors at PC World wrote: "Everyone seems to be on Facebook at this point. But to what end? Countless free applications of dubious value, plus scores of plug-ins and games that draw you deeper into the Facebook rabbit hole until you’re spending hours a day befriending complete strangers with whom you have nothing in common be­­yond a shared love of Raisin Bran." Amen. I know I’m swimming against the Facebook for Marketing tide – - but really, is Facebook where YOUR target audience hangs out? Not mine. Find the social network where your own crowd hangs out – -  THEN market the heck out of it — by building relationships with people who actually COULD become your customer.

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