What's Your Social Media Sweet Spot?

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What's Your Social Media Sweet Spot?

Social media marketing can be a marketer's windfall or landmine, depending on how well it is understood and utilized in light of measurability and impact to the bottom line.

In today's slowing economy, it is imperative to invest marketing dollars and time wisely, optimizing technologies and techniques that will pay off, and s****ping those that don't.

Here are five best-practice tips to finding your social media sweet spot, the online places where the payoffs are worth the time invested.

1. Listen Before You Launch

Do you know where your customers and prospects hanging out online? Do you know who is already talking about your company, either in good or bad terms? Before you begin any initiatives, you need to identify the influencers in your space, and see also what your competitors are doing and saying.

Social media, by definition, is a two-way street. You can talk, but you’d better also be listening. The easiest way to find out who is talking about your company’s products, services or people is to do a little digging yourself. Start with answering these questions:

What is being said about your product/brand? What bloggers are talking about issues that you care about? What is being tagged on del.icio.us and Digg? What applicable communities and comments exist on Twitter and Flickr? Which of your url’s are saved on del.icio.us?

Is anyone reviewing your product on YouTube? What influential contacts exist in your space?


2. Set Social Media Goals

The best executed marketing programs are ones that are closely tied with clear, measurable business goals and objectives.

Once you understand the current social media landscape, and the unique environment, you can establish clear business goals, metrics, measurement and reporting processes, and then identify the best places for you to get involved.

What are your goals for your social media initiatives? They may be to: increase traffic to your website, microsites, landing pages or blog; increase the number of links to these same areas; increase brand awareness, protect your brand name by monitoring what others are saying about you; identify new opportunities for your product or service; or increase leads.


3. Get Blogging

Any company can quickly get started in the social media space by starting their own blog, as well as participating in relevant outside blogs. The two keys to a successful blog is great content and active visibility. Make sure you establish a solid editorial calendar and stick with it.

Better yet, establish multiple champions in your company to blog on certain issues or topics. Remember that content should convey trust, though leadership, sharing and honesty; in short, authentic engagement. This is not the place to spin or promote your own product or service.

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4. Integrate SMM with SEO and Web Analytics

Many social marketing media efforts pay big dividends in raising SEO rankings and link popularity. Anytime you can publish to either your own blog or a related blog in your space, you have the opportunity to create traffic back to your website.

Social Media Optimization involves trying to get your social media content more widely distributed through on-page voting, using tools like Digg or Reddit. Off-page social media marketing can include involvement in a blog, submission of a video via YouTube, or participation in other relevant social media networks.

A good SMM strategy begins with leveraging your existing SEO efforts into new media through extending keyword optimization, link popularity, visibility and traffic.

Once you understand conversations and communities, you can move to build participation and visibility. You should develop key performance indicators so that you can effectively analyze results from your efforts.


5. Promote your Social Media Efforts


With your own blog, you can’t assume that if you “build it, they will come.” Use the same promotional tactics for your blog that you do for your website. Promote your blog via email communications, PR, directories, and other customer and prospect communications.

Evaluate the conversations that are happening on the blog, and use this information to update the content on your editorial calendar. Engage new audiences by creating new content (text, audio or video) and posting it on relevant sites. Then measure the value through increased visibility, links, traffic, leads, and new paths.


These five tips are designed to get you thinking about how find your social media marketing sweet spot by seeing social media participation as an integral part of your entire e-marketing efforts.

You need to research the social media landscape, understand the unique environments, establish clear business goals, metrics, measurement and reporting processes, and then develop and communicate clearly and effectively in the social media world.