But still, a lot of your company’s LinkedIn success depends on how your employees use it. Fortunately, there are simple changes employees can make to their profiles that can immediately improve your company profile. Encouraging employee activity in certain areas of LinkedIn can also help grow your brand on this network.

With a well-informed, active employee base, LinkedIn can be one of the easiest social networks for a company to manage and build a strong presence. Before we walk through the 8 ways employees can enhance your company on LinkedIn, let’s review how employee profiles are aggregated into a company profile…

How Employees Affect Your Company Profile

If someone has listed your company as their current employer, their information is pulled into your company profile. This information can show up in 2 different places throughout your company profile: (a) your company statistics page or (b) in the activity feed on your company profile (this activity also shows up in the main feed of anyone who is following your company).

I’ll use our company profile as an example since we’ve had some recent additions to the team and title changes, so we’re a good  example of the employee activity that shows up here.

Company Statistics

Company statistics can be accessed from your main company profile. Anyone can view these statistics, which include your employees’ education, years of experience, job function, and skill set. If only one person in your company has filled this information out, that one person will be the sole representative of your company make up. In other words, the more employees who fill out their profiles completely, the more accurate reflection of your company.

For example, this is how your employees’ years of experience is displayed (blue= your employees, green= employees at similar companies):

When someone changes their title or leaves the company, this is shown at the bottom of the company statistics page:

And this is how your employees’ skills are displayed:

Activity Feed

The main page of your company profile includes an activity feed that shows your most recent status updates, new employees, title changes, and departures.

For example, when someone joins your company, they appear in the company activity feed at the bottom of your company profile (this also appears in the newsfeed of anyone following your company):

Step-By-Step Guide for Employees on LinkedIn

Below are ways your employees can change their profiles or participate on LinkedIn that can help make your company shine on this network. The best part? You can just forward your team this post and let them do all the work

1. Stop Treating LinkedIn Like a Resume

LinkedIn is a professional social network, but that’s no reason to have a boring profile that is nothing more than a copied and pasted résumé . Personal profiles can be personalized using applications and the summary section can  be more lighthearted than, say, a cover letter.

While listing accomplishments and past job duties show someone’s breadth of experience, a good profile summary isn’t trapped in the past. This is where employees can focus on now, and update their summary continuously to reflect what they’re working on, like current projects, speaking engagements, upcoming events, etc.

What would a potential customer want to know about your employees? Employees should also use their summary to explain how their role at your company benefits the customer experience.

2. Use the Correct Company Name

This needs to be an exact match of your company profile name. For example, on LinkedIn we are “BlueGlass Interactive, Inc.” Anyone who just puts “BlueGlass” is not counted as an employee.

When editing a job description, a dropdown menu will appear with a list of possible company matches. Make sure your employees know which of these they should select.

3. Fill Out the Important Stuff

The most important sections your employees should fill out are the parts that are pulled into your company statistics, which are:

• Job Functions are lumped into four broad categories: research & development,  sales & marketing, general & administrative, and executive leadership. This is determined by a user’s job title, so it’s important these are accurate and not misspelled.
• Education is reflected in the company statistics based on degrees obtained and universities attended.
• Years of experience are the total number of years of all of the jobs listed on an employee’s profile.
• Skills are hyperlinks that can be added to profiles (more detail below).

4. Add Skills & Expertise

A newer feature to LinkedIn is called Skills & Expertise. A user’s chosen skills will appear as hyperlinks in their profile and also get pulled into the company statistics. Clicking on the skills in someone’s profile pulls up a list of influencers with that skill, along with related skills and companies.

To add skills, you can search for a skill, then click Add Skill. Keep in mind your employees’ skills show up not just in your company statistics, but if enough of your employees have a certain skill, your company will show up in the related companies under that skill.

Once skills have been added to a profile, more can be added and removed by  going to Profile > Edit Profile, scrolling to the skills section and then choosing to add a skill or edit to remove a skill.

5. Include Customized Links

Up to 3 links can be added to a profile, but it’s not widely known that the titles of these links can be customized. For example, instead of using the default “My Company Website” to link to your site, employees can actually put your company name. The ability to customize this text is a  plus not just for the sake of appearance, but also for SEO.

These links appear in the top section of a profile:

Links can be customized by going to Profile>Edit Profile, then scroll down to Websites and click Edit.

Select Other from the Websites dropdown menu and you can then add in custom text and the accompanying links.

6. Share Your Content

LinkedIn Today is a news aggregator that features the most popular links being shared on LinkedIn.  When someone signs into LinkedIn, they see the most-shared articles from other people in their profession. Users can also create a highly customized LinkedIn social news aggregator, which will show top headlines from any industries or sources the user follows.

For example, here are marketing headlines that appear on my home page:

In a nutshell, by sharing your content on LinkedIn your employees can help increase your number of shares and potentially catapult your articles to the top headlines. How content ends up in the top headlines is best explained in this guide about the algorithm used on LinkedIn Today.

7. Update Your Company Status

Company updates show up not only in a company’s activity feed, but also in the newsfeed of anyone following the company, right alongside updates from individuals.

Updating a company status isn’t limited to the profile admin, you can handpick any employees to be admins and have access to posting updates. You can even allow anyone with a company email address to post updates to your company profile (I do wonder if any company allows this).

Whether you don’t have the resources for one person to man your LinkedIn company profile or you want several voices representing the brand, making this a collaborative effort among a few employees can  increase the frequency and diversity of your company updates. For example, letting team members from several different departments post updates can help give a better overall picture of your company.

You can add other employees for company updates by going to Admin Tools > Edit. After selecting Designated users only, type in the names of anyone you want to be allowed to update the page under Manage Admins.

8. Participate on LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers is a place for users to ask questions and receive assistance from industry professionals. Different industry categories are given their own Answers pages which include the questions, experts, and related categories.

For example, here’s the Graphic Design Answers page:

As you’ll notice, there are Graphic Design “Experts” listed on the page. So, how does one become an expert?

Whoever asks a question can later select the “best answer” to their question. By acquiring a lot of “best answers,” a user can be featured as a subject matter expert. The 5 top experts for a given topic are featured on that category’s main page.

Encouraging your employees to become active on LinkedIn Answers is a no-brainer: if you’re trying to gain visibility in an industry, it would certainly look good to have your employees appearing as experts in the answers sections of all your industry’s topics. Additionally, users can display their expert categories in their profile.

Instead of constantly revisiting an Answers page, it’s easy to keep track of new questions by subscribing to the RSS feed for a given topic (located in the bottom right of the topic page).

Conclusion

Since a company profile is directly impacted by how employees are represented and act on LinkedIn, it’s crucial to educate employees on how to make the most out of LinkedIn if you plan on growing a strong presence on this network. The good news is, most employee activity can actually benefit your company and brand. The trick is getting your team to dust off their profiles and start particpating more. Using the 8 tips above, employees can make a huge difference in how your business is perceived on LinkedIn.

How do your employees participate on LinkedIn? Have you seen success with any of the above tips? 

P.S. Follow us on LinkedIn  for our company news and LinkedIn Today to keep up with our blog!

An editorial calendar can help guide the short and long-term goals of your social media presence. Planning ensures a pool of quality content for your social updates, in addition to any unplanned updates you will still make.

Some benefits to planning your social posts:

• Frequent/consistent updates. There will be no excuse for going days at a time without any updates.
• Cohesive tone & messaging. This is especially important if you have multiple team members posting updates.
• Have a purpose. Instead of just trying to update X number of times per day on each social network, an editorial calendar ensures you’re not posting “just because.”
• Variety. Categorizing your posts by content type will help you see if you’re providing your audience with a good mix of content.

Now, let’s walk through the steps for making your social media content planning more productive…

1. Create an Editorial Calendar

First you need to decide how far ahead to plan. Making a detailed calendar month-to-month is sufficient, but if your company lays out other marketing plans quarterly, then 3-month planning periods may be more appropriate. A yearly calendar outlined for social media initiatives is also helpful for seeing the “big picture.”

Rather than using an actual calendar, I find it easier to use a spreadsheet as a calendar. List all of the dates for the month with columns for the type of content, source, each social network, and any creative assets that will accompany the post (such as photos or graphics).

Here’s a no-frills example of how to format an editorial calendar for Facebook posts (you can add additional columns for each social network you’re active on):

Depending on how frequently you post, you can also include the time of day or get as specific as an hour. If you have multiple people manning your profiles on different days, the calendar can specify who is responsible for posting each update.

Types of Content

Creating an editorial calendar allows you to see at a glance if you’re keeping your updates varied. Below are some examples of different types of content to post…

• Resourceful Content - links to 3rd party articles, tutorials, tips & tricks for your industry
• Interactive Content – questions for your audience, polls, fill-in-the-blanks, trivia, contests
• Visual Media - videos, images, infographics, presentations
• Company News - blog posts, links to press mentions, events (including online events like podcasts & webinars)

Evergreen vs. What’s Hot Now

A mistake I see a lot of brands making on their social profiles is they’re only sharing brand new links and information. You won’t stand out in social streams & feeds if you’re sharing the same content others are sharing that day. Plus, unless you’re a news source, your fans don’t expect you to be breaking news.

Instead of getting caught up with sharing things that are hot rightthissecond, go back in time and share some of your old content that is still relevant. Share links about the topics you know your community cares about and wants to learn about, even if these links are from months ago. If there’s a great video tutorial that’s 3 years old, but you know it’s something your audience will value, then share it.

Sync Up With Other Departments

Any other marketing initiatives, whether online or offline, should be coordinated with the social media posting schedule. In larger companies, this will require opening communication between a handful of departments.

If you don’t have a company-wide calendar of important upcoming dates, make the social media calendar easily shareable/accessible so others on your team and in different departments can view it. Before creating a calendar for the next month, ask the other departments to fill in any significant dates coming up for your brand’s overall marketing initiatives.

From there, you can decide how to market these initiatives using social media and also plan ahead for which other teams will need to be involved with your social efforts.

2. Find Content Ideas

Creating Original Content

One of the trickiest parts of updating social profiles is creating original content that’s both timely and relevant to your audience. You already know you shouldn’t be talking about your brand constantly (you DO know that, right?), so how can you come up with original posts that your followers will want to engage with?

Every day of the year has some sort of significance, whether it’s of historical importance, a wacky holiday, or the date of a major sporting event. By being aware of these dates, you will always have something to talk about with your social audience.

Mentions of holidays or current events don’t always have to be 100% relevant to your industry, but adding a twist about how these dates relate to what your company does will make these posts even more valuable to your followers. Is there a significant date in the history of your industry coming up? Does a celebrity closely tied to your brand or who’s part of your industry have a birthday this month?

Predicting what topics will be of interest to your followers in the future may sound impossible, but the following resources can help you plan out what the public consciousness may be thinking about at a given time.

Historical Anniversary/ Holiday Calendars

• New York Times On This Day – Historical dates and current/historical birthdays for every day of the year.
• Wikipedia List of Historical Anniversaries – Comprehensive list of significant historical events, holidays, and famous birthdays/deaths for every day of the year.
• BBC On This Day – Collection of significant stories broadcast by the BBC since 1950, searchable by day of the year.

Pop Culture

• TV Guide – Check for any big sporting events, award shows, or other popular TV events coming up that your audience will be talking about.
• IMDB Movies Coming Soon – Lists all of the upcoming movie release dates.
• Amazon Hot New Releases – Searchable by category, this is a collection of popular new products on Amazon (books, electronics, movies/TV, clothing, etc.). If you see a new book or product out that your followers might like, consider discussing it on your profiles.

Historical Trends

• Google Trends – This is a tool mostly used to spot recent search trends, but it’s also helpful for advanced planning. You can go back to the date a year ago and see what people were searching about (it goes back as far as May 2007). This may tip you off to seasonal events that weren’t included in any of the historical calendars listed above.

Other ideas:

• If you have a large international following, include mentions of holidays or important dates in their countries.
• When all else fails, talk about the weather. Blizzards, hurricanes, and other weather phenomena that affect large areas are always widely talked about.

Finding Sources to Share

While it’s great to already have a reliable group of blogs and sites your audience expects you to share content from, it’s important to branch out and find some lesser-known sources to share from.

Your community will be appreciative of learning new sites rather than seeing you share links everyone else in your industry has already shared.

Some sites for finding fresh content sources:

• Alltop – This is a huge collection of current headlines on blogs & sites, categorized by topic. The more popular a site is, the higher it will show up on topic page. Scroll to the bottom of a topic page to find undiscovered gems.
• Blogged – Extensive blog directory where blogs are given ratings by users.
• Best of the Web Blogs – This directory has been around forever and is still a great source for finding respected blogs.
• Technorati Blog Directory – Organized by topics and you can filter results by either blogs or news sites.
• Google Blog Search – This is best for finding recent posts on specific topics rather than actual blogs to follow, but you may also end up finding great blogs to follow regularly through searching here.

Other ideas:

• Check the blog roll of any blogs you already like and share from. You can expect a quality blogger to endorse other quality blogs in their genre.
• The social networks listed in Ryan Sammy’s guide for where to promote content are also great for finding new content sources.
• Crowd source your company. Find out what industry sites and blogs your team members read.

3. Organize Content Sources

Getting all of your content sources organized will help you generate ideas for posts and quickly retrieve links to share on your social profiles. Below are ways to make your favorite content sources easier to search…

Custom Search Engines

Build a custom search engine (CSE) to easily search through sites you trust as valuable resources. A CSE will save you from weeding through crappy content when you want to share an article on a specific topic with your audience. To get started, Annie has written a detailed post on setting up CSEs.

• What to include in your CSE: sites you’ve bookmarked, already share from, news sources in your industry, bloggers in your industry.
• Be sure to go back and update your CSE with new sites you find each month (make this part of your monthly social content planning).

RSS Readers

You’re probably already using an RSS reader to keep track of all of your favorite blogs (if not, this post will get you started).

Tips for a more organized reader:

• Separating all of the blogs in your reader by category will make it easier to scan recent blog posts on a certain topic. The more categories you create, the easier it will be to find exactly what kind of content you want to share.
• Also consider categorizing the blogs in your reader by “rank,”  like: news outlets, industry blogs, casual bloggers. This is helpful when you’re looking for a more authoritative source.
• Every time you add a new blog to your reader, file it into the proper category.
• For speed reading, organize your RSS reader by list view instead of expanded view. This lets you just scan headlines, instead of scrolling through entire posts.

Switching to list view in Google Reader

Conclusion

While it does take effort up front, creating an editorial calendar for your social media posts will provide your audience with richer content and also make daily management of your social profiles more efficient. Keep in mind the calendar should act as a guideline and not be set in stone. Remain flexible and expect to make adjustments as you go.

Bottom line: if you’re not strategically planning the content you post on social networks, you won’t see long-term growth and engagement within your social communities.

How do you plan what to post on social networks?

At BlueGlass, inbound marketing has played a major role in promoting and enhancing our conferences, and through this process we have learned a lot about what does and doesn’t work when it comes to promoting an event online.

Here are 6 tips to go above and beyond in the conference world…

1. Create a Buzz

Use your social networks to start talking about the event before it happens.  By planning ahead (yes, it’s a new concept for us too!) and knowing what you want to accomplish with your event, you will find the engagement to be much higher and the content to be more useful for all those involved.

• Make a secret Facebook group that only past and current attendees can access. Why past attendees? If they are on the brink of deciding whether or not to come to your event, the conversations in this group will definitely have them wanting more.

2. Get in the Game

Have a couple of people from your team designated to do live postings. If you won’t have any staff free to do this, you can even hire event correspondents to take care of all of your on-the-scene coverage. They will need to be present at all the sessions (you will need multiple people for a conference with more than one track) so they don’t miss a beat!

Live Tweeting

Live tweeting extends the reach of any collective experience. Live tweeting also attracts the attention of attendees, prompting them to retweet your company account to their followers, and potentially growing your following.

• Tell your followers (and attendees) in advance to follow the dedicated hashtag for your event
• Use the same hashtag before, during, and after your event
• When quoting speakers, attribute them by using their Twitter handle
• Make a list of speaker Twitter handles before the conference for quick reference. To encourage attendees to live tweet, send them this list as well.
• Concentrate on the main points of sessions, rather than tweeting a verbatim transcript
• Interact with other slive tweeting the event by retweeting and replying to their commentary

Live Blogging

Blog posts can be compiled during the session and published when it is complete. Many of your speakers will share the post about their session afterward and attendees will share posts from their favorite sessions, helping to drive some new traffic to your blog.

• To save on time, already have drafts composed with a title as well as speaker and session information.
• Whoever is live blogging will be furiously trying to keep up, and usually too busy to take pictures. Have another staff member in charge of taking and sending photos to the blogger to include in the posts.
• A helpful  trick is for the live blogger to follow along with the stream of  your event hashtag to make sure they haven’t missed any important points or quotes to include in the post.

3. Host a Competition

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4. Facilitate Networking

• Facebook Groups (like the ‘super secret’ one above) . Of course, you have the option to make the group public as well, so prospective attendees can see who is interested in the conference as well. Connect, connect, connect!
• When attendees are signing up, leave a space for them to enter their Twitter handle. Use the information to make a Twitter list before the event so they can follow each other and get even more out of the event by learning industry related knowledge from their peers. It’s also a great idea to make a Twitter list of only the speakers as well, so anyone live tweeting can easily find the speakers’ Twitter handles to give attribution to them during their session.

• Encourage attendees to review the conference on their blogs, and then be sure to share their posts with their social network. This is a great way you can help promote them, and they can return the favor!

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5. Create Video Content

6. Social Advertising

Facebook Ads

• location
• which company they work for
• fans of your page/ friends of  fans of your page
• fans of other conference or industry pages
• fans of one of your speakers’ pages

LinkedIn Ads

Conclusion

For this post we’ll be going over how to assign an app ID to your website, and touch upon getting PHP snippets for dynamic code. I’ll be posting another follow up to this, but for those looking to get their feet wet into some code this will be a good starting point.

This will be for the WordPress CMS. I’m updated to the most recent version 3.2.1. Warning: There are more steps after this that will be in my next post, so I wouldn’t implement this just yet. Just take the time to get a good understanding of it.

Assigning a Facebook App ID to your Site

First you’re going to need to get an app setup for your website. Go to the app section for Facebook Developers and click the button in the top right to create a new app. Enter the appropriate information (it says ‘failed’ in my image because I already set one up with the same name) and have it created.

From there, you’ll be able to enter in your display name, app name and other necessary information to get the ID assigned.

Be sure at the end that you go down the bottom and click the “website” section so you can enter your website URL.

Once you have all of this complete, you’ll be taken to a screen with all your finalized information.

When you’re working with various Open Graph code, the App AD/API Key is what you’re going to want to use when it’s being referenced. If there’s any reference to your fbadmins ID, you can find that by going to http://graph.facebook.com/*username*. Put your username on the end and it’ll pull up the raw information so you can grab your ID.

Getting a Little Dirty in WordPress

First, make sure that the site you’re trying to edit is your own domain on the .org platform- otherwise you won’t be able to get in and edit anything in your theme files.

If you’re a WordPress theme-editing virgin, here’s a quick walkthrough of the steps to get to your editor. It’s actually really painless.

Login to WordPress and on the left sidebar, click on the Theme editor. You can find it under the Appearance tab.

Once you’re in the editor, your individual style sheets will be on your right. Since we’ll be working in the Header.php file first, look for it in the right sidebar. This is where all of your header code sits.

Open this up and don’t get scared!

Javascript SDK Setup

I’ll run through this in more detail in my next post- it’s best to spend some time in here because of the capabilities that using the Javascript SDK opens up. Using this give you a ton of different capabilities with social plugins and canvas pages, so going in depth wouldn’t do it justice. If you want to use the xFBML social plugins, you’ll need this.

The Javascript SDK is in the Header.php file in the body tag. Here’s an excellent resource from the Facebook Developers page on getting it integrated into your site.

Remember, when appId      : ‘Your App ID’, is referenced in the Javascript SDK code, it’s asking for the code from the application that you just setup.

You’ll also want to make sure that this XML namespace goes up underneath your doctype tags on the top of your head.php file.

<html xmlns:fb=”http://ogp.me/ns/fb#”>

The Like Button

This is the snippet you’ll want to use for your like button once you get the Javascript SKD all setup. I put this in my post.php file so it’ll reflect across all my individual posts. If you don’t want to add code to your post.php page you can drop it in each individual post as you finish them, but you’ll lose the ability for users to connect directly with your site and lots of the functionality beyond the like button.

<fb:like href=”your URL here” send=”false” layout=”button_count” width=”450″ show_faces=”false”></fb:like>

If you want to show the faces of those who “Liked” your content, you can change show_face=”false” to “true“. You can also adjust the button width (width=”450″) and whether you want to include the send button or not. This is only for the main like button code, we will adjust it in the next post so it’s dynamic and pulls the individual post information.

Your code might vary depending on what type of theme you’re using, but I put this code in the container for my post and underneath my main image.

With this particular setup, the like button will ask the user to sign in so it connects directly with their profiles. When the dynamic snippets are added, the social plugin box that pops up will also have a comment area so they can add a comment to their “like” directly from your page.

 Open Graph Tags

As with the like button, the Open Graph tags that I referenced in my previous two posts have the ability to be changed so they use PHP snippets that dynamically pull in the individual titles and images. Without using this snippet it’ll just pull the the information from your main site when it’s in the header.php file.

This lays a nice foundation for part 4 of my post, where we’ll actually get into the PHP portion. I wanted to keep this fairly simple so you can get an idea of the pre-dynamic process. I’m also working on social plugin implementation so I’ll also be working some kind of Timeline tie in to follow up to this.

If you’re planning on jumping ahead and getting everything working yourself, make sure to check your code against the debugging tool. It’ll let you know if you have stray code or if your tags aren’t working properly.

If you’re curious to learn more about the meta tags and their uses,  check out my Facebook Open Graph part 1 or part 2.

But what’s the best way to get that training? And what’s more important to a prospective employer? That you have formal training that can be verified or experience managing social media campaigns? Or a potpourri of both?

A good approach might be to start with some of the free training available online (aww yeahhh), supplement it with more specific training to accommodate your interests, and possibly substantiate it with some kind of certification program. I’ll review just a few of these options I’ve used and plan to pursue.

Online Training

When it comes to online training you have several different paths to choose from. These options range from free online tools to certification programs. But this isn’t a red pill/blue pill decision; you can choose to work your way up from the most basic training to more advanced courses.

Free Courses

Social Media Quickstarter

This course provides segments for all the most important social fields. Each of the mini courses has an estimated time to complete the section and a short, fun video to keep you interested. Quickstarter also gives you the ability to bookmark, share, and even download each section of the course. I personally learned a lot from this course and Evernoted many of the awesome tips, tricks, and tools.

Here is a breakdown of the topics covered in the course:

1. Social Media 101 (4 chapters)
2. Facebook (17 chapters)
3. Twitter (17 chapters)
4. LinkedIn (13 chapters)
5. Blogging (3 chapters)
6. YouTube (9 chapters)
7. Ratings and Reviews (6 chapters)
8. Location-Based Services (7 chapters)
9. QR Codes (3 chapters)
10. Email Plus Social Media Marketing (4 chapters)

30 Days to Social Media Marketing

Another good online training source is Tom Maffin’s 30-day training course. He sends you a different social marketing video every three days. You receive a certificate after finishing the course. I am on day five of the subscription, and I have already learned a lot from his videos.

Here are the 10 topics covered in the course:

1. Geotargeting Your Brand Messages on Facebook
2. Identifying Local High Influencers on Twitter
3. Protecting and Moderating Your Facebook Brand Page
4. Facebook’s Secret to Getting Your Posts on the News Feed
5. Responding When Your Brand is Attacked Online
6. Six Keys to Making an Online Campaign Go Viral [preview]
7. Measuring Your YouTube Marketing Effectiveness
8. Using Page Fragmenting to Measure Social ROI
9. Tom’s Two Secret Digital Marketing Ninja Tips
10. Next Steps

Inexpensive Course

Lynda.com’s Social Media Course

I have been watching Lynda.com videos since I was 15 . They offer a course for social media marketing with Facebook and Twitter, along with other social courses that cover topics such as YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo, and LinkedIn. You can access this course and several other courses with a $25/month subscription to the site. That gives you access to all of their classes. But if you just want to take this class, get er’ done before your month runs out and your credit card is charged again.

Here are some of the topics covered:

1. Understanding Online Marketing
2. Keeping Business and Personal Accounts Separate
3. Developing a Marketing Funnel Strategy
4. Creating a Branded Twitter Page Background
5. Optimizing Tweets To Help Them Go Viral
6. Leveraging the Latest Facebook Features for Pages
7. Creating Targeted Facebook Social Ads
8. Customizing Facebook Pages with IFrames
9. Using Twitter and Facebook Analytics To Measure Impact
10. Reducing Your Workload with Social Media Management Programs

Formal Training

Market Motive Social Media Training and Certification

Market Motive provides a full curriculum dedicated the different aspects of social media strategy. You have the option to pay $3,500 up front for the Coached Course or follow a Self-Paced Plan for $897 ($299/mo). I plan to take their Social Media Training course and get certified next year.

Here are some of the topics and skills covered in the course:

1. Introduction to Social Media
2. Blogging for Business
3. Video and YouTube
4. Social News Networking
5. Twitter Tips, Tools, and Strategies
6. Facebook Business Strategies
7. Viral Marketing
8. Using the Flickr Community for Profit
9. Online Press Releases
10. Leveraging Advertising Opportunities on LinkedIn

On the Job Training

Courses and training are a great way to get your foot in the door, but eventually you’re going to need to ditch the floaties and jump in the deep end of the pool. It’s easy to get the experience: just reach out to small businesses around you and offer to run social media campaigns for them on the cheap or even free for your fave charity or non-profit group.

And while you’re at it, commit yourself to ongoing education. You can do this by following people in the industry on Twitter (like us!), liking their Facebook pages (us again), signing up for RSS feeds of good social media blogs (ohh like ours), joining LinkedIn groups and asking questions, etc. etc.

You’ll find that as you start working with these strategies on a daily basis and learn from others, your strategy skills will sharpen over time. Working for an agency (or as a consultant of some type) gives you the opportunity to apply your skills to everyday business problems.

So in the words of the wise Ms. Frizzle, “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!”

Users with technical courage followed the hack instructions on Techcrunch and updated their profiles to the new format.  The new format for users was said to take about a week until everyone was to be updated, but we are still waiting.  Does this mean that fan pages will take longer to update? Or will this change hit out of nowhere, like the last time everyone flipped out about the new fan pages?

Much like Hurricane Irene, there will be backlash to these changes.  Months and years of strategy might be washed down the drain.  However, like Irene, if we prepare for the changes with the information we know, we could be back on our feet in just a few days.

We can’t be 100% sure of how or when the changes for fan pages will occur.  But we can make some educated guesses on the best ways to prepare for upcoming Facebook changes. Below are 5 tips for preparing your fan page for the anticipated changes.

1. Modify Wall Posts and Engagement

The above posts might be more prominent if the new page layout is identical to what we’ve already seen released on personal profile timelines.  Updates will appear larger and won’t flow down the page as quickly as in the past, making it important for photos to be high quality.  Additionally, brands may not be able to set the wall to show “brand only” posts.  Zuckerberg mentioned something along the lines of disabling the feature to “hide” what the fans are saying.  The brand needs to stay in control of the page. Make sure the wall is full of diverse types of content and not just fans talking.

2. Organize Photo Albums

The build up of wall photos that brands post get lost in the “Wall Photos” album. This is unorganized and will most likely be a big undertaking to organize later.  The new timeline layout will encourage fans to look back through the brand’s Facebook history, of which photos are a big part.  Brands that have already organized albums and will have a seamless transition when changes take place.  Create new photo albums and place photos from the wall into the new albums.  Fans are not likely to browse through “Wall Photos” but will take the time to look for things they are interested in within organized albums.

3. Revise Facebook Engagement Policy

The new algorithm of the Facebook main feed is different for each user now. Users are able to set who they want to see on their main page for a more personalized experience.   However, the ticker on the right hand corner is always moving and brands should take advantage of this.  In the past, many social strategists would advise brands to post to the wall and comment when it is important, so not to inundate the community.  Because there is so much activity on the news ticker, this is now the other way around.   If you want the brand to stick out, you must update and comment as much as possible. But to do that, the tone of the brand and the messaging must be on point and always approved.

Keep in mind, it important not to go crazy and post a million times a day.  Users can still “hide” the brand, or even “unlike” the page, if it gets too noisy.  Post just enough to get noticed and not lost in the crowd.

4.  Prepare New Creative Assets

Brands loved when they were able to make their profile images longer.  They would change the image often, for holidays and other campaigns.  If Facebook decides that brands will get similar pages that the users have, we will be given new creative spaces.  Cover art can be changes as much as possible and gives us more width to brand our pages with.

5. Revise Your Monitoring

The Facebook insights metrics that we all came to know and love are still there but now compiled into the number of people “talking about this” which is now live on the page for anyone to see. This provides a quick way for administrators to look at the page insights all wrapped up into one number.

Here is what it means when you are counting the people  ”talking about this”:

• Liking your page
• Posting to your wall
• Liking, commenting or sharing one of your page posts or other content on your page such as photos, videos and albums
• Answering a question you posted
• RSVPing to one of your events
• Mentioning or tagging your page
• Liking or sharing a check-in deal, or checking in at your location

Conclusion

Like you, we are anxiously awaiting these updates and can only imagine how they will negatively or positively affect the brand fanpages.  No matter what happens, we will adapt.  We will learn new ways to interact with our audiences and increase engagement rates.  Change is inevitable on Facebook and we are prepared and ready for you, Zuck.

This panel features Ben Cook, the CEO of Direct Match Media, and Simon Heseltine, the Director of SEO at AOL Inc. Chris Winfield will moderate.

We’re starting today with Simon Heseltine, who will be going through industry stats, what’s been going on with the Huffington Post and how SEO and social media work together.

He’s showing graphs about how people are using social media primarily to increase brand awareness and increase traffic. Also, the large businesses didn’t see as much of an impact with social media compared to small-medium businesses.

He said 23% of social media messages include links to content and 27 million pieces of content are shared every day.

Now for the Huffington Post, which uses a lot of social sharing icons and badges to encourage web visitors.

An example of a badge is a community moderator badge, which is given to people when they’ve flagged about 20 posts that were removed. Once they have the badge, their flags carry 5x more weight than others.

The Huffington Post has more than a million followers on Twitter and engages with its users. For a while, they were just tweeting out different articles, but now they’re interacting with others. They also have accounts for more specific parts of The Huffington Post, like HuffPost Weird News.

The Gauge launched about a week and a half ago. It’s their new social experiment. (http://thegauge.huffingtonpost.co.uk/)They do a search on Twitter, looking for the terms “agree” or “disagree” about an article, and they compile the opinions on the website. If you share the page on your Facebook wall, people can vote right on the post. It’s all about engaging with users.

They wanted to compare their social traffic with their SEO traffic and found a fairly good correlation, but not necessarily any causation — this is because they’re posting news, information people are searching about anyway.

For their site Joystiq, a gaming site, there’s low correlation between social media and SEO. So you can’t necessarily say what the correlation is between the two in general based on this data.

So what do we know that social can do for SEO?

Platform for users to discover your content = links/more sharing = higher rankings.

Search results are showing opinions of peers through social media (for example, via Facebook or Google+), which brings other URLs into the search and makes it a more personal experience. Even a link that’s fourth on the page can get clicks for this reason.

Even if you don’t have ranking on a term, because you have social media recognition, you can get organic clicks.

He mentioned that Google News is now part of the social division within Google, and there’s already a lot of integration with Google+.

Social media is going to drive organic traffic through the search engines, whether through personalization, algorithmically or through real-time search widgets.

Social media needs to be integrated with your SEO strategy.

Favorite out-of-context quote from Simon: “I did a search for NFL Picks. As you can tell from the accent, I have no idea what that means.”

Next up is Ben Cook, who’s going to talk about how you can get social and use that to get people to do what you want via SEO. And apparently his PowerPoint is full of sweet Lego pictures.

He drew inspiration for this presentation from Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini.  “It changed the way that I view almost every piece of marketing,” Ben said.

Reciprocation is key. Social contracts are binding and can be initiated unilaterally. You can retweet something without knowing the person or Like something a stranger posted.

In social media, if you’re not sincere or honest, it’s going to become obvious quickly. Don’t share something and then ask for a favor. Take sincere actions.

Also, social media interactions are independent of sentiment. It doesn’t matter what people think about each other — it exists outside of these opinions and people will share content regardless.

Other social media principles are commitment and consistency. People have a desire to line up their past actions with what they believe and justify it in their minds. We don’t like to admit we’re wrong. It’s tough for somebody to say hey, I was wrong; it’s much easier for us to talk ourselves into remaining consistent with our previous stance.

So if you ask for a favor, make it something small — a Like or a retweet. Once you’ve got the support, it’s going to be easy for them to keep their future actions in line with their previous commitments to support your content. Start small and keep your requests consistent.

Another social media principle is social proof. Put a social profile up, but direct people to where you’re actually interacting.

“I’m a fan of doing very clear call to actions with my social media,” Ben said. He prefers only a couple of social media buttons to narrow the target. People like social proof; they like to know that they’re following the crowd.

People as a whole follow the crowd, so make your call to action very clear, let them know what you want them to do, and they’ll probably do it.

Another major principle is about “liking”: tweeting, stumbling Liking, +1ing.

If somebody likes you, they’ll be more likely to engage, so you can leverage your relationships. Even though earlier he said social media isn’t associated with sentiment, if the sentiment is there, you can take advantage of it. If you can get a few popular influencers to share your content, you’re more likely to get their followers to tweet your content.

Also, people don’t necessarily care if you’re getting paid for your opinion if they like it, so incorporate affiliates. Keep referrals in mind, as well. Request them from people who like or repost your content.

Authority is a currency — lend or borrow as needed. Convey responsibility and authority onto the person you’re asking something of.

Take advantage of the concept of scarcity. Offer exclusive content to different social communities. Create deadlines and limits to promote more urgency. People don’t like missing out. Also use reverse psychology; a really easy tactic is to act like you don’t want to give up whatever you’re giving up.

Favorite out-of-context quote from Ben: “Apparently a Lego man died, and it’s a tragedy.”

Don’t forget to follow our conference via #bgtpa. Get ready for our next session: Turn Web Analytics Data into Conversion Driven Gold.

This also means it’s time to start thinking of ways to incorporate the holiday season into your social media campaigns. Holidays are about connecting with people, sharing traditions, and building memories. It’s only natural that social media has become an integral part of the holiday season, even enhancing this time of year in some ways.

I’ve put together 60 ways to include the October through December holidays in your social media strategy.

All Season

1. Start early. Use your social profiles to build buzz leading up to holidays rather than just focusing on holidays as they are happening.

2. Design a seasonal branded image to match across all social networks and the company site.

Yogurt Mountain changes its Facebook profile picture regularly to reflect the current season.

3. Create a seasonal Facebook photostrip or Twitter background to match the seasonal profile picture.

4. Many people are eager to talk about their holiday customs, so these topics should be worked into your content for the next few months. Ask fans about their favorite Halloween candy, their favorite Thanksgiving side dish, the best gift they got as a kid, etc.

5. Use social media with traditional marketing. If your company has printed advertising materials (brochures, fliers, newspaper ads, etc.), include your social media profile addresses everywhere your customers see your name (this goes for any time of year!).

6. Build a microsite. This site can house a hyper-focused campaign or act as a hub for tying together all of your social and overall marketing efforts during the holidays into one place.

7. Re-use your holiday microsite year after year.

8. Be sure to still post useful content on your social profiles this time of year and don’t just push your products or services. People are stressed and pressed for time during the holidays, making this a good time to be as helpful as possible with posts.

9. Offer advice on various holiday challenges, like gift-giving, shopping on a budget, entertaining, and traveling. Spread this content across various touch points, such as daily holiday tips on Twitter (using a branded hashtag), stream these tweets into a dedicated Facebook tab, and expand on these tips by creating tutorial videos for YouTube.

YouTube and Lowe’s teamed up to build a Holiday Solutions Center channel

10. Don’t know what advice to give? Poll fans about what their biggest challenges are during the holidays, then determine the areas where your company would be the most helpful.

11. Highlight your company culture. Share pictures of your company holiday parties, your staff dressing up for Halloween, or your participation in charitable events.

12. Make your content have longevity and optimize keywords with next year in mind. Use these keywords throughout your holiday social content.

13. It’s cliché, but people like to talk about the weather. Pay attention to the weather where your customers are located. For example, don’t post about how cold it is during December if you have a lot of fans in Florida (unless you see there actually is a cold front there).

14. Don’t forget to measure. Measure your baseline before starting your holiday campaigns, then measure weekly results thereafter to see the value of your holiday pushes.

15. As you measure, adjust your strategy. Try different things on your different social networks. This allows you to quickly determine what type of content your fans are responding to and switch gears accordingly rather than doing the same thing across all social networks and waiting until the end of the campaign to gauge content popularity.

Halloween

Because Halloween is a chance for people to be creative, whether they’re thinking of a costume or a pumpkin-carving idea, this is a great opportunity to collect user-generated content you can house on your social profiles or even feature on your site.

16. Pictures of babies in costumes. ‘Nuff said.

Graco baby products hosted a simple but popular Halloween photo contest on Flickr.

17. Pets in costumes (notice a theme? anything cute in a costume = win).

PetSmart held a pet Halloween photo contest within a tab on its Facebook page, with the winner appearing in a TV commercial.

18. Keeping up with the cute theme, ask followers what their best Halloween costume was as a child, and ask them to share a photo.

19. Have fans carve your company logo into pumpkins and upload photos to your Facebook page. Feature the best pumpkins in a permanent photo album on your page.

Burton Snowboard’s Facebook Pumpkin Shreddin Photo Album

20. Think your brand has nothing to do with Halloween? Make a funny video tutorial on how to turn one of your products into a Halloween costume. The more over-the-top, the better.

21. Create a contest for fans to make costumes using a household material or object or, better yet, one of your company’s products if possible.

22. Ask Twitter followers to tweet photos of their kids’ Halloween candy hauls. Reward the largest pile of candy with a prize (maybe a year’s supply of toothpaste?).

23. It’s simple, but this is a social twist on a common game. Fill a jar with candy, take a picture, tweet it, and ask fans to guess how many pieces of candy are in the jar. Send the jar of candy to whoever gets closest to the correct number.

24. Host a Twitter contest in which the first fan to retweet any time your brand posts a tweet containing “trick” or “tweet” can win a prize.

25. Set up a program where fans can send you their Halloween candy and your company sends it to overseas troops.

The Halloween Candy Buy-Back program on Facebook gives back to the troops but also cleverly collects participants’ email addresses.

Thanksgiving

You don’t need to be Butterball to talk turkey. This day of food, football, and family lends itself to personalized dialogue with your fans, as well as being the perfect time to showcase how your company gives back to the community.

26. Give back to the community and give your brand a reputation boost by documenting your company-wide volunteer efforts on your social profiles.

27. Small businesses can partner with a local food bank and donate a certain amount of food per number of Facebook fans and/or Twitter followers acquired during a set period of time. For example, donate one can of food per new fan the week leading up to Thanksgiving.

28. Larger businesses can match fan donations to a selected charity. Keep a running tally of the total donations within a Facebook tab or on a microsite.

29. Upload a video to YouTube about a charity your company supports. Offer to donate a dollar amount to the charity per video views the video gets within a short amount of time.

30. Sponsor a tweet-a-thon. EpicThanks’ Tweetsgiving 2010 is a great example of the power Twitter has to raise charitable money quickly: it raised $11,000 in 48 hours last year.

31. Ask fans to tweet photos of their Thanksgiving dinner spread and retweet some of the best photos.

32. Thanksgiving is the busiest travel time of the year. Leading up to the week of Thanksgiving, offer tips for staying stress-free while traveling. The day before Thanksgiving is a perfect time to target these fans with light-hearted content like silly videos and trivia questions.

33. Partner with a food blogger and sponsor a Twitter party. Perdue partnered with Resourceful Mommy to host a Twitter Party last Thanksgiving. The food blogger can invite his or her followers to participate, and they will use a designated, branded hashtag to host a Twitter chat about preparing Thanksgiving dinner. Select a winner out of the participants to receive a prize.

34. Ask fans to tweet pictures of their kitchen disasters on Thanksgiving, like a burned turkey, broken dishes, or an inedible Jell-O mold. Retweet the best photo and send the winner a cooking-related prize.

35. Don’t forget football. Incorporate hashtags for this year’s Thanksgiving Day football games into your tweets or ask your followers which games they’re watching and who they’re cheering for.

Black Friday / Cyber Monday

Leverage the fact that people love a great deal and exclusive discounts to grow your follower base.

36. Online reviews are a huge part of online shoppers’ buying process. Get more customer reviews by encouraging new and old customers to post reviews.

37. On that note, if your business is not yet listed on relevant customer review sites, take the time to set up a listing. Think of these as additional branding assets and add photos, links, products, and anything else to give users a quick overview of your business.

38. For online purchases, suggest customers write a review by featuring a review site link in their confirmation page or in email receipts.

39. For in-store purchases, suggest customer reviews in a sign by the register or included on printed materials.

40. Add a Facebook review tab to your page and encourage fans to add reviews.

Review tabs are a default tab option for Local Business Facebook pages, like this one from Soho Sushi.

41. Bring Facebook into your store. The Diesel Cam was put near dressing rooms so shoppers could upload photos to their Facebook profile as they tried on Diesel clothing, but this could be used in any retail location for people to show off their Black Friday purchases.

42. Can’t afford a fancy in-store kiosk like Diesel? Put a sign at your register telling fans to upload their Black Friday haul purchases or a picture of their receipt to your Facebook page. Offer a prize to the fan who saved the most money.

43. Create an in-store Black Friday event exclusive to Foursquare users, where attendees can check-in to Foursquare for an additional discount and they’ll potentially unlock a swarm badge.

Toys-R-Us gave a limited number of Black Friday shoppers a discount for checking in.

44. Broadcast time-sensitive deals on Twitter and Facebook.  This not only creates a sense of urgency, but fans will pay more attention to your social profiles if they are expecting spontaneous announcements of a sale that is lasting for the next hour only and be likely to share this news with their friends.

45. Give early access to sale prices using a fan-gated Facebook tab or asking fans to tweet a branded message to receive a direct message containing a discount code. Last year, Sears awarded 25 Facebook fans early access to their Black Friday deals.

Lowes Black Friday Sneak Peek gave exclusive access to Facebook fans.

46. Hide discount codes within YouTube videos. New holiday-themed video content can be used for this, but even old YouTube videos can be repurposed to include an annotation with a discount code. Users will want to share videos with their friends once they find the discount code.

47. Encourage sharing. Give a reward for sharing your Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. For example, offer an additional discount if a customer tweets about the discount using a designated hashtag.

48. Leading up to Black Friday, promote your social media efforts in-store. For example, put “Follow us on Facebook and Twitter for exclusive holiday offers” cards in each shopping bag to gain new followers and reward loyal customers who may not be aware of your social media presence.

49.  Use Facebook ads as an inexpensive way to target users by interests or brands they like.

50. Take Facebook ads even further by targeting a specific area to drive people into your physical store locations.

Christmas

51. 12 days of Christmas = 12 days of discounts. Offer a different discount or sale item every day to build anticipation and reward fans for consistently visiting your social profiles.

52. Capitalizing on the “12 days” theme, beauty retailer Sephora had a “Sephora Claus” Twitter campaign, where they awarded one of its products daily to a fan for tweeting “Dear @sephora, All I want for the holidays this year is _________.”  They also created a microsite just for this campaign, where fans were given an additional chance to enter.

53. Similar to the Sephora contest, Southwest’s “12 Days of Luv” Twitter campaign asked followers to tweet a different Southwest-themed photo every day and gave away a $1,000 gift card for the best photo each day.

Southwest wrapped up their Twitter photo contest by blogging about all of the winning pictures.

54. Create a “Christmas Tree Makeover” contest. Have fans share photos of their bare or tiny Christmas tree, and award the worst tree with a gift card.

55. Set up an in-store Christmas photo op. Offer fans a discount if they tweet their photo or share it on Facebook.

56. Post daily gift ideas. These don’t necessarily have to be your product, but they can be anything related to your brand.

57. Take it a step further and post gift ideas for your target audience.  A tire company could share gift ideas for car enthusiasts, a tech company could share gift ideas for geeks, and a gourmet food store could post gift ideas for home cooks.

58. Create a tab for an ugly Christmas sweater photo contest on your Facebook page where fans can upload their photos and vote for the ugliest entry. Reward the winner with a gift card to a classy clothing store.

59. Ask fans to share photos of what it looks like outside their window on Christmas morning where they live. This should produce a wide range of photos, like snowy, sunny, rainy, desert, mountains, beach, etc., that can be put in an album celebrating how your fans live around the country/world.

60. On Christmas Day, offer to retweet the first 10 followers who tweet a picture of their favorite gift.

How do you think companies can use the holidays to connect with their social media followers? What are some great holiday social media promotions you’ve seen?

Below I have listed the various social networks to consider when putting together a content promotion strategy.

Popular Social Networks

The sites below are the top social networks with the most active users and highest traffic. Theses networks accept more general content. They can generate thousands of views and hundreds of links to your content.

Digg

What’s my audience?

Mostly a male audience between the ages of 18-49. This network was one of the most popular social news aggregates. Many top social media influencers and bloggers monitor this site for stories and content to share. Even though the site is no longer what it used to be, don’t count Digg out.

What types of content do well?

• Infographics
• Lists
• News Stories
• Comics

Reddit

What’s my audience?

This network has become the largest social news aggregate. The audience is typically male between the ages of 18-49. A majority of the site is very tech savvy and very aware of social content promotion. The site is monitored by many top social media users, bloggers, and news sites. The best past of Reddit are the sub-reddits that allow you to target your content based on the subject. Using sites like RedditList.com and MetaReddit.com,you can easily determine the best locations to place your content.

What types of content do well?

• Images
• Comics
• Controversial or thought-provoking articles
• GIFs
• Memes
• Videos

StumbleUpon

What’s my audience?

There is a mix of female and male users, between the ages of 13-60. The user on this network are not very tech savvy but activity on this network is very high. You will find a wide array of users on this network. One of the best features of this network is tagging your content. If you tag your content correctly, you easily place it front of the demographic that is interested in your niche topic.

What types of content do well?

• Evergreen
• Resources
• Videos
• Comics
• Art
• Lists
• GIFs

Delicious

What’s my audience?

This site has a mixed audience of males and females. The demographic is a little older that other networks. This audience is mostly looking for resource posts. The popular RSS feed from this network is used by many popular twitter and social site aggregates (JimmyR.com, PopURL, etc.). So you many not see a lot of direct traffic from this network, but you will see referrals from sites that aggregate their feed.

What types of content do well?

• Evergreen
• Videos
• Guides
• Lists

Moderated Social Networks

These type of social networks are based on user-submitted content, and editors/moderators judging and then approving that content. These sites tend to have much higher quality content since a human/community has to review it. You can see great results if you are able to have your site included on one of these sites.

FARK

Fark is a social network where you submit news stories with catchy titles. They love puns in titles and have a very active front page. All content is judged by editors and if it meets their standards it’s posted to the homepage.

What types of content do well?

• Mainly news related content

Drudge Report

Drudge Report is run by one person that posts links to top news stories, breaking stories, and very controversial stories. You can anonymously submit content and he will decides if he will include it. Placement on this site can send 100,000 visits in hours.

What types of content do well?

• Political Content
• News Stories

Ebaumsworld

Ebaumsworld has been around for a very long time and has gone through a lot of changes througout the years. The site won’t send you a massive amount of traffic but a front page will bring you anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 views. The site is also used by other humor sites for content discovery.

What types of content do well?

• Humorous Content
• Shocking Content

Topix

These are local forums where you can share local news and breaking stories. This site is moderated and makes it easy to target specific geo-locations. This is great site to get discussions going around your content.

What types of content do well?

• Geo-specific new stories or content

Niche Social Networks

These social networks won’t send you 100,000 views but they offer the benefit of a targeted niche audience. For example, the investing social network Tipd.com only has a few thousand member, but a few hundred of those people are some of the top financial bloggers on the internet. You could see better results from just focusing your efforts on this network than going after all of the top networks.  Remember, you have to experiment to figure out which sites are really worth your time.

Business

Tip’d – Finance

Feed The Bull – Investing

Motley Fool Caps – Small Cap Investing

Pfbuzz – Personal Finance

Sphinn – Internet Marketing

Killer Startups – New Biz

YCombinator – Startup News

Products & Commerce

Dealspl.us – Deals

SlickDeals.net – Deals

Dealigg – Deals

Leisure/ Entertainment

ArmchairGM – General Sports

Yardbarker – General Sports

AutoSpies – Auto

N4G – Gaming News

WeHeartGossip – Celeb News

Chictini – Woman’s Style

Stylehive – Style Bookmarking

Eco-Friendly/ Wellness

Care2 – Better World

Mind Body Green – Green Living/Yoga

Art & Design

Design Float – Design

Design Bump – Design

Programming

Stackoverflow – Programming

DZone – Programming

dotNet Kicks – .NET Programming

Tweako – Computing

Conclusion

With experimentation you can discover the right niche networks for your content. If these networks don’t match your niche, consider looking through this master list of Social Bookmarking networks. Please share the hidden gems you have found in the comments below.

There are two common misconceptions about budgeting for social media…

1. It’s free! We all know the archetypal CEO who doesn’t “believe” in social media and refuses to spend anything toward social marketing. Logic: Social networks are free → social media marketing is free.
2. You need to drop serious cash to see results. On the flip side is the hipster CMO who “gets it” and drains the entire marketing budget building a massive social media team and chasing every fad. Logic: Zappos has approximately 3 million people manning their Twitter account → you need to hire a small country to succeed.

Let’s collectively SODH (shake our damn heads), then move along to learn about spotting and fixing some common social spending mistakes.

Only Committing to Campaigns

Some traditional marketing and PR pros transitioning into social media careers falter because they’re programmed to focus on campaigns. Flashy social campaigns provide the ”wow” factor, get people talking, and do play an important role in building brand recognition and an online following. It’s tempting to put the majority of social media spending toward a pricey interactive app, over-the-top viral stunt, or extravagant Facebook contest.

However, too much money poured into campaigns may drain the budget required to sustain and build relationships through daily engagement (a.k.a. social management). And, as with traditional marketing, any huge campaign always risks being a huge flop.

Think of social profile management, monitoring and content creation as routine spending, like groceries and utilities. You can’t survive very long without these. Treat campaigns like birthday and Christmas presents, carefully considered before purchase and bought with money squirreled away throughout the year (not bought on a maxed out credit card!).

Smart Social Spending Tip #1

Keep separate budgets for everyday spending and campaign spending. Everyday spending includes staff necessary for social management, ongoing consulting, social network ads, and tool/software subscriptions. Campaign spending includes app development, viral video creation, and campaign-centric social network ads.

Going Wherever the Wind Takes You

A lot of social media is done “on the fly,” with social teams scrambling to post around breaking news and sudden trends. The nature of social media demands quick changes, and sometimes a complete change in direction will be necessary. This is why planning a social strategy feels counter-intuitive to some,  but a budget can’t be built around spontaneous  activity.

Spending as you go risks eating up budget in a short period of time, and not having enough money available when it comes time for a big campaign. A solid strategy, including a detailed promotional calendar, is the only way to get a clear picture of how much your social efforts require month to month. From there, establish a set budget for the year, but allow plenty of wiggle room for unexpected changes.

Smart Social Spending Tip #2

Create a detailed social media calendar forecasting at least 6 months at a time. Instead of allocating an identical budget for all months, adjust your spending for each month depending on that month’s campaigns and goals.

Superficial Social Profiles

Beautiful social profiles are like beautiful people – they’re fun to look at, but after a few minutes, they better have something interesting to say. Fancy customizations cost money, whether using an in-house designer or contractor, but people aren’t going to engage with a page just because it looks pretty. I can’t count how often I come across intricately designed and branded social profiles, only to see them spewing out sales pitches and not connecting with followers.

A good rule of thumb is determining the “cost per fan” of any pricey endeavor. Is it worth spending $10K for something that will initially only reach 100 people?

And remember, most people aren’t actually visiting your Facebook Page (you can lead them there with ads, but that’s another post) or going to your Twitter profile to tweet at you. People interact through their social newsfeeds and streams, not directly on a brand’s profile. In many cases, the only time someone will see your pretty profile is when they first become a fan.

Smart Social Spending Tip #3

Focus on your brand’s online personality first, and its outward appearance second. Develop a rapport with existing followers and grow an audience before spending on tricked out features.

Expecting Overnight Success

Given the quick pace of  social media, many people expect the same speed in their return. However, immediate success is rare. It’s important to remember other brands’ wins that appear immediate are often the result of strategic  long-term planning.

Frustrated by slow results, a brand may be quick to throw more money into the social media fire or quit altogether. But a slow and steady build up in engagement is a good sign of a healthy, growing community.

Don’t make the mistake of being caught up in that big, obvious number:  how quickly your followers are growing. Focus instead on engagement metrics (such as comments, retweets and positive brand mentions). And think in percentages, not raw numbers: a large percentage of  followers interacting with your brand is more valuable than a large number of followers.

Smart Social Spending Tip #4

Engagement – not follower growth – is the best indicator of progress.   Only when engagement metrics go on a consistent decline is it time to switch gears. Otherwise, a steady increase each month is positive signal your efforts will pay off over time.

Conclusion

One final takeaway: be realistic about your brand’s social media progress. A brand just starting out should focus on building a community, not building extravagant apps. A more established brand should be careful not to ignore budgeting for everyday engagement in favor of narrowly-focused campaigns. All companies should put personality before a costly appearance, and consistently monitor engagement to determine spending cuts and increases.

Where do you put the majority of your social budget?

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