Day 6: Social Marketing - Four Things to Be

Written by Rhiannon Gallagher | 10 March 2010

In preparation for Day 6, we picked online communities for each of the five participants in our 10-Day Makeover Project. The participants are now learning how to interact within these groups and how to make this activity worth the effort.

Below are THE FOUR THINGS TO BE in Social Marketing.

1. Be Present

You can’t play the Social Marketing game if you don’t show up. For B2B networking, start with LinkedIn. For B2C, start with Facebook. These are the two most active options, but there are local or industry specific choices as well. Once you’ve joined an online group, introduce yourself in a short and friendly post that outlines your business and offers a way to interact. For example, TripleScoop could create a survey about consumer product marketing, and introduce themselves to a group by inviting participation.

Do complete profiles for both you and your business. If you’re on Facebook, you may want to keep your business associations in a separate group, so you can control which updates they see, etc.

On LinkedIn, create a company profile as well. This will help people find your business through their connections. For example, if I enter “Affordable Printing” on LinkedIn, I don’t get Affordable Printing right now. But I do get a list of businesses that provide printing services, with the businesses where I have network connections sorted at the top. Once Affordable Printing is listed as a company on LinkedIn, anyone in the employees’ individual networks will see their company at the top when they need printing services. Seeing that you know someone at a business increases the all-important trust factor.

2. Be Unique

We recommend joining online groups where you may be the only member who can provide your service or product. There are things you can learn from belonging to affinity networking groups, and often jobs will be posted at these groups. But getting business from these groups is less likely, because at the end of the day, all of the group members are your competitors.

For example, the founders of TripleScoop belong to several groups for market research and qualitative testing. But to find new customers, we are recommending that they join groups centered on product development and innovation. In these groups, they will stand out as the experts in their field.

3. Be Yourself

Along the same lines, look for online versions of your existing communities, like your university alumni association, your church, your hobby groups, or your neighborhood. Often you may be the only one in these groups who does what you do, and therefor the first place people think of when they need your services.

Also, you never know how your networks will intersect. For Private Title Loans, we recommended some LinkedIn groups that focus on alternative and unusual investment opportunities. When Bryan Green went to one, he found that an old friend from high school was a leader in the group. Now he has two levels of connection to that friend, a great reinforcement of his network.

4. Be Authoritative

In the sea of information and opinions on the Internet, you need to establish your authority. Within LinkedIn, there is a feature called “Answers” where people post questions in specific categories, and other people respond to those questions. If the questioner likes your response, you can work up to Expert status on that topic.

There are also many places where people ask for help within a specific area - like http://www.stackoverflow.com for computer programming. Becoming an ‘answerer’ in these locations can help build your network and your credibility.

MORE RESOURCES:

• Day 6: Social Marketing: Ten Reasons to be Transparent
• Day 7: SEO - 2 Sites Launch - SEO Strategies Discussed
• Day 7: SEO Strategy Varies By Company Size