Can social media really build my brand?
I was asked to do a social media marketing plan presentation for an organization. SurveyTelligence is a diagnostic tool powered by Infotool. They have a great product and are trying to build their brand in intelligent survey design. I received my certification from them in 2011. The 365 survey tool helps organizations uncover issues that degrade workforce performance, productivity, organizational alignment, engagement, culture, leadership and essentially the bottom line.
The presentation included a group of consultants that work with SurveyTelligence. The goal is to work together as a team to build brand awareness.
I started out the presentation by asking what their social media goals were. I encouraged them to listen to their audience, encourage questions, respond to the audience and be different than the competition.
I then encouraged them to go all the way with social media.
Your social media stool
Think of building your brand with social media as a stool. Every leg you put on your social media stool strengthens your message and adds stability to your company brand.
- Website
- Blog | for a professional audience try to use a domain name and not Blogspot or WordPress domains
- Advertise with free services such as Google Place, Yahoo! Local, and Bing Business Portal
I also use a free listing in the Yellow Pages directory. When I Google “olinda services middletown” my website is the first site listed. This drives up my credibility as a legitimate business owner.
Add to the social media stool
- LinkedIn: build a company profile, a professional profile and participate in groups; answer questions
- Twitter: have fun, engage you audience
- Facebook: more social and conversational; post controversial stuff, ask questions
- YouTube: promote your brand; appeal to visual learners
SurveyTelligence has some of these elements and are building their brand and broadening their social media positioning.
Here are some areas that I encouraged them to focus on as they continue to build their brand.
Build the audience and the message by…
- Branding their YouTube page to reflect their logo, color scheme and website. Specifically to build a custom page to use for their background. Encourage people to comment on their videos and re-purpose the content regularly.
- Brand their Facebook page to reflect a person, color scheme, brand the site.
- Bring in fresh content through Google alerts.
- Be personable
- Show their knowledge
- Connect with others
This is really true for all of their social media sites needing a concerted effort to tie in with in each other.
Search Engine Optimization
Look at search engine optimization (SEO) tools. When I looked at their product, I asked what terms would I Google to find out more about them; deciding on “corporate survey tool”. They were listed on page 4, mid-page. Although they have an excellent product, the search engines aren’t catching wind of it. I suggested they look at tweaking their keywords and incorporating them in the posts that they write, varying them with upper and lower case, plural and singular. I also encouraged them to comment on other blogs linking back to their blog in an organic way.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a wonderful tool that serves so many purposes. It monitors the web and can give you information about your business and your competition. Set it up to monitor your keywords. Set it up to find more information about potential clients. It is a great way to obtain fresh content to use in all of your social media streams and it is FREE!
Maximize Your Message
I encouraged them to produce an editorial calendar for the message of the week.
- Produce one new blog post weekly
- Produce one new tweet daily
- Produce one original Facebook message daily
- Produce one original LinkedIn message daily
I do not encourage my clients to duplicate the same content across all social media streams. Some of my followers follow me on multiple media streams. I don?t want them to become bored with my content. There are great tools available to use to manage and schedule your social media campaign but do check in regularly and thank those who retweet and post comments on your Facebook page. Respond to those LinkedIn comments and thank, thank, thank your audience for participating.
Share; Don’t Shill!
I encouraged the consultants who attended the presentation and SurveyTelligence to follow a few basic rules when it comes to social media.
- Be a resource
- Help your audience
- Pay it forward
- Tell customer stories
- Speak the language your audience understands
- HAVE FUN!
What do you have to add to the social media stream?