50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
Social media isn’t always the right tool for the job. Not every company needs a blog. YouTube worked for BlendTec, but it might not work for your company. And yet, there’s something to this. Over the last three days, I’ve spoken to four HUGE brands in America that are considering social media for one project or another, and there are many more out there working on how these tools might integrate into their business needs. Here’s a list of 50 ideas (in no particular order) to help move the conversation along. Note: I mix PR and Marketing. They should get back together again.
Please feel free to share this with others, and reblog it, provided you link back to [chrisbrogan.com] as the source.
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50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
- Add social bookmark links to your most important web pages and/or blog posts to improve sharing.
- Build blogs and teach conversational marketing and business relationship building techniques.
- For every video project purchased, ensure there’s an embeddable web version for improved sharing.
- Learn how tagging and other metadata improve your ability to search and measure the spread of information.
- Create informational podcasts about a product’s overall space, not just the product.
- Build community platforms around real communities of shared interest.
- Help companies participate in existing social networks, and build relationships on their turf.
- Check out Twitter as a way to show a company’s personality. (Don’t fabricate this).
- Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.
- Build sentiment measurements, and listen to the larger web for how people are talking about your customer.
- Learn which bloggers might care about your customer. Learn how to measure their influence.
- Download the Social Media Press Release (pdf) and at least see what parts you want to take into your traditional press releases.
- Try out a short series of audio podcasts or video podcasts as content marketing and see how they draw.
- Build conversation maps for your customers using Technorati.com , Google Blogsearch, Summize, and FriendFeed.
- Experiment with Flickr and/or YouTube groups to build media for specific events. (Marvel Comics raised my impression of this with their Hulk statue Flickr group).
- Recommend that your staff start personal blogs on their personal interests, and learn first hand what it feels like, including managing comments, wanting promotion, etc.
- Map out an integrated project that incorporates a blog, use of commercial social networks, and a face-to-face event to build leads and drive awareness of a product.
- Start a community group on Facebook or Ning or MySpace or LinkedIn around the space where your customer does business. Example: what Jeremiah Owyang did for Hitachi Data Systems.
- Experiment with the value of live video like uStream.tv and Mogulus, or Qik on a cell phone.
- Attend a conference dealing with social media like New Media Expo, BlogWorld Expo, New Marketing Summit (disclosure: I run this one with CrossTech), and dozens and dozens more. (Email me for a calendar).
- Collect case studies of social media success. Tag them “socialmediacasestudy” in del.icio.us.
- Interview current social media practitioners. Look for bridges between your methods and theirs.
- Explore distribution. Can you reach more potential buyers/users/customers on social networks.
- Don’t forget early social sites like Yahoogroups and Craigslist. They still work remarkably well.
- Search Summize.com for as much data as you can find in Twitter on your product, your competitors, your space.
- Practice delivering quality content on your blogs, such that customers feel educated / equipped / informed.
- Consider the value of hiring a community manager. Could this role improve customer service? Improve customer retention? Promote through word of mouth?
- Turn your blog into a mobile blog site with Mofuse. Free.
- Learn what other free tools might work for community building, like MyBlogLog.
- Ensure you offer the basics on your site, like an email alternative to an RSS subscription. In fact, the more ways you can spread and distribute your content, the better.
- Investigate whether your product sells better by recommendation versus education, and use either wikis and widgets to help recommend, or videos and podcasts for education.
- Make WebsiteGrader.com your first stop for understanding the technical quality of a website.
- Make Compete.com your next stop for understanding a site’s traffic. Then, mash it against competitors’ sites.
- Learn how not to ask for 40 pieces of demographic data when giving something away for free. Instead, collect little bits over time. Gently.
- Remember that the people on social networks are all people, have likely been there a while, might know each other, and know that you’re new. Tread gently into new territories. Don’t NOT go. Just go gently.
- Help customers and prospects connect with you simply on your various networks. Consider a Lijit Wijit or other aggregator widget.
- Voting mechanisms like those used on Digg.com show your customers you care about which information is useful to them.
- Track your inbound links and when they come from blogs, be sure to comment on a few posts and build a relationship with the blogger.
- Find a bunch of bloggers and podcasters whose work you admire, and ask them for opinions on your social media projects. See if you can give them a free sneak peek at something, or some other “you’re special” reward for their time and effort (if it’s material, ask them to disclose it).
- Learn all you can about how NOT to pitch bloggers. Excellent resource: Susan Getgood.
- Try out shooting video interviews and video press releases and other bits of video to build more personable relationships. Don’t throw out text, but try adding video.
- Explore several viewpoints about social media marketing.
- Women are adding lots of value to social media. Get to know the ones making a difference. (And check out BlogHer as an event to explore).
- Experiment with different lengths and forms of video. Is entertaining and funny but brief better than longer but more informative? Don’t stop with one attempt. And try more than one hosting platform to test out features.
- Work with practitioners and media makers to see how they can use their skills to solve your problems. Don’t be afraid to set up pilot programs, instead of diving in head first.
- People power social media. Learn to believe in the value of people. Sounds hippie, but it’s the key.
- Spread good ideas far. Reblog them. Bookmark them. Vote them up at social sites. Be a good citizen.
- Don’t be afraid to fail. Be ready to apologize. Admit when you’ve made a mistake.
- Re-examine who in the organization might benefit from your social media efforts. Help equip them to learn from your project.
- Use the same tools you’re trying out externally for internal uses, if that makes sense, and learn about how this technology empowers your business collaboration, too.
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Consider this a start. You probably could add another 50 tips for marketers and PR professionals to consider by adding to the comments section, or blogging an additional list at your site. I know you’ve got some ideas that I’ve missed. Care to share?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Comments
What business people need is the a 10 commandments of what NOT to do, starting with: friend 8 million people on Twitter, and distributing my email to a hundred slightly related ventures so I have to opt-out of every one separately. Believe me, I remember, and won’t do business with the prime holder of my email address again. I’m sure there are 8 more offenses to catalog.
Once again a brilliant list of strategic initiatives, one can use it as a checklist to implement client strategy.
In South Africa, we unfortunately have the problem of a ‘digital divide’ where the people to whom these things make sense are a very small minority of a minority of the population and for the overall majority these things do not exist.
You then find yourself in a position trying to implement these and there is no one to use it and utilize it properly. Also many companies think they must have a social media strategy because it’s what’s buzzing at the moment before having thought through to whom and for whom it will say what about which and for what reason…?
So thank you for a nice resource from which to learn and help inform early adopters in a developing society with many difficult socio-economic issues to overcome before these things will even begin to be relevant to a larger segment of the population and start actually making business sense.
this would be great to show to company executives that usually say “how can my company use social media?” just slap down these 50 reasons and then ask them if they have any questions :)
Nice list Cris.
I have to add social media crisis communication plan/strategy, virtual realities, map mashups (as I explained here http://prprometeus.blogspot.com/2008/06/map-mashups-for-strategic-communicators.html)…
Don’t forget to stress the importance of combining mainstream and social media for the best outcome.
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man…you did it again chris- great points- especially 48- out of the park once again- I gotta get this post out to some folks- wow. Nice job.
This one is wonderful information for me but take some time to be in practice because social media’s now creating there worth in internet market.
thanks for such a lovely information…
Chris, great post as usual, thanks for this compilation, I’ll keep at hand because still many companies have no clue about what can SM add to their “traditional” marketing strategies.
I am usually asked about what value can I add to existing marketing plans, and there are some points on this list that I will add to my “template” answer.
In Spain this is still very new, many companies don’t even know what’s all this about. Many of them don’t even know about SEO/SEM, so you get the idea about how hard is to sell your services!
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Wow. Great list. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of structure could be placed around a list like this.
For example - some of the steps outlined are Strategies, some are Tactics. Some are Research And Response oriented, some are around Enablement. Some are General Advice and some are Specific Insights. Does anyone out there have any other ideas as to how this could be broken down and organized, as well as grown, into a community project?
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Chris - great list. I think the fact that the concept behind so many of these ideas comes down to simply doing a better job of listening and learning to your customers is excellent. It’s the insights culled from improved listening that will continue to have the biggest impact on helping marketers do a better job.
Great stuff Chris.
I do not usually add links to comments, but regarding Ann’s “What not to do” request, I wrote a popular yet basic piece on stupid mistakes people make with social media. (7 Commandments, not 10)
http://blog.buzzoodle.com/index.php/2008/06/09/7-stupid-social-media-mistakes-are-you-making-them/
Thanks Chris,
top-notch advice for those of us who are just getting the hang of using social media.
Cheers,
Karl
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I get tons of friend requests on Facebook from wannabe Chris Brogans. They are mass adding your friends. At first, I add them back thinking they might be fans, but once I check out their profile and see they have thousands of friends (even though they aren’t famous), their mini-feed is filled with friend adds, and they work in marketing… they are instantly removed. I’m SO sick of it, this is not a decent use of social networking.
Great list, useful and insightful.
But I liked how you introed the list by saying that social media is not a do it all tool. Most people these days are so hot to jump onto the bandwagon that they don’t always consider of their brand is a if or not.
Having said that, opportunity to start a dialog with the consumer should not be ignored either.
These are all fabulous, Chris. Thanks for organizing in such an easy to use way. I would suggest adding one about education–the number one problem I run into when trying to integrate social networking into my marketing projects is resistance (which I believe masks confusion!) from other members on the project. Perhaps a tip like,
Be prepared to teach others the value of social networking, even when they are initially resistant to the concept. Don’t just say, ‘because it’s cool!’ Come with a list of ten reasons why social networking will help. Then prove them.
would be appropriate?
I like how you keep stressing to not be afraid. Companies should stop worrying about this and accept that with mistakes comes learning and a better way to operate.
Chris, you’ve done it again!
Thank you for a very informative post. You’ve provided an array of tools and ideas for me to use to take my business to the next level.
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No, no thank YOU for sharing your brilliance with us so selflessly, I’ve learnt an awesome amount from following and subscribing to your feed in Google Reader, lotsa good karma for you ;)
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Hi Chris, I thought your post was brilliant this morning and have written a post quoting your ‘50 ways’ on my blog. However I am trying to trackback to your post (My blog is on blogger and so am using haloscan - a manual trackback site) but cannot find your trackback url. I am very new to this and am trying to teach myself as quickly as possible how to use all these tools. If you or anyone else can shed any light I’d be very grateful. Thanks.
Fantastic post Chris. Some great reminders as well as “sparks” to get people rolling with social media marketing. Thanks for such a comprehensive list.
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@Beth Jones I think what you can do is just highlight the entire URL of the post in the address bar and copy and paste that into where it asks for the trackback or pingback URL in your blogging software…? It worked for me, self-hosted WordPress ;)
Yeah, but don’t forget you guys, I think I’d like my blog to be remotely intelligent, I’d want good discussions to happen. Question is how to get to that point.
Nice list Chris! Even though social media listings are often seen as spam resources for online marketers.. I really agree with you first statement btw; Social media isn’t always the right pick for all companies.
Also, bookmarking sites like Digg.com etc are getting more and more popular by social marketers.. The voting mechanisms are often used to promote own content. Abusing this to boost your own content can end up in getting your account and submissions deleted.
In general I would say, try to use social marketing to spread good content, not spam!
Social marketing is a hard tool to control and can easily start working against you as well. I published an article on my blog on this.
You can check it out here: http://www.lifecaptureinc.com/blog/social/2008/07/social-media-marketing-case-studies/
It features some case studies on big companies using social marketing (and failing).
Great stuff here Chris! I wish I could keep up with every single one of them, and I wish my full time job was social media…anyhow, great advice for us PR peeps out there. Thanks for thinking of us :)
Wow, Chris, that’s quite a list.
Informative, detailed and actionable.
What are your thoughts on Squidoo? Did you not include it for strategic reasons or just because you had enough already?
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Hi Chris,
Great stuff, love the stuff you’re putting out, very helpful. I’ve reblogged a selection from this post, hope I can add a few readers (though probably not much traffic at this point in time).
Anyway, really appreciate what you do.
Chris, thanks for the link love. And, 50 ways…man, talk about setting the bar high for the rest of us. I have trouble coming up with 10! Good job though. Keep feeding the community.
This is wonderful. the phrase educated/equiped/informed really struck home for what I’m trying to do with my blog. Better than no shit, no shinola which I had been using as a psuedo slogan…
Keep up the great work, Chris. You’ve become my social media guru!
Thanks for the shout-out Chris. Some of my posts actually talk about good pitches too; it’s just that the ratio of good to bad is pretty poor.
But stay tuned. I’ve actually got some posts brewing that go through the recipe for a good pitch.
Very detailed and comprehensive list. I shall definitely share this and bookmark your blog.
From my conversations with B2B Marketers as a copywriter, I know many are struggling with the sheer volume of what’s possible with social media, where to start, how far to go, what to look for and, of course, how to show ROI and what to measure. It’s a mystery to many. Having two way conversations doesn’t come naturally, so there’s a fear factor there. But this list is great.
Should anyone be interested I’ve recently published a report on Social Media Copywriting. Called “The 19 “New” Rules of Social Media Copywriting it gives marketers tips on how to write for Social Media so they can start these conversations with their customers. It’s a free report and available at
http://copywritingstudio.com/special-report.html. There is certainly a willingness to know more though… I’ve just had a request from a South African University to include it in one of their marketing programs.
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Chris, this post helps me on two fronts - one being my blog - prodding me to do some things I’ve been thinking of doing - like bookmarking and voting up posts at social sites. And, for work, moving the needle forward on mapping out an integrated project that incorporates use of commercial social networks and events to drive awareness of a product. I market to law firms who, according to a survey conducted by LexisNexis, revlealed that almost 50% of attorneys are members of online social networks and more than 40% are interested in joining an online professional network for their profession. Good news for me!
This is great! I can’t wait to implement these suggestions. I love social networking and am always looking for ways to use it to its best advantage.
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Chris, this is great work. I have tarnsalted this into German and published on my blog. This will definitely improve the Germans attitude to Social Media.
Chris - perhaps in a separate post - I’d love to hear your thoughts specifically on #4. This is great stuff - thanks!
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Excellent post and an even more valuable comment list !
If I could ask for more, would be for Social Media Marketing stuff. Definitions, DOs, DON’Ts, success stories, failures etc
Greetings from Greece
Great post! Thanks! I have one more:
51. Once you get involved in social networks, use it to ask your customers and fans questions and respond quickly - simply put, make it a two-way not just one-way conversation.
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Chris,
Great stuff. I’m enjoying and finding these lists very helpful. I’m wondering if you could elaborate a little about #9:
“Couple your email newsletter content with additional website content on a blog for improved commenting.”
Thanks, enjoy reading.
–Debbie Hemley
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Using Social Media In Your Small Business Marketing…
When I first began blogging back in 2005, that was the only way I reached out to my online clients. Everything I had to say or share was included in my blog posts. Many people left comments, but that way…
Okay, I am new in the field but I think that Chris’ list is more about how to do things but not that much about why an earth should a company use social media. In my opinion it would be more useful to show marketers the clear benefits of social media first and after that to give examples how to do it.
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FriendFeed had this many likes and comments: hide-
great post Chris
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Great post, I'm learning so much from you. Keep rockin!
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Thanks Chris, and love number 43.
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@chrisbrogan is relentless in the creation of usable compelling content. I love his stuff and hate that I'm not half as productive.
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i love the last part of #47 "be a good citizen." for me, that is the essence of what builds trust with anyone trying to promote a product.
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Wow! Outstanding list Chris, thanks
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Juicy post... thanks!
CB…how do you keep comng up with this stuff! You should write a book! (ha ha)…Great tips here, I don’t know if you have covered it, but would be good to see how to use some SM tools to do research and get ideas from prospects/customers to further refine your offering. Using LinkedIn to ask questions about a potential product, or social tools like http://www.esurveyspro.com and http://www.pingg.com (which I love for managing events) and http://www.squidoo.com where you can gather feedback or data from potential customers are also good tools me thinks!