Using Outposts in Your Media Strategy

Social networks are great places to meet new people, to build new business relationships, and to learn about information from non-traditional sources. But another great way to use social networking sites is as an outpost. What do I mean by this? It turns out that people getting to know you on social networks might also find your content for the first time, and/or something you post to those networks might bring you an opportunity that wouldn’t immediately come to you in other ways.

Building Outposts

Before we go too deep, as I’m talking about RSS and some of you might not be fully aware, here’s a great video by Common Craft about RSS in Plain English:

Here’s what I’m talking about:

1. Find your RSS feed URL for your blog. (If you’re not 100% sure how, right click the big orange button somewhere on your site and right-click. Select “copy link location.”)
2. Add your RSS feed to FaceBook. I also recommend Simplaris Blogcast (formerly “Flog Blog”). It’s a great app for adding blog posts into your personal news feed.
3. Add your RSS feed to LinkedIn, but go further. There’s a “what are you doing?” line in LinkedIn. Three times, I’ve had business opportunities come from someone catching something in their LinkedIn feed. (No offense to Mario Sundar, but I didn’t realize people watched that as closely.)
4. Post the occasional tweet about a particularly good blog post to Twitter. Do this at a rate of about 1:12, meaning one post about your stuff to any 12 tweets about other people’s stuff. This will keep people a bit more interested in your stream as something of value, versus a “mememememe” type of Twitter user.
5. Repeat this in any “very specific to your industry” social networks that matter to you, and/or on emails to your specific potential customer base. Do this such that you entice people to read your latest article, instead of just putting something that says “subscribe to my blog.”

Technically, it’s a simple tactic used in a strategy of awareness and / or community building. And yet, it’s one that you might not be doing yet for your media.

Any other recommendations you want to add to the process? Any questions?

Photo credit, Jule Berlin