Superb post as always. Perfect contextual use of the advanced uses of social media as a business tool and linking groups via offline. Love it Chris x

I believe it’s realistic, and can definitely see it adding value; especially since first impressions of businesses/services so often seem to include the question, “How is their online presence?”

I can tell you one thing: I’d be clicking on “follow” under Yolanda’s name on Twitter. :-)

Active participation with social networks such as Yelp, sends a message to Yolanda’s customers: we care.

While many companies are often afraid to unleash the malcontents and pull back the covers, the openness of the engagement with Yelp or another online community, sends a signal that a company or business is engaged and interested in what their customers are saying.

Customers are going to Yelp or talk about you online, so being open and inviting them to do so is a great way to further understand them and engage them in your brand.

And the free room for blogger is a nice idea :)

Great post. Excellent contextualization. I’d also like to see a discussion about other analytic tools she might use to demonstrate ROI for her time to her management team. Many of my clients are looking for ways to measure ROI outside of the website analytics.

Thanks for the post!

I think the reality is that few companies have actually dedicated resources to social media specifically or, rather, fewer than you’d think.

I basically have the job you describe above but with additional responsibilities for traditional marketing for Vancouver’s most visited attraction (though not a hotel). I have carved out my own position over the last 9 years here and am one of very few people the owners have grown to trust with their online reputation. I would even go so far as to say my company wouldn’t have someone in this position at all if I hadn’t brought my geek-girl interest in social media to the table.

In addition to listening to the social scene I administer a couple of facebook pages, squidoo pages, a twitter account, read my google alerts, check out my rss feeds from various sources to see what’s exciting. I place all the online ads including adwords and Facebook ads, strategize content for our corporate website, eDM and am always trying to push upper management towards an understanding of the need to blog regularly if we’re going to have a blog at all. That’s just what happens before noon.

The truth is, I also manage all traditional marketing too - media relationships, agency relationships, production (we do that in-house too) etc. I sit down and do my own copywriting when I need to, update our company website, dig in to InDesign to create an ad if time or budget dictates that I must. The point of this is not to leave my resume in your comments, but to suggest that people out there are trying to fit social media into an existing budget of both time and money. At least we are, anyway. And I think we’re doing a pretty good job of it. I think dedicated Social Media-specific marketing positions actually only exist within super early-adopters’ techy companies. The rest of us are doing what we can to join in the conversation.

Excellent article. Since I’m in “overload” right now; I’m interested in how other professionals handle social networking.

You have laid out a primer, step by step, for me. So much for Cherp…
I’ll be reading comments, to see what other brilliant minds might add.
Thank you.

It’s reality Chris.. I’m pretty sure it would work. A small crowd at the beginning might end up seriously huge and profitable as the word spreads throughout the social media.

I love how you laid everything out. Explaining social media is one of the toughest situations when talking to people that just got comfortable with emails. I will share this for sure!

Great post, Chris. One of the very best. I think what would-be social media marketers can take from this is the way you use storytelling to sell the idea.

Here in Sweden there’s been some discussion the last few days about how CVs don’t do people just. I personally think storytelling can make skills more transparent to prospective employers. After all, Big Company Inc might be on the look out for a traditional marketer, but Ms Talented Applicant whose great at these skills might just be able to stand head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd if she can persuade them that what the need is a new kind of marketing emplyee.

Your story might help her get this across and persuade the overly cautious that there’s a new world happening out there thank to the web.

I’d add one small, but relevant plot twist:

“As she was walking out the door for the day, Yolanda opened one last email - an email from an employee who works on the floor in one of her hotels. It read, “I’m sure you’ve already seen this, but some guy posted a YouTube video about his recent stay in our hotel. What should we do?”

Yolanda watched the video and then called the employee. First, she thanked them for forwarding the video and reinforced that she doesn’t see everything on the internet and appreciates when her team passes them along to her. Then they talked together about ways to respond and decided that ultimately, the hotel manager should comment on the video and try to make personal contact with the customer via email. She then sent an email along to the Director of PR and told her 1. The nature of the video, 2. How many views it had received, 3. The action plan she and the hotel manager had worked out.“

As usual, a great post Chris!

What you describe above is quite similar to what I do with my restaurant. Since we are a small restaurant we don’t have a big traditional media advertising budget (nor would I want one). We leverage social media, e-newsletters, Google alerts, online branding and online reputation management to help us in successfully marketing. We’ve been lucky to not have gotten any negative comments yet but even the positive comments help us to grow and figure out what our customers are recommending to others.

I think it is critical that industries such as hotels, restaurants and other travel & tourism businesses be involved in similar practices. Thankfully for us, we are among the only in our area (for now):)

-Justin Levy

Great article, nicely done Chris!

I wrote up a synopsis on Ecademy and linked back to the article here.

Sometimes all people need is a little imagination and creativity to apply new tools to their situation.

Thanks again Chris,

so much good stuff for those of who are still learning about the benefits of social media for businesses.

Cheers,
Karl

This was well done Chris!

I’ve been working with several businesses to help their sales team leverage Social Media. It’s been delivering results.

I might add:
- If you’re local, use Facebook (or similar) and see what community groups are relevant to your business, join and participate.

- Use your own blog to build a network of related contacts or referrals that are professionals who compliment your business. Visitors may appreciate your help in being a resource as well.

- Use business SNetworks like LinkedIn to connect; invite prospects, they can get to know you more and it adds a level to the relationship.

As always, thanks for asking!

I think FriendFeed can sneak in nicely into Yolanda’s schedule. She may establish a semi-public room on FriendFeed for activities and events in the hotel, or around Boston, including places to visit, and so on.

It is a good resource for people to subscribe to, and that is still realistic because she already used Google Readers, RSS feeds and listening tools.

This is great Chris. This will be great as I talk with more clients about how to get started in social media in a manageable way. So many folks are concerned with having to add a full-time body before they get a return. “Small victories” are key.

@seeking_balance: I’m so glad you commented here. I’m heading out to Vancouver in a few weeks (for BarCampBank BC on Sept 20&21 - hi Shari!), and am looking to put together my schedule of things to do. Because of your comment here, I now have Grouse Mountain ziplining on my list.

Moral of this story: You never know where the connections will be made!

Side note: @Morriss Partee Thanks for your note! I hope you have a great time ziplining. I’m hoping to find something to contribute to BarCampVancouver the following week but haven’t yet figured out what that is ;)

@seeking_balance - go anyway. I promise that you’ll find value.

This is a great post describing a new career that didn’t exist only 10 years ago.

Making comments on blogs is an amazing and simple way to grow your networks. “Yolanda gets it.”

John P. Kreiss
http://www.johnpkreiss.com

I love the way this is being told in story form while making clear practical points on how to ‘do’ a social media job. Very helpful to read and learn from.

Chris I’d love to hear how your day goes in terms of managing/acting on all your social media outlits??

The piece that I strugglw with most at this point is finding the right placec to ‘listen’ … Or better yet … Listening for the right things.

__
http://twitter.com/franswaa

[…] Click here to view this post: […]

@Frank- I can tell you about me. But also, tell me about your line of business. That’ll help me help you.

Great post, Chris. I know I’m lightyears behind the rest of the world but I really need to set up RSS.
I’ll also checkout Yelp.
I use everything else (makingthenews on twitter)regularly but thanks for the tips.

Chris–As always a great post. And you’re probably tired of reading “I’m learning so much” but well, I’m learning so much. I’d love to see something in the future about integrating social media resources, in baby steps, with traditional outreach models. For example, we live and die by the press release around here. So how do we distribute those releases via traditional channels as well as use socmed tools w/o turning into “those dang government spammers”? Given the culture around here, my particular challenge is to demonstrate how socmed adds value to what we’re already doing.

Chris - as a small hotel/B&B owner…man, this post is useful!

I had heard of Yelp but was not sure of its depths. Well, they are going to have one new memeber today, for sure!

Also, as soon as my flip video camera arrives from Amazon the Culebra videos are starting…watch out youtube. :)

Great post Chris- the only thing I take issue with is the Boston setting. After complete blowout last night, this diehard Yanks fan is a little put off :)

But seriously- great ideas, agreed that analytics to show ROI would be the icing on the cake.

Thanks as always!

Chris, you should turn Yolanda into a podcast series star ;) The Office 2.0

Thanks, Chris! Hopefully this will help me as I try to bring “old school” into current world. We’re miossing a huge opportunity.

I like that Yolanda picked where she was going to focus her attention. That’s one of the biggest initial hurdles when facing social media is that there are so many directions you can get pulled into.

By focusing on what was not only relevant, but potentially beneficial to her business, she really did make good use of the social media tools available and her time with them.

Nice post Chris.

This is a great article. I really like to use social media as part of my marketing plan. When people do not see enough benefits right away they give up on social media. Social media seems to be more about the long run and not the short run.

Realistic? Sure. Comprehensive? No.

It’s realistic in that nothing here is a bad idea, and everything here can and probably should be done by anyone even considering to call him or herself a “social media marketer.” In fact, I’ve been working on putting together a couple of communication plans during the past couple of weeks that look a lot like this.

But it stops short. She’s not producing any of her own content — not blogging, not podcasting, not sharing videos, not posting photos, not hosting her own events (though she’s working toward it).

I understand that you can only do so much in one article, but it should be noted, for the sake of those who are relying this as guidance, that this is just a starting point. A *great* starting point, but just that.

Hey Chris … thank for the time.

I work in the software as a service (SaaS) business. Our customers are all non-profits. Our tools range from CRM & back-end donor management to CMS front end fund-raising, advocacy and social media tools (others things as well but no need to go into it all).

I work in the professional services piece of the pie (Director). My overall interest in social media is 2 fold: 1) Personally I find it very interesting and want to learn more 2) I want to be able to help our clients understand and use the tools to raise funds, spread their message, take action, etc …

As a side note - I have been paying close attention to @kanter lately … and every thing that went down at gnomedex - very cool to see!

Anyway … does that help?

__
http://twitter.com/franswaa

[…] best post I’ve seen regarding how a company can utilize social media on a daily basis. "What does a day in the life of a social media marketer look like? "  While Chris leaves out some aspects of monitoring social media (there’s no way you […]

Great post. This brings up a couple of questions for me. I work in basically a start up that provides ticketing for music venues around the country. A lot of what I do on a day to day basis involves social media. The one thing I wonder about “yolanda”, as with myself, is where you draw the line between your personal and professional presence online.

Or maybe there is no distinction anymore?

[…] Workflow- Social Media for Marketers: [Via chrisbrogan.com] What does a day in the life of a social media marketer look like? I’m not a marketer, so if I get some of your terms wrong, forgive me. I thought maybe we could do a walkthrough of a fictitious social media marketer, Yolanda, for a small hotel group (four hotels) in Boston. I picked hotels just because otherwise I’d have picked a software company. Let’s walk through a workflow, and then reconstruct it in bullets at the end. […]

It’s great to see a step-by-step for social media usage out in the “real world”. I’ve been thinking about social media and education for awhile, and maybe this is the most logical way to present it. It answers the “Why do we need it?” question that most teachers (or businesses for that matter) would ask.
Once they have a reason to invest in it, they’ll use it.

I think this situation is quite realistic and I’d love to see more businesses using this approach.

Your post depicts a realistic scenario that touches on a small tangent of possibilities that are open to marketers who use social media.

The main point of confusion for marketers is going to be accepting that results from social media as a marketing tool is going to yield results in indirect ways that may be hard to measure unless they are aware of the possibilities.

Social media as a conversation analysis tool, as depicted above, is not direct marketing but does spread a message of focus on customer satisfaction which may yield results that are not directly measurable.

Social media marketers need to understand that results are gained from increased search engine visibility, word of mouth (crowdsourcing) and branding through community building and interaction… Traditional metrics and tracking are an issue that I am sure will get better as this space continues to develop.

For now marketers have to accept that social media is mainly a branding / search engine visibility enhancer that will lead to traffic, action and sales but not directly unless you simply run ads on social networks. Traditionally the direct traffic that comes from social networks converts poorly and is rarely worth the effort unless you have built a community of supporters around your brand. In most cases the benefit for marketers is indirect as stated above.

Marketers that use social media have to take the time to learn this medium before jumping in. All to often I see marketing professionals that misuse social platforms because they don’t know what they are doing… They try to view marketing in social media through traditional Internet marketing goggles.

One thing to look at is the opportunity cost of the social networking. What traditional marketing is Yolanda not doing and what is the lost return on that marketing? That would be a useful comparison, especially when faced with skeptical bosses who think we are just surfing the Web all day.

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[…] Chris Brogan gave us a simple example of how social media can be used for marketing purposes. In continuing my series here I will expand […]

Tidy and certainly realistic, Chris.

I especially appreciate the succinct nature of the way you describe Yolanda’s day. Some of social media marketing folks I know spend so much of their time trying too hard — and trying to pack in too much. It occasionally comes across like flailing.

There is much to be said for working smarter in the social media space — and being intentional with action items.

[…] I read this from Chris Brogan, What does a day in the life of a social media marketer look like? I’m not a marketer, so if I […]

I like the story I can visualize, this also removes the focus on the technology iself and on the use in a setting many can relate to.

Ah, what a sense of relief to read this. I’m the Community Manager for a travel services company and have been figuring out for the past 3 1/2 years exactly what that might mean. (Don’t get me wrong… I love living in the grey areas between job-in-a-box and tech-innovation)

My days are beginning to look a lot like Yolandas, but additionally I’m responsible to design, develop and manage our own Travel blog software, write editorial for in-house blogs, deliver website production enhancements that help develop community features and also run our online CSR program (which heavily engages our community/customers.

Right now, we’re trying to write up a Customer Engagement strategy paper to help set direction for all the Social Media activities we’ve begun… they’ve often started in a random fashion, and whilst we can see the value, we’d like to think they’re contributing to some bigger, well planned business goals.

The hardest thing to figure out is measurement and what is meaningful. At the moment, I have a spreadsheet with a bunch of numbers (Twitter mentions, Technorati, survey results etc). I’m just hanging in (without judgment) for a few months to see what patterns emerge.
Chris - if you ever come across a sample report for Community/Social Media marketing activities, I’d looooove to see it?!

Outstanding post–as always, great information.

If you could do another cut at this, I’d advocate for looking at what Yolanda set up first, what she added next, and so forth–how she built the program strategically. I’m not going to be able to do everything on day one.

Seeking_Balance is the one who nailed my context: I’d love to have someone who had social media as the primary focus of time.

We’re not engaged in it yet for my particular campus (one of 4 in a statewide system) because I’d have to squeeze it in around everything else that hasn’t gone away: actual print publications, news releases, marketing pieces, web content, on & on.

My own time goes heavily toward community relations activities that require extensive time in meetings & at events–aka real-time social networks. That limits my ability to do frequent checks or updates, although I confess to doing plenty of email on my phone in some of these meetings…..

I have a really small team, so we can share but there will be days when we’re all slammed and nobody posts, at least in the early days until we evolve in a way that dumps projects.

I’m in some spaces as an individual to get a feeling for how appropriate they are for us as a specialty campus (graduate/professional, heavy on research), given our communication priorities and target audiences. Plenty of the influencers I need to reach are still not even on LinkedIn, let alone being tweeted at or updating their Facebook pages.

Anyone else in higher ed reading this? What are you doing?
–barb
http://www.linkedin.com/in/barbchamberlain

Looks fantastic! Lucky boutique company being able to support a person on staff doing 100% social media work. Most companies (even at the Fortune 100 level to which I contract) are still farming it out. I’m crossing my fingers for the day when this isn’t a social media marketer, but part of the day of the traditional PR or marketing person. :)

Thanks for getting the wheels turning, as usual.

I am surprised no one mentioned Google Analytics on her website.

She would check the stats in the morning and evening before leaving and see if there is a bump of traffic coming from an sources. She would also analyze why some of her efforts seem to hit a cord and generate traffic while others do not.

She would use the tool to measure and improve her results.

@Barb - I think there are ways to slice the role among your team. To your point, it’s not easy if you’re out there doing face to face work all the time, and I think that’s very important work (humans trump machines).

I’m loving what people are saying. The ideas you come up with are far more interesting than the original post alone. Thank you!

Chris,

This is a fantastic post. I just saw your link on a new friend’s profile on facebook and decided to check it out. I am working up in Toronto at a small bouitique marketing agency and we are starting to build social communities for clients and all of the examples you have given on how to connect with different networks has really opened my eyes to all of the different options you can explore. Since I am relatively new to this, I only knew of a few ways of getting people engaged. Now it’s like I have seen the light.

Thanks Chris. I cant wait until your next post!

Aimee
http://www.walkthetalkers.com

I think this is great. It can be overwhelming to try and tackle the social networking game. Do you have any good tools so I can really understand google reader and use it myself to follow the North Texas art scene, can it be that specific?

Ben

Wow, when you’re good you’re really good! This is a fantastic post - easy to grasp for even a newbie.

[…] here to read a great example of what a Social Media Manager would do? - Thank […]

[…] Example of what a Social Media Manager would do - Thank […]

[…] Workflow-Social Media for Marketers […]

This is a great post Chris. I have been dabbling in social media for my company trying to decide what the most effective ways are to introduce the company and products to a larger audience. We have a Facebook page and a Twitter page and three of us are on both sites personally. Because one of our major products is used by education and health professionals, “The Listening Program,” our approach to date has been pretty conservative: announcing trainings, our International Conference, etc. Now we have a new brain training product that can be used by anyone, and we have to determine the best way to introduce that to a larger audience that could benefit from it. I also handle our wholesale accounts so cannot devote full time to social media, but still hope to find the most effective ways to use it.

Great post Chris,
You say you’re not a marketer but you’re entitled to apply! Believe me, I work in a ad agency (so I am a marketer). A client of mine runs a chain of hotels in Quebec. Be sure I’ll forward her your post. it will help her become the next real world Yolanda.SD

Great post, Chris! I think you nailed it.
I’ve got a couple of additions:

Yolanda is getting ready to launch a microsite targeting tech professionals. The site will provide information about upcoming tech conferences and events as well as places to visit or dine at in Boston. The site will have a ‘tech events’ blog, image gallery and video library. Yolanda’s hotels are barely mentioned on the microsite – Yolanda is focusing on building relationships with potential customers by helping them connect with one another and facilitating conversations.

On the day the microsite is launched, Yolanda sends out a SEO press release that encourages tech professionals to visit the site and subscribe to the ‘tech events’ blog’s RSS feed.

Chris, I’ve been lurking for a month or two trying to take in all I can on Social Networking. Love your posts! Since you chose to write about hotels, I had to jump in. Here are a couple thoughts:

1) Yolanda’s hotel better offer free WiFi or the bloggers/techies she’s pursuing are going to slam her even after giving them a free meeting room.

2) In the hotel and travel space, sites like Trip Advisor have become very trusted. Some hotels are just catching on to the importance of listening and responding to negative posts on trusted mediums like this. Hardly any are encouraging happy guests to share their comments and pictures on mediums Trip Advisor like sites. If I were Yolanda, I’d come up with a little card for front desk workers to give to happy customers with simple instructions on how to share their experience on Trip Advisor.

[…] hotel social media marketer Written by Josiah on August 30, 2008 Social media blogger Chris Brogan shares a day in the life of Yolanda, a fictitious hotel marketer.  Chris shows some good examples of […]

[…] you’ve not come across Twitter yet, then here’s a great explanation of how you might be using twitter to promote your business and find opportunities from Chris Brogan, and here’s a simple explanation of how Twitter […]

While I’m not a marketer persey, I really enjoyed reading this fictious story of Yolanda whose job is to use different social media methods to help draw attention to the hotel she works for. Very interesting.

It sounded very realistic - I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary or unrealistic. You did a very good job painting a picture of how powerful social media tools can be, especially Twitter. I hadn’t heard of Yelp until now. Going to look at it.

We need to give good companies a big SHOUT while letting others know about those that treat customers shabbily, thinking they can get away with it.

Hi Chris,

I am new follower/fan of your posts and tweets. As a marketer by day, this story reinforces how critical it is for us to REALLY understand what kind of conversations are happening with, around and about our clients. We all talk about metrics, optimization,etc. The reality is that to truly deliver ROI, we need to understand the consumer/customer perspective. Thanks for a good article.

[…] another stroke of pure genius, Chris Brogan has published several workflows of social media for marketers, teachers, and pastors.  A great way to showcase how social media can be utilized in the real […]

Hey Chris,

I put together a plan for a client in the Hotel Industry that outlined the steps of Listen, Share, Lead. Nothing big or flashy and they thought it was “fluff”. Maybe you, me, and countless other do not understand Social Media Marketing.(Not)

[…] Managers as bloggers – Open up a different form of communication in managing departments. Want to find out more. Here is the fictional account of what Social Media manager does, read it here: […]