1. Learn from others. Invest time to read what your peers, competitors and business contacts are saying – and how they are interacting with each other. This will give you an idea of the etiquette and language that is expected.
2. Find the network that is right for your business. Just like face-to-face networking, trial different networks to find the most appropriate and beneficial for your business.
A good starting point is LinkedIn, which enables you to communicate with existing colleagues and track down contacts from previous jobs and university.
3. Set up your own blog, and position yourself as an expert. Blogs are an ideal platform around which to build an online personality, brand and reputation.
Post regularly on selected issues and build reciprocal relationships with others blogging on your topics. This will draw target audiences to you.
You can set up your own blog with free templates from sites like Blogger or Wordpress.
4. Sign up to Twitter. Twitter is a free, simple-to-use micro-blogging site which enables you to network with like-minded people about issues and topics that interest you and affect your business.
5. The best way to build up a reputation for your brand online is to operate across a number of platforms and cross-communicate.
Comment on other people’s blogs, linking back to your own, then write about their blog on yours.
Tweet about your latest blog post or let your followers know about an interesting article online that you’ve read and comment upon it. By constantly referring to other bloggers, people and networks you will begin to command an audience, with others recognising your expertise and insight.
6. Connect with peers and clients alike. While your customer base isn’t within your industry, it is always good to raise your profile with peers and potential employees. The savviest people will be using social networking as part of their everyday lives.
7. Align your online and offline messages and marketing to ensure your brand is clear.
Social networking should form a strategic part of your overall marketing strategy and it’s important you convert the social connections into face-to-face meetings and conversations.
8. Decide who within your team will be engaged in social networking on behalf of the company and set parameters.
Ensure that each person understands the limitations and framework and that it mirrors the behaviour expected while at work.
9. Monitor your online reputation. Find out who is saying what about your business and its products and services. Google offers a free “alert” service which emails you whenever it picks up articles or sites that mention your keywords.
A few weeks back, Moonfruit – the free online website building service, was offering free Apple Macbooks in return for people spreading the Moonfruit brand across Twitter in the form of a #moonfruit hashtag.
One person per day was then picked at random and handed one of Apple’s shiny laptops, a pretty good way of instant brand exposure. So what was the outcome?
Moonfruit had over 200,000 mentions, around 45,000 new followers and a 600% increase in traffic to the website resulting in a 100% increase in new sign-ups to the Moonfruit service over the seven days the competition ran for. Plus there was the other media coverage of Moonfruit’s Twitter campaign which went worldwide.
So far so good, everything sounds rosy. But towards the end of the week-long campaign, many Twitter users were getting pretty tired of seeing #moonfruit tagged onto the end of every tweet. People started to unfollow and since the competition ended no-one mentions #moonfruit very much.
So is there a lesson to learn from this? I suppose dangling the carrot in front of your target audience for the sole purpose of brand recognition may return fantastic results, but it seems to be a quick-fix, will the long-term brand reputation stay strong? I’m not so sure.
Having said all this, I have tweeted with the hashtag #mpora with a chance to win one of four Macbooks being given away by Mpora the action sports website. Maybe this is the second wave of social-media brand-flooding – there’s no hard sell, no forms to fill in, no email to submit, just a competition.
I like to talk and reminisce about my childhood in the 70’s and how things have changed, some for the good and some not so.
Street parties happened occasionally and mainly for celebratory events, the best one I can remember was for the Queens Jubilee. This seemed to be a time when everyone had pride in their community, knew everyone on their street or village and loved their country. Do you know people on your street? Do you even know your neighbour?
The Big Lunch Party is a campaign to get everyone to organise a street party this Sunday 19th July.
The idea of a Big Lunch was dreamed up by Tim Smit and Paul Twivy from the Eden Project in Cornwall. They explain: “Basically, it’s a party in your street, in everyone’s street. On 19th July we’re asking the people of Britain to stop what they’re doing and sit down to lunch together. Why? Well for lots of reasons really but mainly to put a smile back on Britain’s face.”
An extract from the website says: “Most of us are shy, many of us lead single lives and even when we are together often go our own way. We all know about the problems in our society and don’t need to be preached at about them. But inside almost everyone there is a notion that despite our differences, the ties that bind us are important.”
I find it strange in these days of social networking when you think nothing of welcoming complete strangers to your Facebook/Myspace page or have them follow you on Twitter the concept of actual physical interaction scares us.
Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole Social Media revolution and the changes we are seeing in all aspects of our lives from choosing a holiday to buying a fridge all based on online community discussion sites / forums.
Hey! Here’s a new concept – lets get something back, lets get social interaction working offline as well as online!
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