Put simply, if you are not engaging in timely manners across many social media platforms, your company will be crushed by the tsunami of social media. The waves of social media have been building for the past 10 years, and have grown to monster size in 2010. If your consumer facing website is not riding the wave, you are going to be crushed by it. You are putting yourself at a great risk of becoming swallowed by the oncoming tsunami and losing the title of a Consumer Facing Store and replacing it with a title of just Consumer Store. The world of online shopping is rapidly moving and you need to ensure that you optimize your online store for the social media revolution.
Here is how to do it:
1. MAKE A LIST of every social media platform that you can think of, then look at the Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and JESS3 to see exactly how well you matched up.
Chances are, at this very moment, you either have seen this great piece of information many times before OR you are extraordinarily overwhelmed -- but don't worry if you fall into the latter category, this is completely normal and you now have the opportunity learn about more than just facebook and twitter.
Brian Solis and JESS3 keenly researched every facet of social media and organized it into a prism that will serve your e-commerce store as an incredibly useful tool for many years to come.
Closely study the conversation prism and jot down every social media outlet that you think your customers may be involved in. Your list should consist of at least 5 outlets.
2. MAKE A GAME PLAN based on your list of social media outlets where your customers will be present. The first thing you need to do is rank the importance or chance of your customers being present in each social media outlet from 1 – 100. Start at the top of your list with number one and write a date and time slot that you are going to dedicate to this media outlet. You should dedicate at least an hour to each network. Within your dedicated time slot, you should focus on accomplishing and documenting the following steps:
- Setting up an account
- Optimizing your bio
- Exploring the community freely
- Searching the community and community discussions for
- Your Company Name
- Your Focused Keywords
- Discussions Regarding Your Industry
- Your Competitors
- Finding tools to utilize and engage with the selected social media network
It is very important that you document every social media network. You will find that this documentation will become extremely valuable — especially within your early days of integration. An efficient social media optimizer is like a highly regarded captain who can navigate the seas because he has memorized or read his maps regularly. To become a captain, you first have to learn your maps — your documentation will guide your way.
3. LISTEN BEFORE YOU SPEAK to your customers or potential customers conversations in the social media realm. When you first begin your social media campaign, you should realize that your social media brand is a service representing your company. Your new social media service is now in BETA and needs to be tested before you start marketing it.
You want your brand to make a positive first impression right? Well, you first need to make sure that you are prepared and ready for the task of engaging effectively. There are many tools available for managing multiple social media outlets within one platform and I suggest that you start utilizing these tools to listen before you engage. I have listed some great tools below, but please be aware that this is a small list and if these do not interest you, simply search for tools that will best utilize your campaigns:
- http://www.sociafyq.com/ - Allows you to customize track up to 15 accounts for free
- http://www.tweetdeck.com/ – Allows you to customize track and engage with Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and LinkedIn
- http://getsatisfaction.com/ – Allows you to build your own online community
- http://Google.com/alerts/ – Allows you to setup an account with Google that will actively search Google search engines everyday for keywords or keyword phrases of your choice
- http://ping.fm/ – Allows streamlined engagement with over 40 social media networks
4. OPTIMIZE YOUR SITE for social media interaction with remarkable content and plenty of social media options. Now that you have your social media networks defined, you want to make sure that your site is prepared to actively engage with them. You need to make your website very easy for a customer to share within their particular community – and that they are compelled to do so. You should have a page or category dedicated to your social media community that enables a user to share and engage with you and that content or product they just bought or really like. You need to always be cognizant of the fact that the customers you are either engaging with or trying to engage with are people. You need to treat them like people, like an actual customer who just walked into your store, not like a faceless username whom you could careless about. To see a shining example of an optimized e-commerce consumer facing website and how to model your store after it, read my article “Remarkable Content and E-Commerce – The Moosejaw Way”
5. ENGAGE YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA campaign with the communities and the people within. At this point you should have accomplished the following:
- Created a detailed list of your social media sites
- Actively mapped, monitored and quantified multiple social media site searches for your company name, brand, industry, products, keywords and competitors
- Collected, understand and operate your social media tools effectively
- Optimized your consumer facing e-commerce store with remarkable content and made it social media accessible.
You are now ready to engage with the masses. Good luck and stay positive. As Brian Halligan, CEO and Founder of Hubspot and author of Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs once said, “Learning inbound marketing is like learning how to play the guitar. ... You first have to learn the chords to get started." Well said Mr. Halligan.
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The Bottom line is this, if you are even slightly interested in succeeding in social media marketing (and you must be if you are here), I recommend that you first buy Brian Solis’s latest book, Engage, and then the Poster Version of the conversation prism today. Much of what I have learned and write about comes straight from the mouths of giants that have come before me. Brian Solis and Brian Halligan are just two of the social media giants that I am learning from, and you would be doing yourself a great favor by consuming information directly from them. See where to follow them on my list of Social Media Giants.
