Posted by: Alexis Siemon
June 23, 2009
Issue #699

Are You Socially Awkward?

You’ve no doubt heard about how social media is taking over the world - or at least the Internet marketing world. And depending on your perspective, this takeover may seem hostile, especially if you’re new to online marketing and have just started to build your own Internet business.

The sheer volume of different social media types and websites can be overwhelming to new marketers. Between Digg, Reddit, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and countless others, even seasoned Internet marketing professionals can have trouble keeping up.

It’s important, however, not to let fear and inexperience keep you from a marketing channel that could do wonders for your business. You may be “socially awkward” now, but you don’t have to stay that way. I’m going to give you a few techniques that will help you get started marketing your site through social media, starting with the first and most important one:

• Don’t try everything at once

The biggest mistake new social media marketers make is trying to play catch-up by creating accounts on every social media site they’ve ever heard or read about. This is a surefire way to rapid burnout.

The amount of time it would take to maintain all those accounts would suck any and all time away from running your business. Plus, by trying to juggle profiles and build networks on too many sites at once, you’d do an ineffective job of marketing.

Start slowly. Maybe even start by surveying your current customers to see which social media site most of them use. Once you dip your toe in and get a feel for how a particular site functions, how its users behave and the kind of content/conversations they respond to, you’ll have a better idea of how that site fits with your message. And once you know that, you’ll know if that is a site to keep and nurture or one to scrap. You can ramp up from there.

If you run a political blog or website, for instance, you may find that Reddit members respond to your content better than Digg members.

Or, if you’re a photographer, you may think it’s a no-brainer to open a Flickr account, only to find that you can get more inquiries from users of Google’s Picasa.

Then there’s Twitter. What can I say about Twitter? Okay, I’m not going to lie … I hate Twitter. The minutia of Twitter drives me crazy. But that might be because I haven’t figured out a good use for it. Dell certainly did. They managed to turn Twitter into a million-dollar sales channel for their computers by using it to alert users of new sales and discounts.

But that’s the beauty of social media. There is no right or wrong way to use it. It’s like every other marketing channel. You have to test to find out what works best for your business.

• Have a unique purpose

Another mistake marketers make is using different social media sites to simply regurgitate the same tired message over and over - sometimes with the same exact copy!

How could this be useful to your customers? Why would they want to connect with you through Twitter or Facebook, only to get the same thing they can see on your site or in your newsletter? That’s like telling someone to put on the TV, radio, portable DVD player, and iPod at the same time to watch the same movie.

What your customers want is the equivalent of the special features section of the DVD. They’ve seen the movie. That’s your main content, right? Your main message on your site, in your newsletter, or your blog. Now - to really get to know you and build a relationship with your business and your content - they want the interviews, the outtakes, the deleted scenes, the director’s cut, the commentary. You get the idea.

At Early to Rise, for example, we strive to provide additional unique content for our subscribers through our YouTube channel. We include things like additional business and copywriting tips, clips from conferences, and even the opinions of other Early to Rise readers.

Because we’ve received so much positive feedback on this additional content, we’re expanding to bring our subscribers a soon-to-be-launched Early to Rise TV channel.

The point is to use social media to deliver a different message, a unique spin - to show your personality. Make sure the message is remarkable in a way that’s a bit different from your regular content, and you will keep your customers interested. Plus, you will entice new prospects to start a relationship with you.

• Be genuine

I’ve mentioned this before when talking about using social media for link building. It’s especially important when you’re trying to build relationships with customers and prospects. No matter which site or sites you choose to use, make sure you really are connecting with them and not just hammering them with ad copy.

You are networking, after all. You wouldn’t go to a business-networking, cocktail reception wearing a sandwich board and handing out flyers. Don’t do it online either. Your customers have needs, their friends have needs, their friends’ friends have needs. Fulfill those needs - even in the smallest of ways - and you’ll have an army of advocates faster than you can say “social butterfly.”

When it comes to social media marketing, the rules are pliable. So long as you are connecting with your audience in a meaningful way, you can experiment and have fun.

I’ll leave you with an example of some really daring social media marketing by Skittles that has the Internet marketing community tweeting in their seats.

Go to Skittles.com and take a look at their new corporate website. Thanks to some clever thinking and a few programming tweaks, they’ve turned their site into a social media extravaganza.

Will this bold move be a success? Only time will tell. Let me know what you think in the comments section below – and feel free to share some of your own social media marketing success stories!

Contributed by Alexis Siemon
Guest Contributor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

Looking for resources related to this article? Try some of these.

Looking for more guest articles? Check these out.

Looking for past issues of The Total Package? Click here for our archives.

Want to share or reprint this article? Feel free. Just give us full attribution and a link to our Home Page when you do.

Attribution Statement: This article was first published in The Total Package. To sign-up to receive your own FREE subscription to The Total Package and claim four FREE money making e-books go to www.makepeacetotalpackage.com.

---

7 Comments »

1. Comment by Bernie Malonson — June 23, 2009 @ 9:50 am

   Alexis, great post!

   You are correct, Social Media can be a big time waster unless it is appropriately targeted. In many ways it disrupts the traditional list building paradigms.

   You can build a list rapidly, but with all the automated following, it is not necessarily very responsive.

   Better as you suggest to actually understand the audience in the media channel, and target appropriately.

   Cheers!

   Bernie Malonson

2. Comment by Kammy Thurman — June 23, 2009 @ 11:10 am

   Thanks for the excellent post Alexis. I have chosen social media that my clients have invited me to — LinkedIn and Plaxo — if that’s where they are, that’s where I want to be. I set up Twitter and Facebook accounts because my email blasting service will send my messages directly to them…I don’t have to write anything extra. I don’t mess around with all the tweeting on Twitter. I just use it as another avenue to get helpful articles and tips out to my clients and prospects.

   What I like best are the discussion groups on LinkedIn because I can communicate with hundreds or thousands of prospects in my particular niches. If you offer relevant, helpful information they are very appreciative and it builds all kinds of goodwill!

   Kammy

3. Comment by Barry — June 23, 2009 @ 11:56 am

   Or you could avoid all the wasted time and use cutting edge software to help you identify “buying” keyword phrases you have an excellent chance of ranking for - multiple times - in the search engines.

   Then whip up some compelling content related to your business’s USP and let fore mentioned software properly spin and disperse it to dozens of 2.0 and social bookmarking sites in a matter of minutes…

   This shotgun approach lets you concentrate upon the social sites that seem to be showing the most interest in your offers and are driving the most traffic to your money pages(which you will have analytics tracking installed on).

   Many people on facebook and twitter absolutely HATE being sold to, so catching your prospect when they are actively searching for something your company has to offer should not be overlooked and one doesn’t have to be an SEO genius especially if you are targeting a local market using the proper keyword modifiers.

4. Comment by Sheople — June 23, 2009 @ 12:58 pm

   Every American needs to read this http://tinyurl.com/q39ecq Educate yourself and your neighbor! http://tinyurl.com/nu2ck3

5. Comment by Susan Connors — June 23, 2009 @ 4:36 pm

   Hi Alexis

   Thank you for this post

   I agree that taking on too much social media can be a huge time factor.

   I am using Twitter to experiment which is slow and steady.
   Plus a combination of linkedin and others when invited.

   They are proving to be quite useful with contacts and readers.

   One thing at a time - one step at a time.

   Different approaches work for different people.

   All the best

   Susan Connors
   Australia

6. Comment by Terrance Charles — June 24, 2009 @ 4:39 pm

   Great insight Alexis, I especially agree with “The biggest mistake is trying to play catch-up by creating accounts on every social media site” that’s true, I did that at first and all I did was burn myself out trying to keep up with all.

   I only focus now on what’s HOT and where the audience is @ mainly twitter, myspace and facebook, those are my 3 fav’s, but social media is definitely worth it, I can remember before I didn’t believe in it as much, just the regular traditional marketing, but now they are my #2 traffic referrers with over 1,000+ unique visitors a day.

7. Comment by Steve Newdell — June 28, 2009 @ 4:57 pm

   I’m very cautious about this. I have only local clients and I’m in a perfect position to wait and see. Skittles has a pile of strangers connected to their name and these people can say or add video apparently about anything they want in any terms they choose.

   As Clayton says above the comments box, “Respect This House!”

   Well….don’t we want more control over people’s comments before we “expose” ourselves to all the obsenity of the world?

   I’m playing possum for a while.

   SteveN