Social Media Marketing Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media

by Evans, Liana

• ISBN13: 9780789742841
• ISBN10: 0789742845
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-18
• Publisher: Que Publishing

Summary

ProfitBigfrom Social Media: Strategies and Solutions That Work! Using new social media marketing techniques, you can deepen relationships with your most passionate, profitable customers--and create more of them than ever before! In this 100% practical book, world-renowned expert Li Evans shows exactly how to make the most of social media--in any company, in any industry. Yours"ll discover exactly how to customize your best social networking strategyhellip;then staff it, organize it, manage its risks, and execute it successfully! Evans shows how to understand your audience, enter the conversation, build trust, protect your brand, integrate social media into existing marketing programs, measure your resultshellip;and profit big from todayrs"s hottest new social media sites and platforms! Topics include bull; Make the most of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Flickr, and more bull; Define goals and customize strategy to maximize Return on Conversation (ROC) bull; Understand thewholeconversation about you andallthe communities you serve bull; Manage legal, compliance, and ethical challenges bull; Plan social media policies for your companyrs"s employees bull; Extend customer service into social media bull; Maintain consistent branding and messaging bull; Complement your SEO, PPC, offline marketing, and PR efforts bull; Learn how to integrate traditional marketing tactics (TV, radio, print) with your social media marketing strategy

Author Biography

Liana Li Evans has been active full-time in search marketing and social media since 1999. She is Director of Social Media for Serengeti Communications, a Washington DC-based Online Marketing Consulting firm.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Basics of Social Media
It's Not Easy, Quick, or Cheap	p. 7
Understanding Social Media Strategies	p. 15
Goals Need to Be Defined	p. 23
It's ROC (Return on Conversation) not ROI (Return on Investment)	p. 33
Know Who Your Audience Is and What They are Doing	p. 41
It's About Conversation
The Conversation Happens With or Without You	p. 53
Bring in Legal Early	p. 59
Don't Be Afraid of the Negative	p. 67
Understanding Each Community	p. 75
Come Bearing Gifts	p. 83
Bloggers Have No Boundaries	p. 91
Every Business Is Different	p. 99
Don't Fall in Love	p. 105
Don't Be Afraid to Throw Out What Isn't Working	p. 113
Be Open to Trying New Things (but Don't Fall Off the Bleeding Edge)	p. 121
Social Media from the Inside Out
Everyone in Your Company Has a Stake in Your Social Media Strategy	p. 129
Plan Social Media Policies for Company Employees	p. 135
Personal Ethics Matter	p. 143
Define Who Owns the Conversation	p. 149
A Great Customer Service Program Is a Natural Extension into Social Media	p. 159
Interns Make Coffee, Not Social Media Strategies	p. 165
Branding and Messaging Need to Be Consistent	p. 171
Be Transparent: Trust and Readership Must Be Earned	p. 179
Audiences Trust Icons and Avatars	p. 187
It's Not About You
Give Up Control and Drop the Ego	p. 195
You Need to Be All ôEarsö	p. 203
Your Customers Know Your Products Better Than You	p. 211
It's Ail About the Idea	p. 219
Your Content Must Have Value	p. 225
Sharing with Others Is Key	p. 231
For It to Work, You Need to Be Social	p. 239
Ask the Audience	p. 245
You Get What You Give	p. 253
How Social Media Fits into the Online Marketing Picture
People Do Not Want to Be Marketed To	p. 261
The Difference Between Buzz Monitoring and Audience Research	p. 267
Complementing Both Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing	p. 273
Links and Search Engine Results Are Byproducts of Social Media	p. 279
Align Offline Marketing Strategies with Social Media	p. 285
Create a Social Media-Friendly ôPressroomö and Promote Events	p. 291
You Tube Is the Second-Largest Search Engine	p. 297
Social Search Is All About the Now	p. 303
It's Not Just a Web Browser Anymore	p. 309
New Signals to Search Engines	p. 315
Choosing a Social Media Consultant	p. 321
Putting It All Together	p. 327
Index	p. 333
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

IntroductionI believe that social media is changing the way that companies need to interact with both their audiences and customers by listening and directly engaging with them. I'm Liana "Li" Evans, and I am the author of Social Media Marketing: Strategies for Engaging in Facebook, Twitter & Other Social Media .I've written this book to give any marketer, novice, or expert a deeper look into the realm of social media marketing. So much has been touted, preached, and hoisted up on a pedestal as things marketers or companies should be doing, it's hard to believe what's true and what isn't. This book can be your guide from beginning to end in understanding what's hype and what's not. From making the case of whether or not you should be actively engaging in social media, to putting the pieces together to plan a successful social media marketing strategy, I hope you will put this book to good use.There's a lot to digest when it comes to learning the different facets that comprise the world of social media. It isn't simply just Facebook or Twitterthere's a much bigger world out there than most marketers or company CEOs or CMOs are even aware of. Understanding that your audience and customers might not be where the media thinks they are (Twitter and Facebook, for example) is an important concept to grasp if you want to be successful.Social media is also constantly changing. The Facebooks of today will be the Friendsters and MySpaces of tomorrow. Communities ebb and flow. They depend highly on engagement and members giving their time. When members cease to find reasons to share and leave the communities, those communities can go through low periods. Some recover, some don't. For this reason, you have to be flexible with your social media strategies and constantly be monitoring and researching the conversations and where they're happening.Throughout the book, you'll find several themes: Research You need to research your audience and customers thoroughly. Without the research, you are only guessing at where to start. Without the research, you will be wasting a lot of valuable time and resources in areas that most likely won't help you attain the goals you want to reach with your social media marketing plan. Strategy Social media marketing is a lot more than just a laundry list of items that a company prints out on a marketing slick. Social media marketing, just like any other form of traditional or online marketing, needs a strategy. You need a well-thought-out plan with goals set in place so that you know where you want to be and how to get there. Involvement It's not just your social media marketing team that's involved in engaging and participating in social media communities. Just about everyone in your company has some sort of stakewhether it's the stories your customer service reps hear on the phone, or it's people totally removed from marketing (your accounts payable department, for example) who have Facebook pages stating they work for you. Everyone in your company has some sort of involvement in your social media marketing strategy. Understanding that different levels of involvement al