Have you seen the reality shows, coming into help those over-packed home owners who collect everything in sight and never throw anything away.

Have you noticed how many people have become great at generating large followings through auto-follow programs?  Just one important ingredient is missing, engagement.

It’s not just about growing your following, it’s about engagement.  When you think about collecting followers you should be asking what do you know about them?

Do you know where they are?

Do you know what they like?

Do you know what they don’t like?

What are their interests?

What are their beliefs?

One thought you may want to consider is to create folders that identify the specific characteristics or demographics of your followers.  Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook allow for this type of filing through various applications.

So what do you think, are you just hoarding followers? What is your engagement process?

When it comes to the field of journalism, the ability to communicate as well as being passionate about it is very important. With all of the stress and meeting of deadlines, its hard to throw in the use of social media when coupled with all of the other demands. In this crazy world we live in, things are changing for journalists.There are many different ways of distributing the news today and one of the big keys has always been to stay ahead of those who are your competition. Now throw in Twitter for example. Its instant. Lightning fast.

It seems that more and more news stories are breaking first on a social media site like twitter, which leaves many in journalism filled with anger and frustration.  One thought would be to use the search application of twitter to leverage your ability to break news across media channels outside of Social Media once confirmed from Social Media Channels.  Check this twitter search link out http://search.twitter.com

Google today launched a Crisis Response and Person Finder in response to the earthquake in Chile.  The person finder allows you to quickly connect those looking for missing people in Chile and those who may have information. 

Googles ability to quicky launch this program shows the true value of information sharing.  This person finder was also used during the Haiti earthquake.  Currently the database has over 4900 records at 5:27pm EST.

Below are additional update resources:

Here are five initial guiding steps to establish a Business To Business Social Media Strategy. This is not a complete guide, nor is it meant to be. I believe these are the first five things a company should be thinking about when they realize they should be engaged in the Social Space.

1. Your Message
Just to confirm you don’t need to change your message, value proposition, or qualifying questions. You just need to list them in concise “smaller” formats in order to getting your message out. So collect your key messages and great one-liners you use everyday. These will be great for status updates.

2. Identify The Key Social Platforms
As you begin the process of starting you need to identify which Social Platforms your target market will be on. I can almost guarantee if your B2B then they will be on LinkedIn, next you will find these same people on twitter and facebook as well. So in reality the Big 3, you will more than likely want to engage in.

***Grab This Complimentary eBook to specifically see how to begin***
to engage, capture, and create buzz around your company
Grab our complimentary eBook:
How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media

3. Identify Your Internal Company Resources
Who do you currently have putting together and drafting your marketing pieces. This should be the person handling the day to day initiatives of your Social Media Strategy.

Read more about Aligning Your Companies Social Media Strategy Here:

4. Answer who should oversee your Social Media Strategy
At the end of the day who do you currently trust to generate business for your company who are the people who are ultimately responsible for sales? Your response is your answer to this question. More than likely you have an EVP or VP whom is responsible for sales company wide. This person should give final oversight to this department.

Read more about Who Should Manage Your Companies Online Message Here:

5. Create a Preliminary Social Media Policy. ~ASSUME NOTHING~
This initial policy should be to identify the processes for engagement approval. Who and or which parties will need to approve your final message(s) you are communicating, such as legal. I would not establish to many others until you are involved in it. Create policies before you ever get the opportunity to review every scenario would be a bad Social Media Strategy. In addition, don’t through initial ideas or strategies out the window based off your assumptions on how things have worked in the past in other marketing efforts or dealing with customers. Take the time to learn and review the processes behind each strategy. ~ASSUME NOTHING~

***Grab This Complimentary eBook to specifically see how to begin***
to engage, capture, and create buzz around your company
Grab our complimentary eBook:
How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media

*TAKE A MOMENT AND RE-TWEET OR SHARE THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR BUSINESS CONNECTIONS.

Here are two questions I get a lot:

1. Is it possible to align Social Media with a company’s current marketing and/or PR strategy?
2. How does that work?

Answer:

Yes, it is. Will it be easy? I don’t think so, I see many companies struggling within a couple of areas:

• Social Media is a democracy, not conventional shove it down your throat marketing. Companies can kill their program before it ever gets off the ground if they don’t change it to “joining the conversation” or “enter the story” type strategy.
• Next, often those who have been in marketing for a long time don’t deal with the change well, that advertising has moved to Social Media. Watch out for resistance and truly evaluate concerns as whether well thought out or just excuses not to do something.
• Lastly, companies are struggling because they are putting their programs in the hands of people who are not truly versed and successful with Social Media. While putting a highly educated marketing professional in place can seem like the right decision, it may not be “if” that person has not themselves or been educated by those who have been successful in Social Media Space.

“It is critical that your company implements strategies that have been proven to be successful rather than operate off of theory.”

***Grab This Complimentary eBook to specifically see how to begin***
to engage, capture, and create buzz around your company
Grab our complimentary eBook:
How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media

When it comes to managing your companies online message and social media branding who should it be? I will share with you some of the pro’s and con’s of each category below. In the end I believe you should review this with the assumption you need a little of each profession and you may need to be more of a mediator when putting these together in a room. So the real challenge for you is to get them all to come together (play nice) and come up with something extremely powerful for your companies Social Media strategy.

***Grab This Complimentary eBook to specifically see how to begin***
to engage, capture, and create buzz around your company
Grab our complimentary eBook:
How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media

So lets review:

Internally:
When you consider what your companies already doing to manage its sales message and who is currently handling that it is easy to assume that this person should head up your Social Media Strategy. With Social Media for business being so new, you will want to be sure that person who heads this up is “open” to this new movement as by now you understand it is definitely not going away.

You may possibly hurt your position and strategy by keeping it with your current marketing manager as this new advertising method can be very hard to grasp. In addition the knowledge and understanding it takes to capitalize in this space has up till now come from hands of trial and error.

Social Media Firm:
In the selection process of finding a Social Media firm to handle your Social Media Strategy be sure to secure a firm who has proven successful people on the team. While case studies may be few as this market develops, they should be able to showcase personal success.

In addition, new firms are popping up everywhere. Be sure to dig into these firms experience and understanding of B2B or B2C marketing and how that plays into Social Media Strategies.

Ad Agency (not the same as a Social Media Firm):
One thing many companies are gravitating to doing is to relying on their current Ad and PR Agencies to point them in the right direction with Social Media. This could be one of the worst assumptions to be making as many PR & AD Agencies are not well versed in Social Media and tend to operate off of theory rather than proven successful strategies.

Be sure your current agencies have taken pro-active steps to stay current on the Social Media movement within hiring proven successful social media professionals.

Internet Marketer:
In your search for a strong Social Media Strategy it is very easy to come across successful Internet Marketers. While this is an additional arm that needs strong consideration to your companies strategy. You do not want to throw out your standard processes you have in place in generating leads, engaging customers with key questions, etc… These elements need to be melted together when you do consult with an internet marketer.

I think there is a place for all of the above, I will say again the key is to getting them all to play nice together to bring your company to the front of the Social Media movement.

***Grab This Complimentary eBook to specifically see how to begin***
to engage, capture, and create buzz around your company
Grab our complimentary eBook:
How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media

*TAKE A MOMENT AND RE-TWEET OR SHARE THIS MESSAGE TO YOUR BUSINESS CONNECTIONS.

Post by  Guest  Contributor~ Nathan Kievman
CEO, DemingHill
Founder, Linked Strategies (#1 LinkedIn Strategies Group)

In my many conversations on LinkedIn, I recently came across a group post within eMarketing Associations Group on LinkedIn titled “Social Media for Business is Crap.” Amazing post with nearly 3,000 comments at the time of this post.

So this question alluded to ROI directly. This business person and many others haven’t been able to find real world results. So the cry out was for real life results. Here is my response:

Our company, DemingHill, services corporations with their social media needs and we see ROI consistently. I will share some examples below. However, I believe this question is a bit presumptuous, though well done for the mass interaction it’s caused. When you say “Social Media for Business is Crap” I can only assume you mean ROI. If so, I believe the question misses the real potential of social media.

Our largest Fortune clients only care about the ROI as a second or third area of importance (if that high). You see, the most important aspect of social media is relationship building. The number one most important thing to our clients has been building communities of key constituents. This process is not as easy as the market makes it out to be and requires real strategy blended together with an intrinsic knowledge of the social verticals rules & etiquette. ROI is important, but so is customer service, brand monitoring, brand awareness, intellectual property, trademarks, crisis management and many other categories.

Where most Marketers steal the thunder of social media is pushing this ROI issue. No doubt it matters, I definitely focus on it, but the real fact of the matter is, if you are not converting outside of social media, social media will not help you convert and improve your ROI. Social Media will bring people (at times in masses) to your virtual doorstep. Sometimes they can be more ready to buy over others depending on how they came to your virtual doorstep, but that comes down to strategy, positioning, and influence.

So regarding ROI:
First what is the measurement for success? Like I said before, is it community members of key constituents or dollars in your pocket from sales?

ROI on Social Media is almost always indirect in my opinion. We have ran many campaigns to know this to be true. Here are some successful ROI examples I can share to hopefully shatter your notion that “Social Media for Business is Crap.” I believe and know Social Media is the evolution of human behaviour, and when human behavior changes, so must BUSINESS. Here are some concrete examples of successful ROI driven results:

~ One of our sales guys at DemingHIll (my Corporate Social Media Consulting Practice) closed a $7million dollar deal originated from Twitter.

~ A client attracted Walmart, Human Health, and Bank of America as consulting clients through LinkedIn

~ Small client set up and established $27,000 in revenue on 7 hours of invested time

~ Consulting firm grew a group from 0 to 8,500 members in 11days

~ Client with product and training program has generated directly from LinkedIn over $250,000 in revenue from his efforts on this site

~ Business Services firm generated $150,000 in revenue from webinar series launched through social media platforms only (by the way, that was in one month)

You get the idea. The ROI question is really about your marketing path and product path outside of the social platforms. Those paths can be fixed, but need to take into consideration the original source of the incoming traffic and what motivates them to buy or take a specific action.

Grab our complimentary eBook: How Your Company Can Begin to Profit Using Social Media