Social Media 101: 2 Practical Steps BeforeYou Sign Up For Your Social Media Accounts

Social Media 101: 2 Practical Steps Before You Sign Up For Your Social Media Accounts

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Synergy Marketing Pro offers Marketing Strategies and Services for Small Businesses. You can reach us at www.SynergyMarketingPro.com

Table Of Content Welcome To Social Media 101! ..........................................................................................................3 A. Mr President Has No Time....................................................................................................3 B. This Is Serious Business.........................................................................................................4 C. But I Have No Clue And I Don’t Have The Time!...................................................................4 D. 2 Things ................................................................................................................................5 2 Things To Consider Before You Sign Up For Your Social Media Sites................................................5 1. Choose Your Social Media Sites ..............................................................................................5 A. How Does Your Audience Look Like?....................................................................................6 B. How Do They Spend Their Time?..........................................................................................6 C. What Is The Purpose Of Your Message?...............................................................................7 D. How Are The Social Media Sites Different From Each Other?..............................................7 2. A Good Consistent First Impression .........................................................................................8 A. I Know That Name! A Familiar Brand....................................................................................9 B. I Can’t Remember Those Passwords!...................................................................................9 C. A Good First Impression – Smile  .......................................................................................9 Your Road Map..................................................................................................................................10 Additional Resources:........................................................................................................................11

Social Media 101 © Synergy Marketing Pro

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Welcome To Social Media 101!

Before you wander off in the different Social Networking Sites First: Choose Which few platforms to focus on Then Decide How you want to show up. More details here.

Louisa Chan from Synergy Marketing Pro offers Marketing Strategies and Services for Small Businesses.

We have helped businesses from different industries build online and social media presence and facilitate their branding and market visibility We bring with us over 10 years of corporate and people building experience and a multidisciplinary cross-cultural background in Business Coaching, Social Media and Mobile Marketing Consulting, IT Consulting and Project Management.

Resources:  Click here to download a free report on 5 Steps To Master Social Media In 1 Hour A Week  Click here for more tips on Social Media

What is Social Media and what is it about these Social Networking Sites that some people seem to be addicted to?

And there is no lack of horror stories that talk about how people have been cheated, hacked or bullied on some social networking sites.

Yet everyone you know seems to have a Facebook or Twitter account. And they seem to be connecting with everyone else on these social network sites.

“Facebook me” has even become an acceptable term! The younger generation hardly use email anymore but resort to instant messaging, tweeting, posting or just “checking in”. So is Social Media for you or your business?

A. Mr President Has No Time You really have no time for online games and chats as you have a business to run (or a professional practice to keep). So should you consider embarking on Social Media?

Look, the President of the United States has 21 million Facebook fans (just 3 million shy of Lady Gaga) and 8 million Twitter followers. Every major

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Synergy Marketing Pro offers Marketing Strategies and Services for Small Businesses.

We have helped businesses from different industries build online and social media presence and facilitate their branding and market visibility You can reach us at SynergyMarketingPro.com We bring with us over 10 years of corporate and people building experience and a multidisciplinary crosscultural background in Business Coaching, Social Media and Mobile Marketing Consulting, IT Consulting and Project Management.

Resources:  Click here to download a free report on 5 Steps To Master Social Media In 1 Hour A Week  Click here for more tips on Social Media

corporation, brand and news media is on Social Media. So there must be a reason for that.

B. This Is Serious Business Undoubtedly Social Networking can help promote your cause and brand your company or business. It can also connect you with prospects and customers help you learn more about their needs and even get them to talk about your business to others.

Companies that use Social Media reports an increase in their brand awareness which in turns brings in foot traffic to their stores. Social Media can increase sales with positive “Digital Word Of Mouth”.

Corporations are engaging Social Media Managers and Educational Institutions are now offering Social Media Classes.

C. But I Have No Clue And I Don’t Have The Time!

But you may not have the vaguest idea on how to get started or you may feel that business is keeping you so busy that you do not have the time to spend on these social networking platforms.

Well the good news is that you do not have to spend a lot of time on Social Media for it to benefit your professional branding or business. I have a full document that talks about the 5 Steps To Master Social Media In 1 Hour A Week if you follow the 5 steps.

Social Media 101 © Synergy Marketing Pro

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Synergy Marketing Pro offers Marketing Strategies and Services for Small Businesses.

We have helped businesses from different industries build online and social media presence and facilitate their branding and market visibility You can reach us at SynergyMarketingPro.com We bring with us over 10 years of corporate and people building experience and a multidisciplinary cross-cultural background in Business Coaching, Social Media and Mobile Marketing Consulting, IT Consulting and Project Management.

Resources:  Click here to download a free report on 5 Steps To Master Social Media In 1 Hour A Week  Click here for more tips on Social Media

D. 2 Things Right now just know that you need to consider 2 crucial things before you embark on any tweeting or posting. Consider these two steps carefully and you will be using Social Networking to advance your cause and not allowing it to use your time for mindless activities.

The key is to consider Social Media from the point of view of business and marketing and use it effectively so you leverage on the power of social media.

2 Things To Consider Before You Sign Up For Your Social Media Sites If you are open to using Social Media for your business then before you rush off to tweet you eed a social media strategy and do consider the following 2 pointers.

They can save you a lot of time and effort and you can get ahead much faster if these are in place right from the outset.

1. Choose Your Social Media Sites There are quite a number of online Social Media Sites each with its own marketing forte for a target audience. The more commonly used ones being Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, LinkedIn, Digg, Tumblr, Foursquare, MySpace, Bebo, and Ning etc.

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All these make use of social interaction through web-based technologies to broadcast messages to and engage with your audience. Obviously there are many more social media sites and you will only want to start using one or two – to start off with. So which ones will you choose?

A. How Does Your Audience Look Like?

Depending on whom your target audience is and the message you want to send, you can filter out some platforms immediately. Is your market made up of teens or matured working adults?

Case: If you want to join a social network for professional business contacts, LinkedIn and Facebook come to mind and not Flicker or MySpace.

On the other hand, if you want to promote a hip and trendy costume jewelleries or video games to young adults then LinkedIn is probably the last platform you’ll want to use.

Non-profit organisations that want to promote a cause will find Facebook a great tool to use.

In choosing your platform first decides  Who your target audience is  What conversations hey most often engage in  Where they like to hang out

B. How Do They Spend Their Time?  Do they prefer to read an in depth article or do they prefer more frequent, shorter micro blogging feeds/tweets or text messages? 

Do they hang out in forums or do they tag each other on location based social media platforms such as Foursquare?

This determines your voice and personality for your brand.

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C. What Is The Purpose Of Your Message? 

Is the purpose to build a database of prospects and clients or to grow your fans?



Do you want to build brand awareness or get more traffic and leads?



Do you have a cause, a product or service that you want to promote and bring awareness to?



Do you want to know more about your audience’s needs?

Depending on your core message, certain platforms will be more suitable for your business.

D. How Are The Social Media Sites Different From Each Other? i.

Facebook is an excellent tool for 2-way customer and prospect communication. You can interact with your audience by asking questions, taking polls, responding to queries and comments and sharing updates add events.

Videos and photos are widely popular on this platform. You can showcase your products, services or events. News and updates spread very quickly on Facebook and it is a very powerful viral tool – if used correctly.

ii.

Twitter is great for sending out broadcasts and can giving quick update. It has enormous coverage. Tweet messages are short and sweet; to-thepoint. You can get almost instant viral spreading of your message if your tweets are interesting and of value, However, Twitter can get a little noisy as there is a lot of chatter all feeding into the stream every second. It’s hard to know if you are reaching your target audience as your tweets are quickly buried by a ton of other tweets in a matter of seconds.

Things move fast on twitter and there is no central ‘page’ unless your contacts choose to view only your tweets.

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iii.

LinkedIn can be very powerful to promote your brand and showcase your expertise. Your profile write-up highlights your professionalism and skills but it brands you rather than your business.

You have a large section to describe your skills and past employment and there are various professional groups that you can join or create. This is a largely a professional community and is one of the best way to reach the corporate world

iv.

YouTube is a great channel to show your authenticity and personality. It is the second largest search engine and it can inform as well as entertain customers. It is an excellent tool for promoting your brand with its enormous impact on SEO rankings.

v.

A Corporate Blog/Website is the hub for all your online presences and activities. Hosting your own domain name is your online real estate and you have full control over the content. I recommend WordPress because of its robustness but Blogger, Tumblr and Typepad are also popular.

Having a blog with good content that is updated once or twice a week can be better than having 24 social networking accounts open with no regular activities or engagement.

It is worthwhile spending some time on choosing one or two social media sites to focus on and build a persona for your business profile.

2. A Good Consistent First Impression Now that you have chosen your platform, you are ready to sign up for one or two accounts. Go to the home page of any of these accounts and you will be asked to Sign Up or Register.

You will need to get ready A. Username B. Password C. Simple write up on your profile – a blurb

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A. I Know That Name! A Familiar Brand Using a consistent user name will strengthen your company’s online branding and presence. Instead of spending time logging into each of the many social media sites, you can make use of a free service such as Knowen to check for the availability of your usernames on these sites.

This saves you much time it will save you from having to use different usernames for each platform – which can be confusing.

Although you will concentrate on using 1 or 2 social media accounts now it may be worthwhile signing up on the other social networking platforms to secure your username.

B. I Can’t Remember Those Passwords!

As you use the internet more you will find that you need to Keep track of all your online passwords. It is also not a good idea to use the same password for all your accounts. To keep track of your passwords, you can either keep a manual list and have that updated, backed up and printed out somewhere or you can make use of a Password Management System like a LastPass or Roboform.

Both are free to use (in fact all the resources I recommend here are free to use although you can always upgrade to the paid version with more bells and whistles).

Having this in place will save you a whole lot of time later when you have to search for details to log in or worse if you have to start new accounts since you can no longer log into your current ones.

C. A Good First Impression – Smile  Next, you can fill up all the entries on your profile or bio section. The more you can describe your business and its specialties or differentiation on these profile sections the better your audience will be able to relate to your business.

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And remember to include a smiling, friendly profile photo. It has been found that a smiling, friendly picture is one main reason your visitors will want to check you out and connect with you.

If you are using Facebook, set up a Facebook Page and not a Facebook profile account since you are using it for your business1. Fill up all the sections of the “info tab” on your Facebook Page.

If you are using Twitter or LinkedIn, make sure you fill up all the entries on the “Profile” section. You should include links to your blog or other social media accounts (e.g. YouTube or mobile sites) in your “Profile” or “Info” section so that others can easily find you on these platforms.

You can use your logo or the same photo across the different social media platforms. Again this will brand you or your company.

Your Road Map So NOW you are ready to enter Social Media Land. When you are ready to embark on this journey, get your hands on 5 Steps To Master Social Media In 1 Hour A Week It will take you step by step through how you can effectively spend less time and achieve more with our social media marketing.

This is my gift to you and you can claim it by clicking on the link above.

For regular tips on using social and mobile marketing for your business, join us at http://Facebook.com/SynergyMarketingPro

This video shows Why You Need A Facebook Page When You Have A Facbook Account for your business and not a Facebook Profile account.

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Additional Resources:

1 - Free Report On 5 Steps To Master Social Media In 1 Hour A Week @ http://www.synergymarketingpro.com/1HourSocialMedia 2 - Marketing On Facebook – Best Practice Guidelines by Facebook 3 - 7 Tips To Using Facebook Fan Pages @ http://www.SynergyMarketingPro.com/using-facebook-fan-pages/

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