Mitch Joel from Six Pixels of Separation, started a project for anyone to participate in, to write about one of your best practices in Social Media Marketing.
Here are my thoughts on two practices:
Consistency:
I would like to echo Mitch’s best practice, consistency. Staying consistent is necessary for maintaining your brand’s online presence. Your brand, whether it be personal or professional, should be able to be recognized on most, if not all social media networks and platforms. Keep your profiles and user name selections the same if possible. It’s also good practice to use the same profile image and email address. Establish as many passport accounts as possible. One primary reason for this is for search engine traffic. It will help you to establish dominance for your brand in the search results. You want as many links pointing to your site as possible. Links with authority and relevance weigh more with search results, and help with pagerank as well. Consistency needs to be applied to every facet of your social media consumption and digestion process.
- Be consistent with blog posts. Try to establish and maintain a schedule for posts and stick with it.
- Be consistent with updates and replies on your micro blogging platforms, primarily Twitter.
- Be consistent with commenting on other blogs, as well as with comments left on your own blog.
- Be consistent with recognition of your peers content. Some forms of recognition are StumbleUpon, Digg, and social bookmarking. For instance the liking system on FriendFeed serves as a recognition system.
- Be consistent with tagging your images, bookmarks and blog postings.
- Be consistent with sharing and what you are sharing. Think how it will reflect on your brand, good or bad.
Sharing:
If I had to pick what I feel my best practice in social media is, I would say it’s sharing. Sharing for me is the most powerful outlet to get a message out there quickly. Think about how we come to comment, discover, and recognize in the social media platform. The foundation starts with the content we create and then share. Most of my time is spent in heavy digest mode, and in the phase of discovery, courtesy of RSS and Google Reader. Once you discover great content that is relevant to whatever your interests are, you must share it. I can’t stress enough how important sharing is, on so many levels. Sharing is one of the core foundations of social networking and social media. Google Reader is a good instrument for this task. Reward authors by sharing their content and feeding it into your Strands, FriendFeed or FaceBook account for example. The point is, content can be shared anywhere, and anytime on the social web, using any site, tool, or platform. Social bookmarking is also a great tool for sharing. Don’t forget you can also StumbleUpon or Digg a new find as well.
- Sharing is caring
- Sharing is contributing
- Sharing creates conversations
- Sharing is learning
- Sharing creates and builds communities
- Sharing is networking
- Sharing is Social Media!
I’m tagging Kyle Lacy, Louis Gray and Alexander van Elsas.
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I never thought about how important consistency is within the social media market. Consistency has been one of my challenges as of late, since my daily schedule isn't exactly consistent, but I am going to start paying more attention.
Great post and thanks for sharing!
I quickly leaned that “sharing (aka – commenting, liking, replying, linking, etc) = a reciprocation of sharing from others”. This is really how it works in offline networking. Those who take the time to refer business, connections, opportunities, etc to others will eventually see a big return. Also consider, the bigger your network/connections the easier it is to share. Thats the tough part since it takes time to manage everything and many of us don't get paid to participate in social media..
I never thought about how important consistency is within the social media market. Consistency has been one of my challenges as of late, since my daily schedule isn't exactly consistent, but I am going to start paying more attention.
Great post and thanks for sharing!
I quickly leaned that “sharing (aka – commenting, liking, replying, linking, etc) = a reciprocation of sharing from others”. This is really how it works in offline networking. Those who take the time to refer business, connections, opportunities, etc to others will eventually see a big return. Also consider, the bigger your network/connections the easier it is to share. Thats the tough part since it takes time to manage everything and many of us don't get paid to participate in social media..
This is a great topic, thanks. I'm definitely trying to figure out how get a “groove on” in digital media just like a lot of others, by trial and error.
I've built a little bit of confidence by starting with liking and commenting on FriendFeed, but haven't developed a consistent flow of sharing stuff. Now I am starting to add some delicious.com links, and will eventually write some blog posts somewhere.
Thanks a lot for the post, your ideas are very helpful.
This is a great topic, thanks. I'm definitely trying to figure out how get a “groove on” in digital media just like a lot of others, by trial and error.
I've built a little bit of confidence by starting with liking and commenting on FriendFeed, but haven't developed a consistent flow of sharing stuff. Now I am starting to add some delicious.com links, and will eventually write some blog posts somewhere.
Thanks a lot for the post, your ideas are very helpful.