How to integrate social media into your company’s marketing

Linda Zimmer is a veteran Internet strategist and president of MarCom:Interactive, a digital strategy consulting firm.

Part one of a two-part series

Do any of these social media maladies sound familiar in your business?

The Shotgun Wedding: the proverbial gun in your back to get your social media presences going. The “Two Twitters and a Facebook” directive: the boss wants to keep up with the competition and he wants it now. The NTBE Bug: No Time, Budget or Expertise.

If so, you’re not alone. Businesses are flocking to social media sites, often in an urgent effort to be hip, to connect with customers on their own turf, or as a fresh way to engage them.

But your customers want something else. They want relevant information where and how they like it, a personalized view of it, and ways they can share it within their own Web spaces.

To truly bridge social media with your existing marketing, a well-planned social media strategy is important to long-term success, but in the meantime there is lots of tactical “socializing” you can do.

Five easy ways: using social media to support search results; using it with your Web site; within your e-mail marketing; for your events; and in your loyalty programs.

These five tactics are a good start to get you on board with social media, to meet some social customer expectations, and to cure that NTBE bug. Let’s look at two of them to start:

Social Media and Search

Search is a key component of your inbound marketing — that is, how customers find you. Consumers exposed to a brand’s social media are more than twice as likely to click on its unpaid search links, and almost three times more likely to search for the brand’s products.

Social media can work hand-in-hand with your search optimization by socializing your existing content (your white papers, presentations, videos, etc.). Your Web content can be distributed onto social platforms, expanding the concept of your “Web site” to your “Web presence” – linking them all to each other and to your Web site. This creates more search results, more places for people to find you, and allows them to choose formats that fit their personal information habits.

For example, “socialize” that white paper by making it available on your Web site, upload it to Scribed, summarize it in a PowerPoint presentation and upload it to Slideshare, videotape a brief interview about the topic and upload it to YouTube and iTunes, embed the video or slide presentation into your LinkedIn profile. How about a Google Knol on the topic?

Don’t forget to “optimize” this content by linking to your Web site, choosing a clear title, including keywords in the description, and using any “tag” feature to enter words or categories people might associate with the subject matter.

Social Media and Your Web site

An essential social feature is RSS – Really Simple Syndication. It is a small bit of Web code that people use to subscribe to and customize how they receive Web news they want to follow. The easiest way to add it to your Web presence is to publish your newsletter or updates on a blog. RSS is built into blogs.

On your Web site, invite social followers by placing icons and links to your distributed content on sites such as Slideshare, LinkedIn or YouTube. This helps visitors find your official social accounts.

Use widgets to bring social content onto your Web site. Widgets are simple “cut and paste” applications for such purposes that require no programming expertise. Most social services offer you free widgets, but there are thousands available.

Some essential Web site widgets:

• A sharing widget: let people instantly share your Web page to their networks;
• Ratings, rankings or polls: insert reviews automatically or get input from visitors using polls;
• Twitter and Facebook widgets: bring your Twitter or Facebook posts onto your Web pages;
• YouTube channel: Web site visitors can browse your video library without leaving your site.

Now that your search and Web site are going social, next we’ll look at doing the same with e-mail, events and loyalty programs.

Linda Zimmer is a veteran Internet strategist and president of MarCom:Interactive, a digital strategy consulting firm. Connect with her at LinkedIn or Twitter.

Tags: facebook, marketing, OCLNN, Social Media, twitter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 8:14 am and is filed under Business . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.