Corporate Social Media

Social media is where it's at these days, yes, even for corporations and businesses. So you need to get your company engaged in social media. Get on board and put your name out there.

There are a number of social media networking sites out there now that you can join - Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, and many others. Your user profile is what usually distinguishes social networking sites from one another. These help set the stage for building relationships with people who share common interests, activities, or personal contacts, rather than just primarily disseminating or digesting information feeds. What this means is that social networks enable companies to invite visitors to get to know the brand in a way that regular forms of marketing and advertising can't do.

So what are the methods that companies can use to leverage the user base of these sites as a tool to grow their companies? I will go over a few things that you can do, or not do, to maintain a presence in the realm of social networking.

First thing you need to do is dig deeper. You need to ask yourself a few basic questions when forming your social networking strategy.

• What are the needs of my business?
• What am I using the site for?
• Whose attention am I trying to get?
• Which sites do I want to take on?
• Who's going to manage my page?
• Who has access to my page?
• Who's going to be the personality of my page?

Once you've answered those questions, then you need to start setting up your profile. You can be personal, but not too personal. Share your photos and videos, but no office party snapshots. Set your privacy settings, but don't be a blank slate. 

When it comes to your fans, you want to be sure and be active with them. Comment on other users' content and profile posts, ask questions on your wall, post links or threads, and post relevant events. Make your page benefit-based, talk about new or uncommon features, include some discounts and savings, don't continually have sales-related messages, don't set up an expectation and then cheat on it. 

The benefits of social networking include empowering your employees to distribute job information, help you put the passive job candidate in your crosshairs, and a low-cost method of finding high-quality candidates. Tools that you can use to do this include custom searches, updating your status message, and linking to stories and external content. Don't use fake profiles, add a social media section, and be aware of existing federal and state laws.

Follow these tips and you're on your way to a great corporate social media networking page.

Social Media Events

There are some great up-and-coming events for 2012. These events can cover anything from simple basic solutions for every day social media use to the very technical end of how to put together social media networking pages and how to use them. What my goal here today is to simply let you know of these events and share the links with you so you can check them out to get further information.

• Coming up shortly, from November 16-18 in Las Vegas, NV is the WOMMA (sord of mouth marketing association) summit where research and measurement integrate. 
• On January 27, FoodBlogSouth 2012 will be holding a conference for food bloggers in Birmingham, AL from January 27-28.
• From March 8-10, in Austin, TX there is a conference for dad bloggers called Dad 2.0 Summit 2012 for $249-$349.
• From April 27-29, the 2:1 Conference 2012's conference is a faith-based conference for homeschooling parents that blog in Sterling, Virginia for $259.
• From May 3-5 there is a social media event where moms and marketers can have an open conversation. It will be held in Key Biscayne, FL for $349-$449 and called Mom 2.0 Summit 2012.
• In June, there will be an unconventional event where remarkable people will converge in Portland, OR for a weekend of strategizing and adventure.
• July holds a conference, called Evo Conference 2012, where a blend of hands-on tutorials, workshops, keynote panels, thoughtful discussion, and networking are used while relaxing in the summer camp-like environment. This takes place July 12-14 in Park City, UT for $249.

There is not much going on throughout the rest of the year, yet because that's a little too far out for the time being. But definitely look into some of these conferences if you think you'd have an interest and you can learn more about the subject matter and become a pro with your social media page once you learn everything they have to teach you.

Social Media Search

There are a number of different reasons to search social media. Some reasons include monitoring for brand and reputation management purposes. Intelligent online marketers have also been using social search for other reasons including competitive research and opportunistic content marketing through social keyword trends.

Premium social media monitoring services listen to the social web effectively but they can be expensive. I'm going to offer you a few free social search tools that can help small businesses make their initial foray into searching the social web more productive while keeping costs low.

The first one I'll talk about is Delver. This is a tool that is based on your friends' influence on content. For example, drawing on the wisdom of crowds to filter the universe of search content. You first identify your own social graph. Facebook is emphasized. Search results are then influenced by your network.

Another good one is WhosTalkin? This is a search tool that allows users to search for conversations around topics of interest. Inquiries are performed against all sources but you can search on specific social services organized by blogs, news, networks, videos, images, forums, and tags.

Samepoint is a social conversation search engine that segments searches by social mentions, discussion points, booksmarks, wikis, networks, B2B networks, groups, life casting, micrblogs, reviews, podcasts, documents, video, images, news, and web. Each result extracts keywords, as well.

There are several other tools out there that you can search for to aid you in your social media search, but those are some good ones to start with and check out. These are great tools to find out where you stand, as well as your competitors.

Social Media Content

Social media content is anything that you post to the social network site that your on that drives traffic to your website. There is good content and bad content that you can post, but I want to talk to you today about the good content that you can, and should, post for your friends and visitors to see. If it's not on the list below, it's probably not a good idea to post it for the whole world to see.

Share your blog posts. Social media sites love them and if you have a great blog, people will want to see it. People that see blogs on social media sites very often visit that page.

Use videos to generate traffic. They are very powerful ways to get your message across and great to use on these social media sites. As long as the content you're providing has value and is entertaining, people will watch.

Share articles with everybody. You can either share the link to an article in different groups, which is very powerful. You can also create a document on a Facebook groups and add it to that group. Either way, it's a strong way to brand yourself.

Share up-and-coming events, whether local or national, with your friends and followers. They could even just be free webinars that people might be interested in viewing. As long as it's relevant and on topic, go ahead and post them.

Post quotes that will inspire and motivate people on a daily basis. It brings positive feedback to your page and gives your viewers a little pick-me-up.

These items should all be part of your social media marketing plan that you do every day. Most sites don't like capture pages, so don't push those. The importance of social media in business has grown vastly. Each time you place a link, blog, article, or video, it becomes a backlink to that page. So what you're doing is not only promoting yourself to the world by showing your talents but you're also telling search engines how great your content is.

So just think about what it is you're posting before you post it. Once it's up, it's available for the entire world to view. People say to think before you speak, well same goes for this: think before you post.

Social Media Policy

With all of the social media issues that have been popping up, it's been suggested to come up with a policy for your company in regards to social media to make sure all of your employees are on the same page as to what they can and can't post on their networks.

People have gotten fired for writing about customers on Facebook that they didn't like or complaining on Twitter about how much they hate their job or their boss. Well, when your bosses or supervisors see this, it's bad publicity should their customers find this information as well. Because of that, there has been a rise in company's making policies in regards to social media.

There are actually several policies in regards to social media that social media strategist, Jason Falls, suggests that you create:

1. Employee Code of Conduct for Online Communications
2. Employee Code of Conduct for Company Representation in Online Communications
3. Employee Blogging Disclosure Policy
4. Employee Facebook Usage Policy
5. Employee Personal Blog Policy
6. Employee Personal Social Network Policy
7. Employee Personal Twitter Policy
8. Employee LinkedIn Policy
9. Corporate Blogging Policy
10. Corporate Blog Use Policy
11. Corporate Blog Post Approval Process
12. Corporate Blog Commenting Policy
13. Corporate Facebook Brand Page Usage Policy
14. Corporate Facebook Public Comment/Messaging Policy
15. Corporate Twitter Account Policy
16. Corporate YouTube Policy
17. Corporate YouTube Public Comment Policy
18. Company Password Policy

What he continues to point is that it's true that there are quite a few and it might seem "frivolous" but the point is that "different networks have different implications for different companies." But you can simply write one policy and just make sure it addresses each social medium. Or you could just write the policies as you need them. For example, if your company does not currently have a presence on YouTube, then you may not need to address it now, but do so later should your presence be known. 

Now you probably want to know what exactly you should include in this policy. Remind your employees to familiarize themselves with the agreement and policies. Make them aware that the policy applies to multi-media, social networking, blogs, and wikis for professional AND personal use. They cannot post any confidential information to any third party. If employees comment on any aspect of the company's business they have to clearly identify themselves as an employee and include a disclaimer, which should say something like "the views expressed here are mine and don't reflect the views of the company." 

Postings should not include company logos or trademarks unless given permission. Postings must respect copyright, privacy, fair use, financial disclosure, and other applicable laws. Employees should not claim or imply that they're speaking on behalf of the company. Corporate blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, etc. could require approval when the employee is posting about the company and the industry. The company reserves the right to request that certain subjects be avoided, withdraw certain posts, and remove inappropriate comments.

You don't necessarily have to start from scratch with these, though. If you're looking for some good examples, there are websites online that have databases of over a hundred social media policies. There's even a tool kit that you can purchase that has templates for different types of policies. It is also smart to get a lawyer involved to make sure that your policy is customized to your company and follows any necessary guidelines.

Once the policy is written, you need to make sure your employees know about it! Send out an e-mail or a memo with the policy  or a link to where they can find it to educate them on the new policy, which will help avoid future mishaps. 

Social Media Technology

With all the new technology of social media, handwritten notes, meetings for coffee, and eye contact may have become part of the past. Advances in social media networking have allowed new and more efficient ways of learning and communicating.

The term "social media" refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into an interactive dialogue. It is a group of internet-based applications that allow the creation and exchange of content generated by its users. It has substantially changed the way of communication between organizations, communities, and individuals.

Social media is not just about websites, though. It comes in may forms: magazines, forums, weblogs, social blogs, miroblogs, wikis, podcasts, photographs or pictures, videos, and ratings. These can be categorized into six different types of social media. Collaborative projects (Wikipedia), blogs and microblogs (Twitter), content communities (YouTube), social networking (Facebook), virtual game worlds (World of Warcraft), and virtual social worlds (Second Life).

From these different social groups, come technologies, such as blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing, and voice over. Of course, there are many others, but these are a few that are used most often with social media.

Because of these social media technologies, people are able to communicate and share information with friends and family from all around the globe easily and quickly. We may not have one-on-one meetings and handwritten notes as much anymore, but imagine how much more we can get done and how well we can get ourselves and our businesses known by using the new social media technology. There's a whole new world out there, and it's time you joined.

Social Media Statistics

If you're interested in possibly setting up your business with a social media network, there might be some things in this blog that would be of interest to you. What you want to do is go where the people are - where you can get the most customers and visitors. My goal here today is to simply share with you some statistics from different social media websites and give you an idea of where everybody is hanging out.

1. One in every nine people on Earth is on Facebook.
2. More than 250 million people access Facebook through their mobile devices.
3. YouTube has 490 million unique users who visit every month.
4. Wikipedia hosts 17 million articles.
5. People upload 3,000 images to Flickr every minute.
6. 190 million average Tweets per day occur on Twitter.
7. Google+ has more than 25 million users.
8. People spend 700 million minutes per month of Facebook.
9. More than 2.5 million websites have integrated with Facebook.
10. YouTube generates 92 billion page views per month.
11. Wikipedia authors total over 91,000 contributors.
12. Flickr hosts over 5 billion images.
13. Twitter is handling 1.6 billion queries per day.
14. Google+ was the fastest social network to reach 10 million users at 16 days (Twitter took 780 days and Facebook took 852 days).
15. Each Facebook user spends an average of 15 hours and 33 minutes a month on the website.
16. 30 billion pieces of content is shared on Facebook each month.
17. Users on YouTube spend a total of 2.9 billion hours per month.
18. Twitter is adding nearly 500,000 users per day.
19. 300,000 users helped translate Facebook into 70 languages.
20. People on Facebook install 20 million apps every day.

Those are just a few statistics. There are many more out there. I know that there are Twitter and YouTube applications for smart phones, as well, not just Facebook, but I don't have those statistics available at this time. So just keep an eye out for what is being talked about and where they're talking about them. Find the best place for you to push your business or your product and sign up, set up, and start selling.