AICC Boxscore 2013

Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, oh my! By Virginia Humphrey

Social media is now a fairly common practice for most businesses and individuals. It can be a little confusing or intimidating when you are just starting out though. There are a lot of options and “social media” can really mean just about anything—online magazines, microblogs, podcasts, picture sharing, the list goes on and on. Should your company be engaging in social media? Probably, in some way, shape, or form. One in six marriages starts online. If people are looking for “the one” on a computer screen you had better believe that they are looking for your product as well. Social media has a powerful amplifying effect and more reach that I think we can actually comprehend. You should take a thoughtful look at who you want to interact with, why they would interact with you, and create a social media strategy. Future articles will walk through different social media platforms, but for now let’s try to get the backbone developed first. Step 1. Create Your Goals & Write Them Down What do you want your social media efforts to achieve? You, of course, want to build your following and increase engagement, but to what end? Do you want to increase sales? Increase brand awareness? Build your database? Drive traffic to your website? How are you going to measure success?

Step 2. Determine Your Target Market Are you speaking to CEO’s, sales reps, plant managers? What are they interested in? Step 3. Determine Which Social Media Outlets will Help You Reach Your Goals Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, oh my. There is also Google+, Pintrist (which many people swear has business applications, though I am still at a loss to find them), Tumblr, Reddit, FourSquare, YouTube, I could go on for days. Like I mentioned earlier, I will get in to many of these and walk you through pros and cons, and maybe even some how-to’s. Step 4. Develop a Content Calendar How many messages do you want to send in a day/ week? (Note: You should never go more than a week without posting something somewhere.) Who is responsible for sending them out? What do you want to say? A good rule of thumb is only promote your company or products 20% of the time and use the other 80% to give people tips, interesting facts, or updates that they need to know. That means that you need to be a thought leader in the field. You can start a blog, ask your followers for their thoughts, write white papers, re-post/ tweet industry trends, or a host of other options. You may be surprised how fast you go through content if you are posting every day, so I recommend having your content ready a few months

ahead of time. That way you are never at a loss of what to say. Planning ahead should also, in no way, inhibit you from acting spontaneously. If you see something outstanding or a major event occurs it is ok to bump your scheduled posts a bit. This flexibility also lets you remain current, which is key, because you know how short people’s social media attention span is. Step 5. Create a Response Plan If your social media is successful you will get responses. People will be talking about you and at you. What are you going to do about it? Like any technology, social media, can be used for good or evil. You need to think about how you will handle constructive (and not so constructive) criticism and who is going to handle it. You also need to determine who will be monitoring the social media outlets of others to see if your company starts trending. Part of the response side is also making sure that your company’s profile is actively participating on industry related social media sites and conversations- like AICC’s discussion groups on Linked-In or our AskRalph blog. This will help your company build trust on social media sites and keep your company in the loop. Follow your clients in an effort to encourage them to follow you. Step 6. Analyze your Results You set goals, so now that you have gone through all the other steps and executed your plan it is time to see continued on page 33

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BOX SCORE