Category: Social Media

10 Tips for Promoting Your Business Through Social Networks

Monte Enbysk, a senior editor at Microsoft Office Live, called a couple of weeks ago asking to interview me for an Office Hours column on using social networking sites to promote your business. I had a delightful conversation with Monte, and he just notified me that his article is now available online, here. Here’s an excerpt:

Are social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn the business tools of the future? Or are they a passing fad that will meet the same fate as disco music?

Time will tell. But if you run a small business circa 2008, ignore them at your own peril. Many of your competitors have already jumped on the bandwagon, and are successfully networking their way to a stronger Web presence, enhanced credibility, and more customers.

Yes, many of these sites are used for socializing by your teenaged sons and daughters. But businesses can benefit too, says Lee Aase, a veteran media relations manager. His employer, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, has put him in charge of articulating the clinic’s message through social networking sites such as Facebook.

“The way that most businesses grow is by word of mouth, by recommendations, and by peers and communities,” says Aase, who writes articles and blog posts about marketing through Facebook. “The whole concept of social media is a lot like birds of a feather flocking together” — in other words, people with a common interest or objective interacting online, he says.

I recommend that you check out the rest of the rest of the article, in which you’ll get 10 helpful tips. Monte wrote this from the perspective of a small business owner, but I believe the tips are just as applicable for larger organizations. And even if you work for a larger company, you have a personal brand to enhance, too. You should learn how you can do that effectively through social networking sites.

Others Monte interviewed included Jinger Jarrett and Leslie O’Flahavan.

For further reading, I recommend Social Media 104: Intro to Social Networking, which is part of the core curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG).

Social Media 104: Intro to Social Networking

Note:  Social Media 104 is part of the Core Curriculum for Social Media University, Global (SMUG).

Visiting Professor and honorary SMUG doctoral candidate Lee LeFever, whose material also has been indispensable in Social Media 102: Intro to RSS and Social Media 103: Intro to Wikis, again has a “Plain English” video to introduce new users to the benefits of social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. Watch it:

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=6a_KF7TYKVc]

If you want to use social networking sites for business purposes, here are a few introductory tips about each of the top three sites:

  • “MySpace is for middle schoolers.” That’s the assessment of my youngest daughter, the wise-beyond-her-years high school junior. It’s an overstatement, but it does match the demographic reality that the MySpace demographic skews young. Which is why it’s a bit disturbing to me that on MySpace I get far more porn spam “friend” requests than anything else. MySpace claims a much larger user base than Facebook, but somehow I doubt that Alla, Alyson, Anna, Clarice, Esperanza, Estella, Evelyn, Gertrude, Ivy, Jaymie, Judy, Judith, Jennifer, Karan, Keeley, Mertie, Michaela, Maritza, Norine, Nisha, Patricia, Ramona, Traci, Thelma, Vanessa, Valeria and Zada are real people. But if you are an aspiring musician or otherwise want to reach a young fan base, you may want to have MySpace in your mix. For example, my friend Scott Meis with the Donate Life Illinois initiative to increase organ donation has found MySpace a great way to reach young people with his message.
  • LinkedIn is the most popular strictly professional networking site. I call it “Social Networking without the social.” I know others swear by it, and I’m happy to be a member, but I don’t see it involving its users as much as either Facebook or MySpace do. If you work for a professional services firm and are looking to do hardcore networking, LinkedIn could be great. It gives you ability to provide and ask for references and recommendations.
  • Facebook, with its Ivy League college roots, strikes a nice balance between the two. It’s far less susceptible to spam than MySpace is. I’ve devoted a whole section of this blog to Facebook business uses, so for Social Media 104 students who want to read ahead for extra credit, go to the Facebook Business page.

Homework Assignments:

  1. Visit my MySpace page. If you want to send me a friend invite, that would be great to actually have some non-spam requests. I don’t spend much time in MySpace, though, so if we want to have a SMUG class about MySpace, we probably should have a guest instructor. Any volunteers? If you think I haven’t been fair to the biggest social networking site, I’d be glad to accept a guest post about the advantages of MySpace. If you want to create a MySpace page to get more hands-on experience, that gets you extra credit, too, but it’s optional.
  2. Create a LinkedIn profile. Find at least five current or former work colleagues and add them to your network.
  3. Join Facebook. This is a remedial assignment, as it was part of Social Media 101, but if you haven’t completed this step yet, now is a great time to do it. Then you can enroll in SMUG and Friend me.

Class Discussion

Answer the following in the comments below: 

  1. Which social networking sites have you joined?
  2. Do you find one of them more useful than the others for your business purposes?
  3. If so, which one, and why?
  4. Do you belong to a social networking site not mentioned above? Which one(s)? Why do you find it helpful?

The Parable of the Bagel

Once upon a time there was a guy. Let’s call him Lee, because that was his name.

Lee was attending a great conference in San Francisco, where he learned a lot about using Social Media for Internal Communications.

On the third day of the conference, when he arrived for breakfast he found that:

  • The continental breakfast table had bagels.
  • The continential breakfast table had cream cheese.
  • But there were no knives to spread the cream cheese.

Did Lee go hungry? Did he eat a dry bagel?

No.

Lee thought creatively.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=4WijLtAIYGA]

He used a spoon — not for its intended purpose, but to meet his need.

(And even better, he got someone else to do the work while he videotaped.)

The Parable of the Bagle has two major applications:

  1. You’re better off if you can pick the right tool for the job. Even though the bagel was pre-sliced, it would have split more nicely with a knife.
  2. Consider the social media tools you have, and how they can be used creatively to meet your needs. The spoon wasn’t intended as a cream-cheese spreading device, but it does a fine job of it. Likewise, Twitter and Facebook and blogs and other social media tools may have had purposes and applications envisioned by their developers, but what you need to do is see what capabilities the tools have, and how they might meet a need for you.

Twitter might just be a way to quickly activate a disaster response-team. A secret Facebook group might enable you to manage collaboration among external vendors without giving them access behind your corporate firewall.

Think creatively.

Change Communication Planning

bonfiremap.jpg

Bonfire’s Audience-Centric Communication Planning Map (click above to enlarge) moves through these steps from left-to-right in the map below, instead of just jumping to the final step. When the CEO says, “I want a blog,” that’s just jumping to a solution.

They recommend instead starting with:

  1. Audience Concerns: Who is the audience and what do they care about? Aggregate audiences by concerns and how the technology will impact them instead of artificial hierarchical structures or functional roles. For example, look at technological skill level of audiences. Create tiers of concerns. Some will cut across functional roles. What information is most essential? What will get people’s attention and address their concerns? What do people need to hear to jump on board? What is the connection and disconnection between the communicator and the audience? The great thing about Web 2.0 technologies is that they enable users to choose what they want to receive, and what information is relevant to them.
  2. Sponsor Concerns/Business Outcomes: What do we or our sponsors expect us to achieve? What business metrics are we chartered to move or influence? What are the stated and unstated expectations? What behaviors or actions are we to inspire or reinforce? What is the fundamental issue that we are trying to address? What are the business objectives you’re looking to achieve in how people Think, Feel, Know and Do in the Current State vs. Future State. What is the fundamental shift needed to get people to Think, Feel, Know and Do what you would like them to do? Example: a casino shifting to a consumer-driven healthcare environment. How do you get people who work in smoky casinos start to make healthy choices? “Just do it” wouldn’t work. Instead it was “Choose wellness where it works for you.” Tagline was: “Be at your best.” This is the way toward working together to lower healthcare costs.
  3. Communication Objectives. Look at three phases: Awareness, Understanding and Action. Match the Audience Concerns with the Sponsor Concerns/Business Outcomes. Explain to the audiences how these are aligned. What are our SMART communication objectives? Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Actionable, Realistic, Time-Based.
  4. Story/Key Messages: How can we create a conversation that moves people? Create a “North Star” or mantra, with key messages that support. Communicators are the most equipped group of people to guide the cultural conversation. How can we create a shared vision? How do we share a common view of current reality? What is our STORY from this journey and what actions will make the difference? What mantra will shift behavior?
  5. Design Criteria: How can we design communications for impact? How do our audiences take in information? How do they learn, share knowledge and collaborate? What design elements will appeal to them the most? If there is an existing brand framework, what is the relationship to the new design criteria?
  6. Communication Solutions: At this point in time, what are the right messages and solutions for these audiences? What are all of the possibilities that we should explore? What tools share knowledge, build skills and support change over time? What are our selection criteria? How do we create a rhythm and pulse while sustaining our efforts?

Changing the way people orient to information can shift their view of the world and influence lasting behavioral change.

Note: Photos from today’s session will be uploaded to the SMUG Student Union site on Facebook.

The Change Curve

Vivien and Marady started by discussion organizational change management, and understanding the stages people go through in moving from a current state to future state. It can be like jumping a chasm:

  • Denial
  • Anger
  • Blame
  • Fear
  • Acceptance
  • Shifts
  • Excitement
  • Creativity
  • New Forms

It can be represented graphically like this:

maradychangecurve.jpg

(That’s  Marady as spokesmodel. Click the thumbnail to enlarge.)

A better model, they suggest, is Peter Senge’s creative tension method of a learning organization, as visualized below:

creativetension.jpg

We’ll get into that after the break.