Having a Social Media Strategy

Social media is certainly a way to get website traffic as well as communicate with your clients and customers. However; there are some lessons we should have learned by now: The most important is this: every web site on the Internet does not produce revenue, and some probably won't. On the other hand, everyone with a Facebook page or a Twitter account is not going to drive the masses to a web site without a compelling reason.

The Internet is information first!

Unless you are offering something engaging, you may as well enjoy your friends on Facebook and spend your time and effort other places. The caveat to that is popular products such as the iPad and Android phone. There is a lot of buzz around that, so letting folks know about features and upgrades is pretty much all that needs to be done.

Whatever your product or service, you need to find interesting facts, expertise or other information to pass along to customers and clients. That is what I am doing with this blog; passing on a little information related to my services.

The social media game needs consistency from you, or it will fail. You need to start with a simple strategy to see how your potential market will respond. Here is what I suggest as a minimum level of participation:

-Make a calendar and for your media contributions in advance. Be sure that you can meet your deadlines. Blog readers who expect a blog on Monday, don't want to wait until Tuesday.
-Write a minimum of a 200 word blog once a week. Two to three a week is a better number. This is the base "information" of your social media marketing.
-Connect Twitter to Facebook (or vice versa) so you only have to post once a day and it ends up on both. Usually let people know about your blog posts, ask an engaging questions Facebook, or provide a motivational quote related to your business (from the blog or industry guru) on Twitter. You can connect the blog to Facebook and Twitter so those new posts will automatically post.
-YouTube is a good place to do a "how to" video. It could easily be the same content from the blog, but in video form. I could read this video and ad some video enhancements.
- Email campaigns keep the whole thing in motion by recapping what you are doing in the other places. I would highlight a service once every two weeks along with some bullets about the things that are happening on the blog. You can have overlapping content.

Remember every post, blog or email needs an action item for your audience!

Good luck!