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Friday
Apr032009

Social Media - You've got a friend in me!

I’m constantly singing the praises of social media. Never before have there been so many ways to communicate directly with so many people — and make that the people of your choosing. It used to be that we PR pros would compose a lengthy press release making sure to put the real news in the headline and the subhead (sound like Twitter?) and then count on personal relationships, the favor bank and the occasional real news to catch the attention of the media. That old way took a lot of luck, timing and patience. How great to be able send out a quick thought or crystallized idea in real time.


I Tweet…Therefore I Am
Twitter really allows one to do that. Have a thought and a quick link? Keep your message short and crisp and send it out to a universe that you’ve hand-picked. Maybe they’ll see your message this time, and maybe they won’t, so that’s why you want to keep tweeting – because eventually they’ll become familiar with your tweets, and hopefully, if you have something worthwhile to say, they’ll start taking a closer look. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is your audience on Twitter. The important thing to remember is the old reach and frequency rules of advertising – they couldn’t be more relevant than on Twitter – you want to reach the largest group of people (your followers) and you want to reach out to them as often as possible — so they get to know you, and can depend on your information. Jump in, keep up an active dialogue with your followers, and say things that they and other people will want to hear.

Jumping into the Soup
We recently gave a talk entitled “Social Media — Jumping into the Soup.” It was a quick primer on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, and what we found, is that in a given group of working people, there are many different levels of social media experience. You’ve got your early adapters and your luddites, and then a whole group that fall somewhere in between. Many of the people listening to our talk already knew how to use Facebook, and wanted to know more about how to effectively use LinkedIn. In this particular group, Twitter was still as new as commercial space travel, and the majority of audience members said, “Twitter — No way!” To them we said, “there’ll come a day when you’re being interviewed for a new job, or competing for that piece of business, and the decision between you and the competition is going to come down to 140 characters.”

Here’s a quick, basic slide we used to show the old way of thinking about and using Social Media, compared to the “New Way” to use these tools to one’s business advantage:


Using Social Media

The Old Way
Connecting with friends
Connecting with family
Connecting with current and former co-workers
Connecting with your network in real time

The New Way
Forming business relationships and networks
Reaching potential business partners, employers and employees
Reaching and retaining members and donors
Raising awareness to your cause, project, program, product or company
Developing dynamic, interactive relationships
Keeping current in the marketplace
Driving traffic

 

 

 

 

AuthorSteven Greene | DateFriday, April 3, 2009 at 12:30 AM | Comment1 Comment |
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