Help! I Need Social Media Advice…
Social media and digital communications have really grown as a marketing medium. The new strategies that the web have afforded can be extremely powerful. With that in mind, it’s important to learn as much as you can.
Getting started can be the hardest thing. To help people better understand social media marketing, I’ve outlined some important reading for individual topics in social media…
Facebook Basics
For many Facebook is a really important aspect of their social media strategies. Making sure you create a Facebook fan page that maximizes your return is important.
How To Create the Perfect Facebook Fan Page
Tamar from Techipedia wrote an awesome article outlining a few steps to creating a great Facebook fan page. She goes over the idea of creating a landing page, Facebook SEO, and FBML.
Who’s Blogging What: 2010 Facebook Page Marketing Guide
Recently, I took part in a really in-depth Facebook Marketing Guide that’s being published by HubSpot. The guide goes over everything from creating a fan page to building a loyal following.
Use Vanity URLs to Save You From a Branding Fail
Once you have your Facebook fan page ready, definitely check out the article I wrote on branding. Don’t make the mistakes many large brands do on a day to day basis.
Starting with Twitter
Many businesses have found value in the reach afforded to them through Twitter. The following articles should help you get started with Twitter and using it to market your business…
Twitter 101 for Business
For the very basics go to Twitter itself. The Twitter staff put together a great guide for Businesses getting started with Twitter. It includes case studies and best practices.
Using Twitter Search for Business
Even though a very short post by Chris Brogan, it is full of information. Being able to use search properly is a great way to find new leads and consumers.
The Ultimate Guide for Everything
A great guide that outlines how to get started with Twitter and what some successful brands have done. It gives you good ideas on what to do once you have your Twitter account.
Twitter Marketing: A Small Business Guide
I previously put together a Twitter marketing guide for small businesses. It’s relatively short, but reviews how to get started, how to use Tweetdeck, and what to do with your Twitter account.
Using Online Blogs
A blog or social media hub is an extremely important aspect of a social media strategy. Most marketers overlook the idea of owned media and determine that hosting a blog is too expensive and resource intensive. The truth is that a blog can be the greatest social media investment a brand makes…
Do You Have A Social Media Hub?
Really one of the most important things for your social media strategy is creating a social media hub. The hub acts as the anchor for the strategy and ties together all the social media profiles.
Study Shows Small Businesses That Blog Get 55% More Website Visitors
For many businesses, their social media hub will be their blog. Hubspot put together a great study showing the impact of a blog on a businesses’ digital footprint. Definitely check out this article if you’re curious about creating a social media hub.
New To WordPress – Where to Start
Almost always, I recommend WordPress for small business blogs and sites. Their “getting started” guide is a good way to learn more about the software and how you can use it.
Analytics and Metrics
Once your campaign has launched, you have to be able to measure and optimize the campaign. Knowing which metrics to track and how is important. The following articles explore the topic of analytics and metrics…
This is How You Measure Social Media ROI
This article reviews how you can possibly measure social media ROI. It reviews the pitfalls and obstacles to adding social media to the marketing mix.
HOW TO: Track Social Media Analytics
A short article that reviews the basics of pulling together some social media metrics. Shows you how to track social media shares and other important metrics.
Social Media Analytics: Twitter: Quantitative & Qualitative Metrics
As usual, Avinash puts together a great article that outlines his thoughts on Twitter metrics. He reviews both how to measure and draw analysis from the data.
Understanding Social Media Metrics: Basic Modeling
This more advanced post looks at econometric modeling and how it relates to social media marketing. Using the model, we can begin to determine what impact individual decisions have on our social media success.
Social Media Metrics: What We Need to Track Sales
Everyone wants to know what they need to do to track sales through social media. This post explores why it’s important to measure social media sales, what to track, and what tools to use.
Online Culture
The web has evolved our culture and changed our social norms. What is acceptable offline might not be tolerated online. How you say something online, might not be acceptable offline. Understanding the web culture is a necessary step for being successful online…
Culture, the Great Influencer on Corporate Social Media Adoption
Although the slideshare is gone, this article definitely gives some great insights into the idea of culture as a driving force for social media understanding through a company.
Social Media Requires a Cultural Investment
An article that explores how culture can affect the profitability of a company and explains why the evolution of culture is a necessity for social media success.
Alexis Ohanian: How to make a splash in social media
A TED video that highlights the idea of social media culture and gives a great case study that shows how the reddit community works.
Christopher “moot” Poole: The case for anonymity online
Another important cultural phenomenon online, the idea of anonymity. “Moot” the creator of 4chan talks about privacy and anonymity in this great TED video.
Final Thoughts
Just learning the basics of social media marketing, how you should act, what you need to do to begin, and how to measure your success, is extremely difficult. Reading as much as you can and testing out new ideas is the best way to gain the knowledge you need to be successful.
I’ve outlined some articles I recommend, but now it’s your turn. Leave a comment and share articles you believe helped you get started with social media. Don’t feel like you have to share only articles, give your advice or thoughts for those trying to get started.
