Invite colleagues
There has been a lot written about undertaking a social marketing presence and about 12 months ago I also wrote a post on getting started on this (Read Here). But 12 months in social media is a lifetime so I have revisited this topic to update areas you should focus on in order to have develop an online presence.
Some of these steps mentioned below are common sense but should not be underestimated in maintaining and growing your personal or companies online persona’s.
11 steps in starting your social marketing presence
- Schedule regular time slots for contributing to blogs each day- it will become harder over time to maintain the energy to continue developing content and building a following.
- Sign up for the major social news sites. There are a large number of SNS websites in China, those from the United States are not able to occupy the dominant positions in the Chinese market, due to the culture and language differences and the limits of system and regulations so select the right SNS site for your target and focus. Chinese: 51.com, Xiaonei.com, Chinaren.com, and Kaixin001.com or Western: Facebook, Spinn.com, Digg.com, Mixx.com. Complete your profile completely, and submitted news from elsewhere on the web to generate a real presence and avoid being labeled as a spammer.
- Ensure your personal/ company blog is regularly being updated (If you haven’t already got one- where have you been). It is an absolute necessity in today’s social networking environment. I use Wordpress which can be downloaded and installed easily. It also has some great plug-ins to extend the functionality.
- Once you have your blog set up, join the following networks. (These are blog communities that will help you generate visitors, authority, and links and most bloggers belong to them.) MyBlogLog.com (install the widget on your Wordpress blog), and BlogCatalog.com. (They also have a widget to install).
- Join professional networking groups like LinkedIn.com, make friends, and interact with other bloggers on these networks and community sites. Especially the people who you want reading your blogs. You can even start your own, promote it in the network, and send “shouts” to the group when you have announcements or need attention to a new post.
- Once you have established yourself on all the sites above — meaning you have a decent profile in each that shows you’ve been active and involved — move on and search for networks that are more specific and fit your particular market niche. Continually monitor and look for new “vertical” social networking sites that will fit your target audience. This membership will give you a greater opportunity in also promoting your ideas, products and brands as they understand the subject matter far better that a general blogging community. Also, be sure to add new sites into your social networking strategy as often as you can. Doing this will allow your company and brands a broad reach and with back-links allows your site to be indexed by the search engines for greater visibility.
- Join a group dedicated to social marketing to pick up tips from other social marketers, and find new places you can sign up with to continue building your social authority. New sites pop up every single day. Check Wikipedia for a list of major active social networking websites
- Join blogger.com and put content there that is good, just not good enough to go on your main blog. This serves two purposes: 1) you get to use more of the great content you find as you travel through all the social news sites and 2) it gives you another place to link back to your main site and pass on traffic and link popularity over time.
- Leverage micro-blogging platforms to promote new postings to your site. Wordpress has an automated Twitter plug-in that will submit a twit about your latest post. In China, leverage FanFou (饭否) or TaoTao(滔滔). Also leverage StumbleUpon, Digg and HaoHaoReport to attract post blogging attention.
- Track your website diligently. You need to have a web analytics tool that you can use to monitor your sites traffic and get a view of your reader’s location and how they got to your site. I use SinoAnalytics, a low cost but powerful tool for providing this information. But you can use one of the many blog stats plug-ins that come with Wordpress or even Google Analytics.
- Don’t stop! Once you proceed down this path of promoting your company and brands in a social networking setting you need to keep going to maintain momentum and continue to develop community awareness.
I often get people say that they maintained a personal or corporate site for a period of time then lost simply stopped… I can understand this and depending on the purpose of your online presence you will have different motivations.
Until then, start to plan, do your research and execute your online strategy. Please post a comments below on your ideas or bring your suggestions into the twitter world: @sinotechian
