photo by mdwartistry

You create a plan to implement social media, or a company asists you with the process- what now? You have a fantiastic Facebook fan page, an active twiter account and have ordered a Flip camera to start posting office activities on YouTube, but how can you start bringing everything and everyone together?

Take a step back and think of all the ways that you communicate with your customers.

Go. Write them down.

Now, think about your audience and message that you want to convey. Do any of the social media platforms give you the opportunity to enhance or grow that communication?

Yes? No? Not sure? Well, if you are like any other company out there, email and websites are tools that should be utitlized, and social media efforts should be present in these marketing plans.

Here are a few options:

• Add links. Displaying the option for people to go to social media websites from your official site is a productive way to say ‘take a peek and what people are saying about us’. Let your fans shine by giving them the mic on Facebook or Twitter.
• Have a ‘share this’ option. This can include the retweet option or the chicklets for posting on Facebook, digg and more. Allow people to move your message on. You want it to remain conssistant right? Well, what better way then to have people pass your exact information?
• Include icons and links in e-newsletters. Talk about traffic. If you use email marketing tools that show you how many people opened the email and clicked on a link, this would be a great time to see what platform your audience/customer perfers or is interested in. Also, it’s a fatastic time to shine! How?
• Have picture streams. Yes, please use platforms like Facebook and Flickr to show customers your products and even company culture. You want to see them, but they also want to get to know you. So give them the opportunity to check you out.

Why not take advantage and share your social media avenues? Who knows, you might hit someone on the homefront and gain a fan or two.

Kristina is based in the Twin Cities and eats and breathes social media. Her love for technology’s influence on culture can be found here.

Tags: Marketing, Social Media, Strategy