Social Media 4 Newbies — Tips for Getting Started

1. Determine what your purpose is for being in social media space. (Hint: Wrong answer is “because everyone else is.”)
2. Decide how you are going to measure your progress/success.
3. Begin creation of a Social Media Guidelines document to share with your employees/co-workers.
4. Listen: Spend time googling your company/brand and your competitors. Find out what conversation is going on already. Set up google alerts for your company/brand and your competitors. Set up a generic industry word. For example, if you sell pizza, set up a google alert for the word “pizza”.

5. Decide exact name you will use on Twitter for your company – limit is 15 characters. Use exact name for your Facebook page. Plan this out in advance for brand consistency. For example, Cassanos PIzza is CassanosPizza on Facebook as well as on Twitter.

6. If you are planning to begin with a personal Twitter page, use your real name, all one word with no spaces, underlines or numbers. (There are exceptions, of course, and this may not be an option if your name is taken already.)

SOCIAL MEDIA RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
• Be authentic
• Be kind
• Promote others
• Know that relationship is everything (my first social media mentor Liz Strauss drilled this in my head and she was spot on!)
• Give, give, give, give, give, give…then you may ask someone for a favor (thank you Gary V — author of “Crush It!”)
• Engage
• Offer original, creative and interesting content that adds value for your followers
• Listen and participate

TWITTER
• Sign up.
• Use a close-up photo of your face for your profile. If you use a silly cartoon image or close-up of your eyeball, people will be less likely to follow you back.

• Fill out your profile info fully. Be sure to include URL link to your company or blog.
• Begin tweeting! Don’t worry about being new. We were all new to this once. Fill up the page. The only people who will see what you tweet are those who are “following” you. So, if you have no followers, you are in effect talking to yourself.

• Follow people you already know IRL (in real life).
• Follow @Carole_Hicks
• When you want someone in particular to see your tweet, you must include the @ sign before their Twitter name, or they will not see it. Do not put any punctuation marks before or after the name.

TWITTER TIPS
• You won’t fully understand the value of Twitter until you have a decent “village”. We recommend aiming for 100 followers/following to begin. Having said that, this is NOT about numbers. Anyone can buy followers with software. No one is impressed if you buy 20,000 followers. Build your stream organically (naturally).
• A fast track to gaining followers is to click on @Carole_Hicks followers and follow everyone she follows. Many of them will follow back quickly when they see you are friends with her.
• Promoting others builds social media cred. When someone says something worth repeating, retweet (RT) their post by copying it and including an RT at beginning of post.
• You are allowed 140 characters per post, but if you have info that may be retweeted, only use 130 to allow someone opportunity to RT.
• Use Twitter to drive traffic to your Facebook page or blog. Most URL’s are too lengthy. Use a shortner tool like bit.ly (the website is just bit.ly and does not have a dot com at the end)
• Budget your time. SM can be a time sink.
• Use a free tool like TweetDeck or Hootsuite to manage your tweets and save time.

DO NOT set up auto-responses to new followers or you will receive this from me:

7 Steps to Creating an Online Community

Saturday I had the pleasure of teaching a group of students, parents, teachers and faculty from the Miamisburg Christian Academy an introductory session on Social Media. The age range in the group seemed to be about 15 to 50 (plus!). Quite honestly, I didn’t know what I was going in to. I had no idea how many of the group were proficient in social media and how many were novices. I am very comfortable teaching in a corporate environment but this was brand new territory.

CREATING AN ONLINE COMMUNITY — PHASE 1
1. Create a vision. In this case, I pressed them to answer the following question: “What will it look like six months from now if you find yourself very pleased and excited about your social media spaces…what is happening on your Facebook page, your Twitter page…how do you feel about what is happening?” What is your vision for how the online social aspect syncs with the offline social aspect?
2. Make sure you go all the way around the room and get input from the people who are being shy and reserved. Often, they say the most profound things. It was true in this case.
3. Make sure everyone in the group acknowledges who will be the Community Manager. The CM needs help and input, but ultimately they have to drive the ship.
4. Get buy-in from everyone in the group to support and give content to the CM.
5. Be open to the possibility of creating vertical spaces for different age groups or special interests. For example, we went into this thinking about one space on FB, one on Twitter and so on. As the meeting went on, excitement was generated around the idea of creating a uniquely separate space for the students. Why not a special FB page for the Art Department?
6. Walk away. After I saw the excitement levels building, I stepped away and let them talk without me there facilitating (a brilliant move on my part).
7. Give homework and set a date for follow-up. If you don’t establish dates and assignments, the momentum is likely to flatten.

I wish the event had been video-taped. It was electrifying, exciting, energizing. I think the most fun I had was recognizing and revealing that the students are going to be the ones who will rise up and champion the way. I suggested to the parents/teachers/faculty that instead of banishing the use of mobile devices, we have a space during the week — Friday at lunch for example — when we encourage and allow students to text, with guidelines of course. Why not give them a little room to be teenagers. They LOVE to text. Why fight change? Why not work along side them and use technology for good. One person suggested that we create a Facebook page designated JUST for the students. Cheers erupted from the two students who were present.

On the other end of the age spectrum, the adults in the room who were not as comfortable with technology as the younger people were clearly moved and inspired by what they saw and heard. At one point, U! Creative’s President, Ron Campbell, jumped up on a railing and took the photo you see above. Within seconds, it was downloaded and visible in the Facebook stream of one of the attendees. Most of us in social media are used to this kind of happening but it is still a joy to watch the faces of people who are being exposed for the first time.

Stay tuned. Keep an eye on this small, private Christian school. It will truly be interesting to see what they do with the new tools and methods of communication. I see a case study in the making!

MCA on Facebook
MCA on Twitter