Social Media Marketing and Brand Goals

Social media marketing is the new shiny toy. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a really useful shiny new toy. It’s a rapidly evolving, fun newcomer that is grabbing all the headlines, adding bells and whistles every week…sometimes every day. So while every author, company, brand or entrepreneur needs to have a social media marketing strategy and be able to innovate and implement great new campaigns, it can’t pull focus from your primary goals. It’s a method to help you reach your goals, not the end goal itself.

Make sure that your social media marketing efforts serve your overall brand goals. As you set or review your brand goals, ask yourself:

1. What unique product or service do I offer?
2. What “need” does my service or product fulfill?
3. Where would potential customers seek solutions for fulfilling that “need?”
4. What 5-7 words describe the “why to buy” for my product or service?
5. What is my complete marketing strategy for announcing and promoting this product?
6. What are my expectations for income from this product?
7. Does this product reflect all of my brand messages and core values?

After you’ve identified your unique offer and created your targeted, keyword rich messages, make social media outreach via your business Facebook page and Twiter account a regular but measured part of your everyday business tasks. Just 10-15 minutes in the morning and perhaps another 10-15 minutes at the end of the day or at midday can help you keep your brand message in front of potential customers.

Here are five things I do every morning:

1. Facebook Profile: Check in-box and respond as need, accept or decline invitations to events and pages, check my “key contacts” stream briefly for any interesting updates, news, innovations I want to share with my friends.
2. Facebook Fan Page: Briefly check to see if any comments or questions need clarifying and post either a link to a news article or blog post that I want to share with my fans or post a tip, strategy or idea. That post goes out automatically to my Twitter as well.
3. Twitter: Check @replies to see if anyone has questions. Thank folks who retweet or #FF me. Check DM’s and respond as necessary. Check one of my key lists and peruse the stream to see if any of these industry movers and shakers has something I’d like to retweet or read or share with my followers.
4. Blog: Post to my blog, which will then auto post to my Facebook Fan Page and my Twitter account.

Periodically throughout the day, if I find something worth sharing I pop over to Hootsuite, which I keep open on a tab on my browser. I post the link, write a quick post and pre-schedule it to go to one or more accounts later that afternoon.

I spend no more than 10-15 minutes each day glancing through my Google reader which aggregates about 20 blogs I find most relevant to my business and I grab a link and schedule a post from one or more of those on Hootsuite.

Once a week, I spend a full day writing blog posts, making videos and planning additional marketing strategies for my business.

The rest of my time I spend on clients, writing, and creating new opportunities and outlets for my work. For every product, my social media marketing strategy is just one portion of my overall marketing plan. My marketing strategies including speaking engagements, webinars and teleseminars, e-newsletters, targeted advertising, guest blogging, in-person networking and media interviews.

What are your non-social media marketing plans? How will you create conversations about YOU this year?