Social Media Cheat Sheet for Social Media Virgins

Posted on January 20, 2008
Filed Under smo | | Written by Gary Reid

For the vast majority of business folk social media is still an unknown, certainly many I speak to are quite happy to admit they are social media virgins. So, if you are a social media expert bugger off and read something else, this won’t interest you. If, on the other hand the very sound of edge competency makes you check if your flies are down read on…
I put together a little ‘cheat sheet’ that I just email or hand out to people who are interested in finding out more. For many Del.icio.us is a mind blowing tool and opportunity when explained. These folk are usually just people I know and I do believe what Zig Ziglar said

You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

To borrow from Zig again, the key to social media is the same as money, getting it right will not make you happy or successful, but it seems everyone wants to find out for themselves.

Social media is no different to marketing, get it as right as you want still doesn’t guarantee success.

The plain truth is that getting to grips with social media will be painful, stressful and there is no real certainty that the rewards will justify the means, but we haven’t had long to understand it’s full effects yet.

Here’s my 10 things a company could do to get closer to social media

  1. Build a ‘from the top’ social media optimization company philosophy
  2. Identify evangelists and influencers, both within and without the company
  3. Create a voice - As your brand, with a mascot, community, character, fake…
  4. Produce content/release content from the vaults.
  5. Syndicate content internally
  6. Seed content externally
  7. Create delivery mechanisms users can adopt, such as widgets or RSS feeds
  8. Embed yourself in the community
  9. Track usage and monitor the conversation for opportunities to act
  10. Rinse and repeat.

Content and Quality
It’s about creating a resource of content that may not necessarily give short term gain.

Types of SMO

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Comments

One Response to “Social Media Cheat Sheet for Social Media Virgins”

  1. Christopher Scott on January 21st, 2008 2:16 am

    Thanks for the great post featuring the work of Zig Ziglar.

    I’ve seen him speak and read his books and he is great!

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