Guest post by Cokey Falkow
Does your marketing and public relations feel like a gamble these days? It seems like everyone and his proverbial dog are talking about the advent of the new model of media. But what the heck does that mean to someone who owns their own business? How do you navigate these uncharted social media waters? Do you put your business in the hands of someone who is learning a new way of doing their business too? Or should you hire a kid right out of college who is a digital native, but has no business or marketing experience?
There are many ways to get a large “bang” for your marketing buck. Having a skilled in-house social media manager can be a key factor, especially in a company that does not have the budget to pay an agency either a retainer, or use them to effectively run their online messaging models and communications. The problem is that the person put in charge of your marketing and PR needs to be able to leverage all the ways they can bring you maximum ROI.
The first factor is who you hire, because Social Media and Digital Public Relations are personal and rely on personal relationships. Once you have the right personality, they’ll need training on how to use social media as a business strategy. Training can not only boost your new hire’s performance and confidence, but also take your business to the next level.
One of the secrets to social media success is the quality of your content. Your Social Media Manager should be looking for a hook or a story to tell. Every business has lots of interesting stories – you just have to know how to find them. And once you find them, publish them and distribute them. Leverage all your content to grow your presence and your community online and create good links to your website and your online newsroom.
So where it all this content going to come from, you ask? Here are some questions you should be asking:
- Does your brand do events?
- Do you attend events?
- Could you use those events to generate content?
- How could you capture and publish that content?
- What brand or customer stories need to be told?
- Do you already have a wealth of content that can be re-purposed?
- Are you leveraging your content to boost SEO and drive leads and traffic to your website?
- Does your Social Media Manager know how to do all this?
- Have they set up an online newsroom as a hub that houses all your digital content?
Great content will get you more social visibility, more fans friends and followers, and more engagement. It will also improve your Google search rankings. Yes, Google tweaks their algorithms regularly, but one thing doesn’t change: the need for great content. If you routinely create and publish content that your audiences find interesting and shareable, Google will reward you with high rankings. And why should you be so interested in Google? As someone said to me yesterday – no one ever said “oh, I will just Yahoo! or Bing that!”
The question is no longer “Should we doing social media?” It’s “Are we doing it right?” Train your team so you don’t have to worry about whether they are doing it right.
