Social Media Basics for Wildly Successful Women

I am honored that I was the speaker at last night's meeting for a smashing group Wildly Successful Women in Denver. Here’s a recap of what I spoke about and the resources to consider when thinking of creating your social media strategy. 

First understand that social media is now and the future. Social media is online content created by people that is inexpensive to free and makes us all publishers. We’ve gone from monologues to dialogues and to more of a democracy. Whereas before we relied on newspapers, movies, radio, also known as industrial media, we now can publish, participate and engage with others. We can vote on products, talk about them, etc.

Components of social media include social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook,, video marketing, blogs, email marketing and others. The important thing is to

• find your community
• look and listen
• participate
• build relationships
• share content
• set your goals and analyze.

Advantages of social networking and social media marketing include building your brand, increasing your online footprint and being found the inbound marketing way - new marketing instead of being intrusive and pushy, you pull prospects and potential customers.

While newspaper circulation is 48.4 million daily, 285 million people watch television monthly, there are 14 billion core searches done online both in searching and in online media such as Twitter and YouTube – and these figures are constantly changing. What a great time to create your social media strategy.

Here’s a few tips for doing social media the right way. It’s never about you unless you want to turn others off. Social media is similar to a cocktail  party. If you walk into a party and just talk about how great you are, your company is, your services are and never ask questions or listen, you’ve just become the jerk at the party. Nobody cares about you or your product. Give people a reason to follow/friend/connect with you. Make them feel important. Share helpful, valuable information.

So how do you add value and make others feel important? Remember it’s a conversation, not a broadcast. To look like an expert and add value:

• share original, helpful content
• set up Google alerts at www.www.Google.com/alerts on your area of expertise to include articles, videos, blogs and share the links
• subscribe to newsletters or RSS feeds through Google or other reader
• show humor on Casual Friday by posting funny videos or quotes
• post inspirational and other quotes.

Engage others by be Retweeting (Twitter), sharing (Facebook) or commenting on their posts on LinkedIn groups. Share events you are holding or attending.

To share articles, blogs or videos, shorten the web address by using a URL shortener to a few characters. Two to consider are http://tinyurl.com/ or http://bit.ly.com. Or use a bookmarking/sharing tool such as www.addthis.com.

Optimize, optimize, optimize. Use keyword research tools to come up with good keywords related to your industry - ones with good traffic but low competition. Try  https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal or  http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/. Use the keywords in your blog, videos, website, etc.

Wondering how to start a blog? Here's some information that might help you whether to use Typepad, Blogger or WordPress. All three offer different features. I use Typepad because it has great SEO capabilities and you don’t have to be as technically savvy plus they provide tech support.

Into video marketing? Post your videos to video sharing platforms by signing up with http://www.tubemogul.com. The first time, you'll have to enter your information for all the different networks. Tubemogul will share your videos with all your video platforms.

When deciding on which social networks to join, remember, bigger and popular doesn't mean the best. Find your community by listening and observing. You can be a big fish in a smaller network that is more relevant to your industry. 

Decide what you like to do. Do you enjoy writing, being in front of a camera and creating videos or engaging with others online? How much time can you devote? Pick a few and work them steadily. Most of all, have fun. Make this process part of your creative outlet. Have any questions? Please post them here and I will answer them.