To be successful in social media it is important to have a plan, timeline and measurable goals in order to evaluate the success of your campaign. Below are 4 steps that should be included in any social media campaign:

1. Listen

It is important to understand the social media presence of your target audience and your brand. Listening first and then coming up with a plan based on the information learnt will maximize the ROI of your online efforts.

Some key points to consider include where your target audience are interacting online and who the key influencers and brand advocates are.

2. Strategy planning and metrics

Some social media monitoring tools available can help you identify a baseline that will provide you with comparatives to measure success. You need to consider both the creative and technical sides of your campaign. Things to consider:

• What are your campaign objectives?
• What will inspire and motivate consumers to participate?
• How can you make your campaign easy to share amongst consumers?
• What resources will you need? (technology, staffing, etc.)
• How will you track and measure your campaign?

What to measure will depend on your objectives. Easiest measurement is what percentage increase or decrease in behavior would you like to see over time? For example, reduce in demand on call center by 5%, increase in conversations about a new product you are launching by 10% or increase in customer satisfaction by 12%.

3. Online Engagement

Creating the opportunity for human interaction with your brand is key. Your staff who are internet savvy are great ambassadors of your brand. Invite them to participate and provide training to them as they will become great resources to your campaign’s success. They can use their networks to spread the word.

The key goal of your campaign should be to create something so “talkable” that people are discussing it everywhere. Being responsive to those who participate in the conversation is also essential to success.

The tool you use should be able to help you identify who your brand advocates are and their online influence. The tool should also be able to provide you with daily reports and real time alerts so that you can respond to those who are participating and responding to your campaign.

4. Evaluate and Revise

Reviewing the success of a campaign is necessary for the planning of future ones. Some questions to consider are:

• What worked and what didn’t?
• What could be improved?
• Did the campaign increase customer satisfaction?
• Was the campaign worth the investment?

It’s important to remember that social media marketing is about building relationships and having the resources to continue the interaction with consumers online. A social media campaign is a part of your social media strategy. It needs to be an ongoing effort.

Social Media adds value in the form of interaction with “fans” who also tend to be existing customers. In recent years consumers have grown increasingly wary of vendors and our “fans” are our best resource to bridging that gap in trust.

Our “fans” also renew at a very high rate therefore the more “fans” we convert, the better our renewals will be. Some simple principles like being honest and interesting and adding value to people’s lives can go a long way in the social realm.

It is important to learn who the influential leaders are in social media that relate to your product/service and build a relationship with them. For instance if you are in the software developer business, you will want to find who the influential leaders are in social media that discuss topics that relate to software reviews and connect with them. Offer suggestions, help, advice, answer questions that might arise that are in your area of expertise and be consistent and authentic.

In return you will be building trust for you, your brand and a loyal following of “fans”. “Fans” who through word of mouth are your best referrers and potential customers. The more “fans” you convert, the better your business will be, and therefore the more you are able to grow your revenues year over year.

Some of the metrics that help evaluate the value of social media include:

• increase in “fans” which in turn means increase in influence and brand reach
• increase in new customers as a result of brand awareness and word of mouth through “fans”
• increase in customer renewals as a result of increase in “fans” which in turn means increase in revenue.

How are you using the value social media creates to grow your business and what results are you seeing?

Flipboard is a free iPad app that you can quickly download from iTunes and then request access to the service via email.

It downloads your latest incoming updates from your Facebook and Twitter accounts and turns it into a colorful digital magazine. Flipboard will turn the links you receive from your Facebook friends that might include photos and displays it on your iPad along with the first few paragraphs. If you touch the photo or image it will expand to fill the entire iPad. If you touch a link it will bring up the page on Flipboard’s built-in web browser. You even have a comment section to discuss the story with your Facebook friends.

You can use Flipboard to read your Twitter incoming messages. It displays a few paragraphs of the web page along with any links or images so you are not limited to the 140 character cryptic messages your followers send you!

Flipboard also acts as a Twitter feed reader so you can put your favorite feeds into Flipboard and it will turn into an instant news magazine that updates itself. You can link to lots of Twitter news sources such as Fortune, Economist and Wired to name a few.

You can also use Flipboard to aggregate data feeds from major news sources. It sorts the stories into useful categories — news, business, sports — allowing you to riffle through a great variety in just a few minutes.

Flipboard is still in it’s infancy with lots of bugs that need tweaked. For instance, it doesn’t store downloaded data for when you’re not connected to the Internet and there’s no reload button to refresh content. At the moment you have to shut down the app and restart it to refresh content. Sometimes there is a lag of 30 minutes updating Facebook content. You also can’t bookmark a webpage within Flipboard to your iPad’s Safari web browser. Future releases of Flipboard should iron out some of these bugs though. For now there’s still plenty to like about Flipboard.

One example of how you could incorporate Flipboard into your social media marketing and sales efforts is to create a dummy Twitter account that you will not use to promote your business or proactively seek followers. What you would use it for is to tweet to this account any customer reviews about your product you find online or any videos you post to YouTube of customer testimonials. This Twitter account is essentially your social bookmarks that you link to the Flipboard app on your iPad. This will enable you to create a social media magazine that is portable and attractive which you can show your potential clients to assist in the sales process.

Are you using Flipboard as part of your marketing/sales process? If so, share with us how Flipboard has been able to help you and your business.

Everyone is fascinated with social media these days and it’s becoming a part of a lot of people’s daily lives both personally and professionally.

Of the top 20 most visited websites 4 of these are social media sites: #2 Facebook, #4 YouTube, #12 MySpace and #15 Twitter. There’s no doubt Social media is definitely here to stay!

If you’re thinking of joining all of these social media sites my recommendation is to start with one or two and learn to use them well. By signing up for too many of them you will be spreading yourself too thin.

First thing to learn is social etiquette. Each social media site has it’s own community with its basic structure, rules and regulations. If you’re new the community users will help you stay within the guidelines by providing hints and reminders when necessary. You will find that all you have to do is ask and most users will be very willing to provide help and guidance.

The first thing you should do after signing up with a social media site is to fully complete your profile and upload a suitable picture of yourself. What I mean by “suitable” is a picture your mom would be proud of. I see all to often users who send me an invite to connect don’t even have their profile filled out or a picture uploaded. Why would I want to connect or do business with someone who doesn’t take the time to upload a picture of themselves?

What you choose for your profile picture is also very important because it’s the first thing people see of you. It should present you in a positive manner. Save the ‘fun’ pictures for other sections of your profile like the “Photos” tab within Facebook.

The most important thing to remember is to be ‘social’. Always remembering to present yourself so that people will be attracted to you and want to get to know you!

Social media and social networking gives business owners the opportunity to reach a larger audience at a low or no cost aside from the time spent networking.

As business owners we’re always looking to find ways to maintain our social media presence as efficiently as possible whilst still allowing us time to manage our other business activities. Below are 7 time saving tips we would like to share with you that might help you save time and create an effective social media marketing plan.

1. Understand your purpose and have a plan

Before jumping into social media set aside some time to think about specifically what you hope to get out of it. Perhaps it’s to increase traffic to your website, gain brand recognition or to maintain relations with your customers. Since time is limited it’s important to know what your purpose is, how you will approach it.

2. Understand what social media is all about

It’s important to understand what social media is, learn the etiquette and the do’s and don’ts before jumping in. You don’t want to create a negative image for your brand. Take the time to get familiar with the various social media sites, connect with other users and learn how the sites work. One of the biggest mistakes is to jump into social media and start promoting your product or service right off the bat. This will tend to create the impression that you’re only interested in selling and not the conversation or the people who are following you.

3. Targeting specific sites

Another common mistake new users make is to sign up for an account on as many social media sites they can find. You’ll never be able to keep up with all of them and you’ll be spreading yourself too thin. Focus on a just a few sites and plan to be an active and consistent user. You’ll see far greater results!

4. Use Twitter

Twitter is a great way to connect with your target audience with fast and instant results if you have a product launch, event, teleclass, etc and need to market it to a large group quickly. Being active on Twitter doesn’t mean you need to create an account and follow a lot of people or send out tweets about anything and everything. Start by following people and replying to their tweets, start conversations, see who’s following them and if they fit in your target audience/niche follow them. When you have a new product/service/blog posting share it with your followers. As you make more connections and gain influence your results will improve by generating more traffic to your website or clicks to your links.

5. Target niche-specific social media sites

Niche-specific social media sites are on the increase and these sites provide a smaller community of targeted people that you can get your content to. You’ll find a higher percentage of people on these sites will fall into your target market and produce greater results.

6. Cultivate your network

Your network determines the success of your social media marketing. Get to know people in your niche, see who is promoting their content, and reach out to them about the possibility of helping each other.

7. Schedule times for social media

The best way to manage social media is to schedule a set block of time to use social media. It could be 30 minutes a day or 3 times a week. By having set times it can help you to keep your usage down and still be active. Once you decide what’s right for you stick to it!

Do you currently have social media marketing methods that you use to help you save time and still be an active member of the social media community? If so, we would love to hear what works for you!