Social media stratregy 2010
Have you worked already on the online strategy for your business?
We’d like to share with you an overview of our 2010 social media strategy. It’s a good opportunity to help you start with your own plan, give you some ideas or at least point you in the right direction 
We are absolutely open to suggestions so remember to leave your comment at the end of the post!!
Blogging
Focus: Build authority / Expand community / Increase US & UK readership / spark conversations / *Networking / Improve search engine rankings
* This year we’ll choose to read and comment on 10 blogs: 5 will be to follow trends and stay up to date, the other 5 will be strictly for business networking.
Blog topics (Tip: Define categories first)
Reviews, Video tips, Internet marketing, Social media
Blog’s ideas sandbox:
Ask on LinkedIn Q&A, Read other blogs (listen)/ reblog, Reviews (books, events, apps, etc), Web trends/ Search / video tips
Characteristics
- Frequency: Twice a week
- Posts must offer value
- Must include images and/or video
- Time allocated per post (research, writing, marketing) = 2 to 3 hours
Blog post Marketing
- Include relevant trackbacks in the post
- Send tweets throughout the week to promote the content
- Bookmark: delicious.com, bookmarks.yahoo.com, stumbleupon.com
- Submit post to: Bizsugar.com, Digg.com and Reddit.com
- Send post only to relevant LinkedIn groups and “follow” articles (this way you’ll be notified if someone makes a comment so you can follow up)
- Submit blog feed to 5/10 RSS news feeds weekly
Video & Photo content
Photos will be uploaded to FlickR and Facebook (automatic to Twitter).
Videos will be uploaded to You Tube / Tube Mogul, then Facebook (automatic to Twitter).
Subscribe to Channelship’s You Tube channel
Focus: Share engaging photo and video content / Build authority / Expand community / Increase US & UK fans/ multiply interactions / Networking / Company-Industry communications
Building the community
- Friend relevant contacts from Twitter and LinkedIn (profile)
- Pump good photo and video content
- Listen: reply to any question or comment ASAP. Keep the conversation
- Interact: Make comments / “like” status updates
- Facebook ads campaign: targeted to people in marketing and communications
Time allocated: 4 to 6 hours weekly
Focus: Share helpful-engaging links / Listen to random and selected conversations / Build authority / Expand US & UK community/ increase conversations / Networking / Company-Industry communications
Building the community
- Follow contacts from LinkedIn
- Follow back relevant contacts
- Follow people especially traditional marketing and communications
- Proactively do Q&A
- Chit-chat
- Share GOOD stuff! try to always include a link to good content
Time allocated: 6 to 8 hours weekly
Focus: Share helpful-engaging status updates / Build authority / Expand US & UK network/ increase group interactions / Business networking / Company-Industry communications / Increase business opportunities
Building the community
- Follow contacts also on Twitter
- Join US/UK strategic groups
- Send blog posts only to relevant groups and “follow” the article.
- Read groups’ digest and engage in relevant threads.
- LinkedIn Q&A: offer value answering selected questions. Ask industry questions also.
- Keep personal/business information and LinkedIn apps on profile up to date.
Time allocated: 6 to 8 hours weekly
Email Marketing
Focus: Share helpful-engaging content/ Build authority / Expand US & UK awareness/ increase business opportunities / Company-Industry communications / webinars main promotional tool
- Platform: Mailchimp
- Grow email database using website, webinars and offline networking.
- Segment database!!! (don’t send every single person the same information!)
- Newsletter will contain three topics: best blog post/s, Great tips or social media case study and invitation to monthly webinar
- Frequency: Once a month
Time allocated: 5 to 10 hours monthly (depending on the campaign)
Have you found the strategy useful? Go ahead, and share below what worked for you last year or how can this strategy be improved!!
Best,
Fred
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What’s your opinion? Don’t be shy and leave a comment!
View Comments to “Social media stratregy 2010”
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I love how you laid out your plan – yours is much more detailed than the post I did this week. I also appreciate your transparency on what you plan to do (which is what I did as well).
Best of luck to you in 2010!
Thanks very much for your comment Michelle. Glad you found the plan useful
I had a look at your blog and love the way you broke down the subjects per day on your latest post! What we really like about those kind of approaches is that after reading them, you feel it's actionable and easy to execute on.
Keep in touch!
Best
Fred
Hi Fenril
Thanks for sharing. Just had a look at heyspread and looks good. I'll check it out in depth during the week.
Your comment about blogs doesn't make any sense to me at all.
Unless I'm misunderstanding you, it sounds like you're going to only read a tiny number of blogs. That makes absolutely no sense.
It also sounds like you're going to be spamming your own content to Digg, so you'll probably end up getting banned.
Thanks your comment Michele,
I guess it's important to clarify who we're writing for: Even though we have businesses from different fields following our thoughts on web topics and social media, our target audience are Marketing and Communication staff that want to learn more about social media and make their first steps. Hopefully, they'll need our help and support as a next step
In reference to the number of blogs: Based on the above, I suggested to pick 10 blogs (breaking it down: 5 to follow trends and 5 for networking purposes) because it's something actionable and easy to do. We'll definitely end up reading a lot more blogs but the habit of sticking to 10, provides and interesting discipline that pays off in the long run.
Regarding Digg: We started testing Digg and Reditt three months ago and we're seeing great results (It's important to clarify that the post, including the video is not based on information gathered from other blogs but our experience from 2009). Our content through Digg helped us connect with a few interesting people in the States so we immediately saw a networking opportunity for instance.
When you submit content to these platforms twice a week like us (Even once a day is fine) there's no way you'll be considered spam. You need to make sure that when you post you choose all the right options: e.i I don't want to submit a post about social media under the “Entertainment” section.
As long as you pump good content, under the right section/tags you will not get banned.
Finally, anyone having a look at the kind of content we share, will instantly know that's about value and not content from a spammer.
Hope that helped.
Best
Fred
Fred
I still think your idea of how to handle blogs is incredibly backwards.
If anyone actually followed it they'd get an incredibly skewed concept of how blogs really work.
As for Digg – you're basically trying to game it.
If your content is interesting and / or of value other people will Digg it for you.
It's because of strategies like the one that you are encouraging that there is so much junk being submitted to sites like Digg
Michele
Fair enough Michele.
I just modified the call-to-action at the end to encourage more comments on what works and what doesn't. It would be good to know what people think can work better to promote the blog…
Fred, this is terrific help and advice, as usual from Channelship.
I'm particularly interested as I have just recently completed my website and as part of that I have started a blog. I teach computers, and I find that more and more people are now asking me to help set them up on Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook etc. with a view to promoting their business online.
I'm anxious now to engage as much as possible and learn as much as I can about the whole world of social media, especially over the coming year, so many thanks for articles such as this one, and best of luck to yourself and Channelship for 2010!
Hi Paula, thanks for your comment
Social media has been a hot topic for a while. The truth is that there're no “writteng in stone” plan, rules or structured ways of utilising the platforms so the beauty is that you can come up with your own masterplan!
Glad that our post inpired you!
Best
Fred
Comment by Barney Austen on Facebook:
“What a great breakdown, well considered and laid out.. and actionable. Must focus on this aspect of our business plan for this year – you've given me the nudge I need. Cheers”
Thanks Guys, thats a well laid out plan and I am going to follow your layout for my own, one question why mailchimp for the emails?
You are welcome Daniel. Feel free to use, re-use and share
Regarding emails. Two years ago we started testing some email marketing platforms such as Campaign monitor and Newsweaver but non of them were as complete, dynamic and cool as Mailchimp! really love these guys. They constantly come up with more features and integrations with other sites that you probably already use
There's only one other platform that we haven't tested yet but we consistently hear good feedback about: http://www.aweber.com/
You guys are to be commended for your positivity and openness to share your ideas.
Well done Channelship
Best
BArry
Thanks Barry!!
Thanks Barry!!
[...] Fred Caballero of Channelship an SME here in Ireland posted their social media plan for 2010 – note they are a web development agency so their plan may not be as relevant for your business. Adding up the number of hours they plan to spend posting one article to their blog, and then using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn each week they openly disclose that they plan to spend between 18 hours to 25 hours each week (this excludes their time creating, editing and posting video and their 5-10 hours per month they estimate on their newsletter). [...]
Thanks for the post Fred. There is no doubting the power of digital marketing as a medium, however there is a role for traditional marketing to be integrated. Niall O’Driscoll recently blogged about traditional marketing’s relationship with digital on the O2 ideas room.
Thanks,
http://webkit.o2online.ie/ideasroom/?p=1577
Great Post!