Frontline Perspectives

The new rules of social media series.

While on vacation this past week, I had the chance to finish Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and more) that Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business. As a long-time fan of Anne Handley of Marketing Profs, I was looking forward to hearing what she had to say about  maximizing your online presence.

The book is an easy read, and references a plethora of online examples of what’s working and why.  As marketers, we spend a lot of time thinking about where we should be in the online space, and how to get it done.  But the reality is that the best social marketing efforts are never “done.” Your social media experiences build ongoing stories that provide insight into your company, your expertise and your capabilities.  This book helps develop some great strategies for creating the strategy, building a framework, what to write about and how to keep the conversations going.

While few concepts in the book were new to me, I still came away with some tips I plan to incorporate into our own social programs (and for clients when appropriate) with greater intensity and further planning:

1. Don’t just categorize your blog content, tag it (and remember to use the keywords in your copy).
2. Great webinars include powerful visuals (not a bunch of bullet points), relevant graphs and statistics (regularly survey your customers for data points) and customer success stories (people love real-life examples).
3. Repurpose your content into other forms that can and will reach out to additional people: white papers into ebooks, webinars onto slideshare, case studies into blog postings, etc.
4. Don’t require prospects to give you all their contact information up front; instead, ask one or two additional questions with each inquiry.
5. Consider ebooks instead of white papers to reach a broader range of decision makers, and at different points in the decision process.
6. Use graphics and videos in your FAQ sections.  And make them printable.
7. Tag all photos to help with search tactics.

This is a great book for anyone new to the social media game, and anyone who’s been working at it for awhile and is looking for some insight into how to take it to the next level.  I bought my copy on Amazon. And if you’re interested, Anne writes for the Marketing Profs Daily Fix blog.

I’d be interested to hear what you learned from the book.