Social Marketing Conversations

In the earlier post on The Trinity of Social Media, we explored blogging and I stated that the blog is a foundational component.  The basic components are a blog, a microblog and the social network.

This post explores how the microblog fits a basic strategy we laid out in the Trinity of Social Media.  Hope you enjoy it and comment on how a microblog has worked for you, or even if you still cannot get your brain wrapped around why should you use one at all.

The idea behind the Trinity of Social Media is that any one of the components are a good start, but a strategy of these three elements are better – much better.

What is a microblog?  In The Social Media Bible, (chapter 15, pg 263) we write that "Microblogging is text messaging and a bit more".   Yeah – I’ll go with the "bit more" side of the comment.

To begin with, we see the term ‘blog’ embedded in the name, which to the uninitiated, suggests a blog like function.  In many ways, it does have many of the functions of a blog.  The blog was explored in depth in this post.

To begin with, a remarkable differences is the length of the post.  A microblog post follows the constraint of the mobile phone text message, which is approximately 160 characters.  Giving up part of that 160 characters to a user ID puts us at 140 characters.

So while a blog post is about 200 words, a microblog post is 140 characters – so the post it’s like 8 times smaller than a blog post.

At it’s core, microblogging can be seen as the sending, or posting, of text message by one person to a site on the web.  At the web site, other people can come and visit to read their posts.  Like a blog, the reading can be constrained by the person posting the message.  If they wish to allow it, visitors can subscribe to the messages posted and get them automatically sent to them.

With most microblogging services, the posts can be received on a mobile phone or on a computer.  If on your computer, it can be in your web browser or in a special program that runs on your computer.  When making a post, it can be sent from all the same places (computer, cell phone, browser, desktop program, etc.) as well, so this model presents a very flexible too to connect and communicate with an audience.

The net effect of the service is that you can send messages to not one person, but a whole network of people, or subscribers.  Imaging those subscribers as friends, customers, prospects or stakeholders.  Likewise you can receive message from a network of people in the same way, so you get to determine what is interesting to stay on top of? 

Breaking news stories have emerged in microblogging networks well in advance of when mainstream media can get to it.  Today we can expect that every new agency monitors the microblogging stream of messages for relevant news that they might investigate further and prepare for scheduled mainstream media broadcasts.

How does a business use a microblog? Examine the model I’ve just laid out; a one-to-many, publish & subscribe communication model that the pubic at large can opt-in to, and opt-out just as easily. 

As a retail business owner you might leverage the capability to instantly connect with customers and prospects informing them of specials that have a time limit.  A corporation might insert it into their customer service model, listening and instantly responding to customers that indicate they are unhappy.  A sales team might listen for topics or mentions of their brand (or a competitors!) that indicate when to connect or reconnect with a prospect.

Give subscribers a link to your blog to explore your latest blog post, view an uploaded video or a picture. 

Here’s a very popular thought – how about asking them what it is they want or need so you can then offer specifically that?

How does this fit into the Trinity of Social Media?  The first element was the blog, the blog is a semi-formalized communication with your audience.  It does, or should, require some kind of research, linking and images or video to make the post interesting to your audience.  The frequency of a blog post is however fairly regulated, daily at most, weekly at least or if you like me, when you can get to it while you’re growing the company.

A lot of life happens between those blog posts though – urgent matters arise, meetings are held, pictures are taken for sharing and new prospects and customers find you.  The frequency of a microblog posting is much more frequent than that a blog.  A bearable stream of 2 to 5 posts a day are common and a dozen or so to an interested audience is entirely bearable.

What microblogging tools are best?  Twitter by far has the greatest presence of any public microblogging platform on the planet.  It has been the subject and carrier of participants and first arrivals for breaking news on the 2008 election, USAir plane landing in the Hudson River, and citizen vs. government unrest in Iran.  A lot of good comes out of the Twitter community as well; local meetups that raise funds for charity (@Twestival) and there are microbloggers for almost every cause from AIDS Healthcare (@AIDSHealthcare)to to Saving dolphins and whales (@SaveTheDolphins).  Lastly, it can be just plain fun!  Check out Sockington the Cat (@Sockington) to get a smile as a cat shares her quirky thoughts as she explores her masters house with over 1.2M of her followers know as the Sockington Army.

There are other tools in this space (Jaiku from Google, Plurk, Tumblr all come to mind) and each provides a little different spin on the basic premise of connecting to an audience with a short message. At one point I came across a listing of over 200 microblogging services form around the world, so no matter where you are, there is a microblogging tool and audience for you.

Image from http://www.eventslisted.com/socialmediastrategies/

I earlier posted about the Trinity of Social Media and in it I laid out three fundamental components in the strategy – a blog, a microblog and a social network. 

We get a lot of questions at TSMB Media about social media in general and blogs in particular.  This is a foundational post in a series about The Trinity of Social Media and blogs in particular that I hope you use, enjoy and reference often.

Lets start at the beginning - 

What is a blog?  A blog is a collection of articles, often by the same author or company, that is presented on the Internet, often for public consumption and comment.  It can contain any type of electronic or online content – audio, video or text.  I suspect that when we can transmit smell or touch over the Internet, it’ll contain them as well!  So a blog is not just the sharing of text for everyone, it is a sharing mechanism for whatever kind of content you might have.  I like text on a blog most, but that is because of the way the search engines index content – they work best on text right now. The tools are coming into play that will better index image and video content, but the technology is just not there yet or widely used by the audience – text is easiest to index right now.

What do you talk about on a blog?  Your blog is where you, as the individual or as a company, will create posts (or articles) of 200 or so words that showcase your company, your product, and your business philosophy.  Whatever you feel would be relevant to communicate to your audience of customers, prospects and stakeholders.  I have clients that have not one blog, but three!  One is targeted at their core business audience, one is more personal and one is a place they post industry observance.  Each of them draws a particular type of visitor or reader.  Likewise, I have clients that only have one blog and there, they post just video files with some text for consumption.

The content on a business blog then is primarily about the organization and why you are the company your customer deal with and prospective customers should deal with.  That is not all your blog should contain though – endeavor to share a bit about the company picnic, pictures and posts of internal events, videos of subjects that relate to your products, links to other blogs that support your comments or suppliers and places your products are being used or demonstrated. 

How often do you use or post to a blog?  Frequency of posts is relative to where you are in the life of the blog and the number of current visitors and subscribers.  Early on in the life of your blog you may want to post more often.  Frequent posting leads the search engines to make a determination that the posting source is a relevant news source and should be visited often.  More frequent updates = more frequent search engine visits, more search engine visits = higher authority, higher authority = better placement in search engine ranking.

So just post to a blog and I get readers right? Nope – not quite how it works.  In the Trinity of Social Media under the ‘Platform’ leg of the model, we point out two items; a ‘Posting / Publishing’ leg and one under ‘Reading / Commenting’. 

The reading of complementary and competitive content blogs is a very important step.  Participating in blogsphere will drive readers and comments / links about your blog elsewhere on the web – all good relative to your search engine ranking.

Your blog should be positioned as the foundational element in a social media strategy.  It should be the place you refer people to in your microblog post for more info, it becomes a place you connect to your off-line marketing, and it is where you always link your social network profile.

Why am I blogging? Passion… blogging gives you the control over what you are able to say about your passion, how often you want to say it and the context of how your message is presented.  If you are not passionate about your topic, it will show.  Your audience will not manifest and people will not come back to read your posts.  Zig Ziglar always said “fake it ’til you make it”, referring to being happy or successful.  This tactic will also work in social media… but only for a while.  If you do not find your passion, your voice will waiver and fail.  Find your passion and stick to it. 

What if your passion wanders?  No problem – the underpinning here is that you have to be true to yourself and you have to let it resonate in your blog content.

Are there pros and cons of one platform over another?  Sure, that question is beyond the scope of this post however.  I know I have the WordPress logo in the bubble, but it can be any blog platform you wish – important is to get the content out there and iterate on the message. 

What else do I need to consider relative to my blog? There are a few more parts of what makes a blog work for you.  My perspective is that unless you have a blog presence, the other aspects of the social media trinity lack the ability to create traction for your brand – without that blog there is just no where stable and consistent to point them.

With my involvement in social media approaching it’s fourth year, I see a pattern emerging in the foundational elements of an effective online presence.  There are three elements in the strategy that encompass the tactics that I believe need to be adopted to support a presence.

I see it as particular to the timeline of an exchange or conversation and how it contributes to social capital.  The caveat is of course that no one strategy fits all companies.  If however you are not going to engage for a professionally developed social media strategy, this is a good one to cut your teeth on and get going.

The first point of the triangle is the blog.  Recently social media strategist have suggested that CEO’s and thought leaders might want to reconsider their use of the micro-blogging phenomenon, Twitter.   That’s because as valuable as a CEO’s time is, posting to a micro-blogging tool that is not indexed by search engines represents content that cannot be later referenced in the conversation with an audience.  A blog on the other hand will retain the conversation, search engines will find it and those that want to, will then be able to find the content via search, by referral or via direct reference by other sites. 

The blog is the component that represents the location on the web where you would want to to open or reply to conversations regarding your public strategy, the reasons you’ve invested in the products / services you have and the virtues of the organization (your organization) behind it – it’s the stuff you want the public to know about you, your product and your company. 

It’s also where you’ll respond to comments posted elsewhere that you want to reply to that require more than a few dozen words.  Lastly, and this is a point I’ve debated before with friends, pundits and followers, do not attempt to moderate the comments made to your blog.  You can always delete spam, remove rude remarks and ban people who cannot be civil.  An attempt to moderate a blog implies you do not trust your audience – a mistake when trust is the commodity you have to trade in a social media setting.

The second point of the trinity is micro-blogging.  A lot of life and business happens between the more formal blog posts you make.  Sprinkled into the millions of inane tweets are much more salient tweets that, in a well prepared social media strategy, could serve to connect you and your company to your prospects, customers and stakeholders.  One at a time, the tweets might be irrelevant, but taken in context they can present a more human image of you and what you’re trying to accomplish.  They might also support a powerful ROI, one modeled by Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.TV in his now famous comparison of direct mail, freeway billboard and micro-blogging-based campaign results.

The third point of the triangle is social networking.  You may find that one social network is insufficient to connect to the audience you’re targeting, or you may find that there is a special-built social network that is already targeting your audience.  A Pew Internet Study shows that the majority of Internet users are participants in social networks now and their use is growing.

The social network rounds out the model by enabling a conversation unfettered by you or your company.  Unfettered, but not unmonitored.  You want your users to be able to connect with one another in a place you can connect with them.  They are going to talk about you, your product and your brand – there is just no stopping it.  By providing a platform for the conversation at least you get a chance to engage.

As an opening effort for the do-it-yourselfer’s out there, The Trinity of Social Media is complete with a blog, a micro-blog and a social network.  Pay attention to this, use at least this as a strategy and you’ll get a more positive result in social media than doing any single one of them without a strategy.

Is there a secret to it?  Only if you think there is a secret to strategy and a coordinated effort.  They need to be coordinated and developed to support one another in their operation and in the way they support one another.  Could one be implemented without the other?  Certainly – I present this strategy often enough to recognize that not everyone want to type / input their content. 

What else needs to be answered in this model? a lot.  If the blog was a video blog or a podcast would that work?  If the micro-blog was video or audio based would that count?  Which social network is the right one or should it be special constructed?  How do you get the answer?  subscribe here, join the community at TheSocialMediaBible.com or get a professional on your team and they can step your through the evaluation quickly.

Are there pitfalls to be avoided in the strategy?  Undoubtedly – but the overwhelming failure is to not engage in social media and believe you will somehow not be ignored or that your competition will also be complacent.  Actually, if you are a company and you are ignored, that is an important data point by itself – what might you be doing wrong?

[Update] I had someone suggest I create a Mind Map to help illustrate the Trinity of Social Media.  Neat idea! I used MindManager from Mindjet to create a Mind Map of the Trinity of Social Media.  Make sure you are current with Adobe Acrobat8 and Flash9 installed and this mind map & player should work (MindJet requirements)

If you’re on an Apple / Mac, you may only be able to open the .JPG of the map (click the image to the left).

Reworked my blog a bit last night, using some of the features of the template from WPThemes Magazine that I had not turned on before.  Come visit and let me know what you think of the new layout.

I know there is more to do, so come visit and share what else you think I could add or need to take away.