Start Social Media Marketing by Listening
OK… your company is ready to launch a social media marketing initiative, what should be your first step? Should it be blogging? MySpace? FaceBook? Setting up a lens on Squidoo?
No… first you need to set up your listening tools to understand what is being said about your company, your brand or your key executives. Before you decide to engage your customers, you need to understand how people are feeling about your brand. What voices are the most influential? Where do you need to have a presence to target where discussions are already happening?
An effective monitoring system allows your company to be proactive and respond to complaints in as little as 15 minutes after they are posted. By actively monitoring social media your company can develop a reputation of reaching out to and helping customers. By reacting quickly to criticism you are more likely to convert complaints into product evangelists.
There are a number tools that do a very good job.
- Google Alerts let you track web, blogs, news and groups for any phrase you want. (Free).
- Trackur monitors all major search engines, not just Google (Starting at $18/mo)
- Brandwatch combines alerts combined with data analysis. (Free weekly alert and paid plans)
- BuzzMonitor is an open-source social media aggregator that you host on your own web server. Software downloads are free. Developed by The World Bank.
One of the most important things you can do after getting traffic to your site form social marketing is to keep that traffic.
Bad traffic with low click throughs and high bounce rates can have a detrimental effect on your rankings where as good traffic that clicks through your site and sticks around has a positive effect on your rankings. Usability, therefor is a key consideration.
Comment by The SEO Files — September 20, 2008 @ 5:15 am