Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Groundswell

Since I am reading the book "Groundswell" by Charlene Li & Josh Bernoff I thought I would highlight some of the material that I have found to be important and interesting. I also highly recommend this book to anyone who is wanting to learn more about social media.

What is the Groundswell you might be asking? The groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather from traditional institutions like corporations. One of the first steps in creating a social media strategy is to LISTEN. Listen to what's being said about you/your company online. There are several ways of doing this. You can do Google Alerts on your company (and your competitors), search on Twitter & other social networks, etc. Being involved with social media you can "step into" the conversation that is already taking place about your company/product or service.

When getting started in social media and seeing which aspects of it would be helpful to you the Groundswell book recommends a four-step planning process called the POST method to help you get started. It can help you create a systematic approach to your plan. P=people-what are your custommers ready for? O=objectives-What do you want to accomplish. S=strategy-How do you want your relationships to change with customers? T=Technology-in this step you can pick the right technologies that woudl be a good fit for your company. For more information visit http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell/2007/12/the-post-method.html.

You can also consider your Customer's Social Technographics profile by visiting http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html.

Even though some of the technologies mentioned in this book will change, the basics of setting a strategy in place and being aware of your end goal in mind is very important.

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Making Social Media Headway at Work

I am proud to announce the LinkedIn group I started for my company reached 1,200 members in six months. I know it's not all about quantity but I think that number can help demonstrate to my company that Social Media is something to really put some thought into with our marketing plan and when developing a strategy to engage with our members and prospective members.

Today I also sent out my very first tweet for my company and started researching companies/people to follow. The tweet included a link to an article my director of communications wrote about social media as she is a newbie and just learning it. She's more of a newbie than me but I love her openess to dabbling into learning more about it. It was fun when I found one of the CEO's from our member company who is now a regular tweeter.

I'm thrilled I was able to talk my VP & events director into considering having an event for 300 people on social media this fall versus the spring or later. The task given to me...find the sponsor(s) and panelists and we can start planning it. If I can find sponsors soon, the event could be in September or October. I think October is more ideal. How kewl would it be to exceed our normal attendance of 200-300 people at our monthly breakfast events to something like 400+ people? I would love it and that's my goal!

I think I can do it too, especially by offering discounts for people who retwee (RT) the event announcement and coming up with a fun contest. Stay tuned, more fun to come. I also find it funny now how much I don't listen to the radio because my mind is focused on all that I've been learning regarding social media and thinking about fun & creative ways to apply this to my company. Woow...12:40am. Need to go to sleep so I can dream more about social media....zzzz

Little sleep for social newbie

Are you a social newbie who is getting little sleep because your mind is racing 24/7 after learning all of this new information from webinars, social media classes/events? Are you like me attending about 3 events a month on social media?

Here I am up once again until about 12:30 in the morning finishing up a night of researching many sites from my Twitter account to visiting mashable.com to typing in key words to learn more. Social media is everywhere and it's so exciting as I feel I'm a little bit ahead of fellow co-workers, friends, people I meet, etc. I love to share my knowledge and what I've been learning. So much fun!

One reason why I'm also getting little sleep is I'm constantly thinking about ways to integrate social media into the company I work for. I love the support from my director who can see my passion/enthusiasm and knows one reason I want to learn this stuff is I really think it can help with lead generation (my job is sales) plus has an incredible reach worldwide through all of the marketing channels.