10 Easy Steps to Social Marketing – and it’s all free!

One of my greatest web frustrations is the mass of information yet the lack of strategy regarding Social Marketing.

I kept looking for someone to tell me the 10 easy steps to getting started in the world of Social Media. So I decided to create my own - here’s my breakdown of how to get started. And all the tools below are free.

1. Set up your Logo. Branding is crucial, and you want to make sure that your brand is consistent across all platforms.
2. Start blogging. Content is king. So if you have nothing to offer to “the conversation” on the web, then don’t waste your time with Social Marketing. Figure out how you want to position yourself in the market. And start producing (or intelligently summarizing) the content that your listeners are interested in. If you aren’t set up with WordPress or don’t feel comfortable with it, then just go to WordPress.com and set up a free account. It’s not that difficult; in fact, it’s easy – and powerful. Just make sure to keep your blogs bite-size, use visuals and create alluring titles!
3. Get your Accounts set up. That means (a) a Facebook Page (b) one or more Twitter sites (I separate my personal tweets from my business tweets) (c) one or more YouTube channels (d) a LinkedIn group.
4. Start following opinion leaders. It’ll help you learn how to best blog, how to best tweet and how to best use YouTube. By “follow”, I mean (a) follow on Twitter (b) become a Fan of relevant Facebook Pages (c) Subscribe to Blogs that matter to you – most blogs let you set up an Email subscription (d) Subscribe to the YouTube Channels of valued leaders. For example, while I follow Max Lucado on my personal twitter, I follow Gizmodo on my business twitter – to help me stay abreast of the latest trends in gadgets. I subscribe to Problogger’s blog, and I also subscribe to MarketingProfessor’s YouTube channel. Lastly, I highly advise you to configure your SmartPhone so that you can easily view Facebook and Twitter. If you’re like me, then time is precious. Having quick access on my Sprint EVO 4G helps me stay abreast of all the trends.
5. TweetDeck and HootSuite are the two best products that allow you to send and receive Social messages. They aggregate the messages for you. I create a message and then choose which channels I will push it out through. Very convenient. And best of all, you can set up filters (such as “CRM”) to help you stay abreast of the conversations that matter to you.
6. Bit.ly is a simple tool that you can connect directly into TweetDeck. It helps you create personalized links to the pages you are marketing. And you will love the reports it provides. If you use it right, Bitl.y will help you discover which of your links (and blogs) are really drawing readers and which aren’t. You might be surprised!
7. YouTube. Although this might appear daunting at first, most cameras these days allow you to easily create video content. This is the wave of the future, so hop on board now! It ain’t going away. There are fantastic tools out there like Camtasia – as well as some great free utilities  from DVDVideoSoft. Create the videos, shorten them, convert to Flash and upload to YouTube. I do it all with DVDVideoSoft. Did I say free! And don’t worry about the quality for now. No one expects you to be the next Steven Spielberg. By subscribing to popular YouTube channels, you will become aware that the people want content, not beautiful editing. If it takes you a month to edit a video, it might just be “old news” by the time you post it. Web 2.0 is fairly forgiving.
8. Gadwin Printscreen. Although there are more professional tools out there, I have been using Gadwin for 8 years. It installs in 2 minutes, it’s free and it is easy to configure. It is probably the tool I use the most! Everyone loves a picture, and Gadwin puts you in the driver’s seat.
9. SlideShare. This online PowerPoint reader allows you to upload your PowerPoints and then embed them into your blog or website. Very easy to use, and it makes your blog look slick! Again, this last tip is more about your blog than your social marketing. But it definitely helps to embed visual content into your blog – be it JPG pictures, YouTube videos or SlideShare presentations.
10. Configure your blog to automatically feed into your Facebook Page, your Twitter feed and your LinkedIn group. So when this blog went live, my 3 Social Marketing pages were immediately updated. FeedBurner is a great tool to help you with this. You will likely also need to use your RSS feed. This is probably the most complex part of the whole experience. And if it is too complex initially, then skip it and instead promote your published blog manually via TweetDeck.

So whether your CRM is Sage ACT 2011, Microsoft Dynamics CRM or SugarCRM, you need to get going on your Social Marketing strategy!

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