The Social Media Marketing List: 45 things you should be doing but probably aren't
Learn HTML. Learn. It. It's not that hard. Read Pearsonified's cool post about semantic markup for blogs if you want to dive deep. If title tags make you itch, then just focus on learning the following HTML tags: P, H1, H2, H3, A, UL, OL, LI, STRONG, and EM. Come ON. It's only 10 tags. That'll be enough to keep you going for a while.
Learn to listen. Wait! Don't kick me in the tailbone! I've got specifics: Download my free e-book about Google Reader as a social media monitoring tool and use it. That'll cover you for a while. Later, look at using something more robust, like Trackur.
Learn to help. Now that you're listening, set a goal: Answer one question a day. Don't make a sales pitch! But provide a useful answer to one person every day. The question might be related to your business, or it might not. Either way, your answers will earn you trust, friends and a reputation. Reputation = currency.
Track results. Use Tweetmeme, bit.ly and other services that track audience response.
Get a Tweetmeme account.
Get a bit.ly account.
Don't track ROI. You can't track return on investment from social media. Not directly, anyway. Don't set that expectation, and smash it anywhere it shows up. Social media marketing is about building a reputation that you can trade on to boost other marketing efforts.
Don't trust anyone who says they can track ROI. I've looked at dozens of tools promising to track social media ROI. They all end up tracking clicks, which you can already do with free stuff like Google Analytics. None tie reputation to ROI. Because they can't.
Destroy all auto-follow software. If you're using Twitter, avoid auto-follow programs and all other schemes that promise to get you 'thousands of followers overnight'. Auto-following is like the guy with the major nose whistle next to you in the library: Persistent, maddening, and may end in violence.
Avoid schemes. Following #1 a bit further, avoid anything that promises to make social media marketing an 'overnight success' for your business. There is no overnight success in social media! K? Shoot for overnight success and you'll end up like the last 3-4 armies that tried to take Moscow: Out in the cold, with no friends left.
Take ownership. Of yourself. Use Michael Streko's most excellent Knowem service to own a profile on every major social media site. That'll keep nasty buggers from stealing your name and/or brand.
Take ownership. Of the person/brand otherwise known as yourself. Be sure to also set up profiles, particularly on Twitter and Facebook, for permutations on your name. If you've already got @thebikeshop, try to get @the_bike_shop, too. If you can't, so be it. But it pays to own your name as completely as possible.
Never lie. Never. NEVER EVER. The social media universe has the combined lie-detecting power of every mom, dad, cynic and psychic online. They. Will. Catch you.
Own. Then apologize. If you screw up (WHEN you screw up), don't be defensive. Just say "Argh, I'm sorry, I really screwed up there". Own the mistake. Then apologize. You can even take it a step further and make some contribution/offer to win folks back.
Don't be mean.
Read more: http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2009/12/the-social-media-marketing-list.htm#ixzz0cGHOBsH6
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