Social Media ... Starting the experiment

It took me about 6 months to get my head around social media and answer the "why should I bother?" question. Now that I've made the decision to commit the time and figured out what aspects make sense to our business, the experiment is on.

First, the main reason for all this effort, namely building a successful business. This relies on finding new clients and doing a good job, helping them to grow, so they remain clients and social media can help in three ways:

1. Extending our marketing reach
2. Building a reputation based on sharing knowledge
3. Developing relationships with existing and prospective clients.

So, this is what we have started doing with Social Media and why are we doing it ... call it a simple strategy if you will. I'm not sure if it's right, but it's a start.

Website: This sits at the heart of our marketing effort. Social media posts provide back links to pages of interest which helps to optimise the site for search engines, so we get found. We add articles, news and other formal resources to the site, whereas social media provides an outlet for more ad hoc knowledge sharing. 

Blogging: Finding a purpose to blog was key. The LifeSaver Blog is there to help people by providing a repository of thoughts and ideas for saving time, money and hassle. If the content is interesting and valuable then people will follow us and our reputation will grow. And, it increases our web footprint and visibility.

Twitter: Millions of people use Twitter and its an opportunity to increase visibility and reach by creating a following that re-tweet our content to their following. Anna Tweets ideas and interesting web resources, and the blog is linked to it via TwitterFeed. Tools like Twitter Analyzer and Twinfluence help measure the effect.

Online Networks: We have profiles on Linked-In - an online business network for professionals - and are members of 3-4 VA and e-Business Communities. These, and network meetings, help develop personal relationships in specialist areas through our participaton in online communities, groups and forums.

RSS Feeds: As well as following others on Twitter, we use Google Reader to feed information from other blogs and websites. This is how we follow people we are interested in, and is how we find the valuable content that people share over the internet each day - all good knowledge to blog and Tweet to our followers.

Over the coming months we'll be monitoring how we're fairing and how each of these activities is performing, in terms of their value and contribution to our goals.  We'll also blog about our experiences helping clients to exploit social media too.

If you have any thoughts on what we're doing and how we could develop and improve our use of social media I'd love to hear from you.

For more ways to help you save time, money and hassle Search This Blog or visit www.office-lifeline.co.uk