by Ashley Zeckman on Dec 6th, 2011    Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media, Social Networking, User Generated Content

It is no longer a question of IF companies should execute a social media strategy. The question for most companies is HOW to best execute a meaningful and engaging approach that generates results. With so many social media marketing options available, marketers must also decide best practices and what tactics to avoid.

We all make mistakes as marketers and it’s important that we not only learn from those mistakes but share with others so that they can avoid them. I hope that the 20 Social Media Marketing Do’s and Don’ts that I’ve provided within this article not only entertain you but make you think about your current social media strategy. Which tactics are you happy to say you’ve implemented and which mistakes will you admit to?

10 Social Media Marketing Do’s

#1: Save Time, Re-purpose Content.

While this is a great tactic it is important to be thoughtful about the way that you are re-using content. Simply spitting out the same information over and over again will not work. Be sure to change elements of your posts in order to either highlight different information within the post or target a different segment within your audience.

#2: Interaction is Where It’s At!

True interaction via social media can be a tough tactic for many marketers to master. Finding the correct balance of self promotion and intriguing content that inspires action can be very instrumental in using social media appropriately. Take some time to comment or interact with your current clients and prospective clients to show that you’re there, and you care about what they are saying. A simple tactic is to ask questions that inspire a response.

#3: Try Multiple Media Types.

Social media users are interested in fresh new ways of presenting content and ways that they can share it with their networks. In fact certain forms of media such as infographics or videos have a tendency to be much more sharable and appealing. Try to incorporate some new media types into your social media content plan for the year.

#4: For Pete’s Sake! Make it Searchable.

I’m going to go out on a limb and assume that you have some sort of optimization in place for your website. Keep the same strategy in mind for your social media content. If it can be searched it can be optimized.

#5: Keep Calm in a Crisis

The last thing you need is your social media intern “Sarah” having a meltdown at the first sign of something unfavorable being said about your brand on social media. By keeping a level head and having an emergency preparedness plan ready should disaster strike you will be able to calmly and rationally tackle the issue. P.S. Ignoring it doesn’t count as a plan.

#6: Customize the Flow

If you’re like us you have multiple audience members to provide information to online. This could be different verticals or even different departments within a single organization. Do your homework, what sites do your different audience members participate in and what topics are of importance to them?

#7: Don’t Let Just Anyone Represent Your Brand

In the past some companies have encouraged all team members to participate in the promotion of their brands because they worked under the notion that more was better. False. While you don’t want to discourage interaction or squash the dreams of your team it is important that the voice of your social media strategy represents who you are and what you believe in as a company. Trish from accounting that posts on her social network about the copious amounts of alcohol consumed Tuesday night and the terrible time she’s having at work the next day may not be the best resource for networking your company.

#8: What Was the Purpose of This Again?

Remember why you’re using social media in the first place. By setting a set of realistic and attainable goals you will be able to test what works and what doesn’t and adapt your online marketing strategy from there.

#9: Pull Out the Tool Box and Find Your Measuring Tape

If you create a beautiful piece of furniture but can’t fit it through the front door what was the point? The same applies to your online strategy. I don’t want to discourage planning big but make sure that you have an effective means of measuring your success in order to identify the true ROI of your online marketing strategy.

#10: Be Innovative, or at Least Open to Innovation

You don’t have to be cutting edge to run a successful social media program. However, it doesn’t hurt to have your eyes and ears open to the latest trends. Experiment with your strategy to find new and interesting ways to present the same information to your networks.

10 Social Media Marketing Don’ts

#1: Hello? Is Anyone Listening?

One of the worst things that you can do is ignore your audience. I shared an example last week of ChapStick’s reaction to unfavorable responses from their network. Deleting information or simply refusing to answer are a big marketing fail.

#2:Have You Ever Tried to Have a Conversation With a Robot?

If you are like me, at one time or another you’ve found yourself screaming at the automated help desk for your credit card company beyond frustrated that you couldn’t speak with a live representative. Try to spare your online audience of the same exasperation and create thoughtful and conversational content. Leave the robots for the other guys.

#3: I Know You Are But What Am I?

As we’ve said before it is difficult if not impossible to take things back once you’ve said them online. There is nothing wrong with disagreeing with audience members, colleagues, or competitors but there is no need to be impolite. If you take a do unto others approach you will save yourself and your company a lot of damage control.

#4: Accounts Covered in an Inch of Dust.

You did some research and found 10 new social networking platforms that your company is not signed up for. You assign a task to your marketing team to sign up for these accounts, and unfortunately that is as far as it goes. If you cannot commit to utilizing a platform on a regular basis and setting it up in a way that clearly represents your brand then what is the point. Don’t do it just to do it.

#5: One Size Does Not Fit All.

All social media sites are not created equal. As marketers we must consider not only the type of interaction that typically happens on a given platform but also the audience we are trying to reach with that platform. If your social strategy for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are all exactly the same you may want to reconsider your plan.

#6: The Nameless & Faceless Group from Company XYZ

In order to make friends online you need to be friendly. Part of being friendly means adding a personal note to your social media profiles. Snap some impromptu photos around the office and share a little bit about some of the key team members. This is an instance where a little bit of extra effort can go a long way.

#7: Taking Your Relationship To the Next Step.

Romancing your prospects does not end at gaining them as followers. Sure they’ve signed up to receive updates on your company but is that really enough?If your ultimate goal is to gain them as new clients then it is important to have a personalized and meaningful flow of communication that sets next steps in the relationship. An example would be recommending that you have a phone conversation or possibly meet in person to discuss some business opportunities.

#8: We Really Care About You. Just Kidding.

Spending countless time and effort to engage with prospects only to abandon them is a completely useless tactic. Handle these relationships with the same care that you would your other business relationships.

#9: We Have No Idea What is Important To You.

Our company is great, we have so much to offer you, hire us now! I consider each of these to be obnoxious and pitiful tactics for engaging followers. Instead of utilizing your platform as a means for marketing your products and services try instead to offer information that can help solve the business problem of your prospects.

#10: What Are All of These Followers For Anyways?

Now that you’ve built up this community of online followers what can you use it for? Your online community is a great resource for crowdsourcing content and brainstorming ideas. If you want to gather a set of your own statistics why not go to your online community and ask them to participate in a study or survey and share the results with everyone.

I know that a lot of these tips may seem like no brainers to you some of you, but in the fast changing world of social media, mistakes can have a significant impact.

I’m curious to know if you have any other “no brainer” social media tactics that you’d like to share? They can be funny, insightful, pretty much anything you want as long as they’re true. I look forward to laughing, cringing, and sighing with you. If you have a moment to fill out the survey below I’d love to get some feedback from you regarding this post and your personal experience with social media marketing.

A favicon is the image you just before a website’s url that is used as a placeholder in your browser’s favorites or bookmarks..

See below.

Just like a logo, the favicon is a symbol of your company as it is represented online

Creating the .ico file

If your company already has a logo.. then all you have to do to generate the .ico file is go to this website.

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon/

Or.  get the Photoshop plugin so you can save any image as an .ico file.  It should not be any bigger than 16 X 16 px

http://www.telegraphics.com.au/svn/icoformat/trunk/dist/README.html

Installation

On WordPress Blogs.

Under the Appearance Section,  select “snippet options” and then upload your .ico file.

In order for your favicon to show up in some older browsers, you will need to edit your page header just as you would on a regular HTMl site

1. Go to your WordPress Administration Panel.
2. Click on Design (called Presentation in WordPress 2.3.x and below, and Appearance in WordPress 2.7+).
3. Click on Theme Editor.
4. Select the file called Header or header.php to edit the file.
5. Search for the line of code that begins with <link rel="shortcut icon" and ends with /favicon.ico" />.
   Overwrite it, if it exists, or add the following code below the <head> HTML tag.

   <link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/favicon.ico" />

6. Save the changes.

Enjoy

Landing on a disorganized rental website feels like walking into a cluttered house. Prospective renters viewing a disorganized website may become overwhelmed, turned off and eventually leave.

You want prospective renters to feel immediately at ease navigating through your website. Rental hunters are likely on your website to find information on available rental units. If you make it easy for them to find the rental property they’re looking for, it’ll be easier for you to close a rental deal.

Avoid the website clutter and get organized. Use these three tips to organize and structure a better real estate website for your rentals.

Tip #1: Stop and plan.

Before you start creating pages, posting listings and writing unit descriptions, take a step back for a second to plan your website’s structure. Planning the structure of your rental website will help create a natural flow to your pages, which will help prospective renters navigate your site.

Post-its, drawing on paper or Excel spreadsheets are great ways to start planning your website. The top of your flowchart is your homepage, and from there, you can branch out your ideas of your subpages. Planning this ahead will save you the pain of undoing hard work when you start actual website building.

Tip #2: Create smart subpages.

Don’t just place all your listings on one page. Strategically divide your rental properties by common characteristics and create separate pages for each. For example, divide your units by neighborhood or by broker. Put yourself in the shoes of a renter – how will they search your listings? When rental properties are organized, it makes it easier and faster for prospective tenants to find a unit they’re looking for.

Tip #3: Uniformity is important.

Plan your website’s look and feel before choosing colors and adding rental listings. Websites that have pages that look different and inconsistent come off as sloppy and unprofessional. Make sure your website portrays a professional rental real estate business that renters can take seriously.

Webpages of the same type should have the same layout. For example, the East Village listing page layout will be identical to the SoHo listing page. If each page has an introduction about the neighborhood, each neighborhood should have one.

Your website needs to stay consistent with your brokerage’s logo, color scheme and feel. For instance, Redwood Real Estate would probably not have a purple background, unless those were the company colors. Brand your website by putting your logo on every page and keep consistent theme by using your brokerage’s colors.

Of course we are!.   As obvious as it may seem to someone like me, as with any “bubble”, the majority of people will not be convinced until after it “bursts” to see the error of their ways.  A “bubble” is a economic trend defined by considerable investments that exceed the actual value of a product or asset.  The more money that companies invest in social media efforts without a clear understanding of the ROI, the larger the social media bubble will grow.  As Google’s third attempt to replace Facebook fails to make any significant improvements that might cause someone to switch ends up in the same way that Google Buzz and Google Wave have, the larger the bubble will become and closer it will get to “burst”. As I see it, the inevitable “burst” that is what makes it a bubble in the first place, is not going to happen for another year or two. This prediction is not only base on the cyclical nature of any economic bubble that happens every 10 years or so.  The single event that will trigger the burst will begin when Facebook goes public in 2013 and when the revenue expectations exceed that the actual revenue perceived, venture capitalists will pull out, and the stock will plummet.

How can I be so sure?  Just look at the facts.  The main source of revenue for Facebook comes from advertising.

While it is still growing every year, the rate of growth is slowing down. Currently, Facebook’s clickthrough rate is about .04%, and when compared to Google’s 8%, is not as profitable for many businesses with a limited PPC budget. Also, as users become more tech-savvy, are  less likely to be influenced by banner ads..

Still, as the most popular website in the world, with over 800 million users, there must be someway to capitalize on this phenomenon beyond just selling banner ads. And there is, as social media has become an invaluable tool for business, there are hundreds of third party companies that provide social media services claiming to be experts on how to make money on Facebook.  As the ROI of social media has yet to be determined, most of these social media “experts” still rely on banner ads to market their company. Even if they knew what they were doing, getting more people to “like” your page does not guarantee you more customers. With no ads on Google+ how does Google plan on making money?  Not even Mark Zuckerberg knows for sure, and has gone back to school to study business in hopes to figure it out. Let’s hope he does before it’s too late..