Increase Your Company’s Social Media Presence

Being an interactive agency, maintaining a social presence is something we try to constantly maintain.  Our recent merge with Efficience has provided us with more social media opportunities, which has also provided more room for social media improvement.

One of the biggest misperceptions of social media is that it falls solely on the social media director or manager. In order to make your company more social, it is key to get everyone in the company involved, or at least aware, in the benefits of social media.

Here are 6 ways to increase your company’s social media presence:

1. Give Interactive Tutorials

Some of our co-workers are not currently active in social media. Some simply don’t want to be, and others have never learned what it is about.  Fun and easy web-based tutorials are a great way to inform co-workers in a form they can access both in and out of the office.

2. Focus on Fun Ways to Use Twitter

Some people have strong opinions about Facebook; they either love or hate it. To avoid this, focus on a platform that is just as helpful to your company but is less familiar. Twitter is so fun, and the opportunities are endless. A good way to get everyone involved is show tweets of comedians or show hashtags of commentary during an episode of The Big Bang Theory. This will show that Twitter can relate to each co-worker and will show how Twitter can increase information in any certain business or industry.

3. Find Influencers Within the Company

In our office, there are obviously some people that love social media more than others. The social media gurus can be helpful tools around the office if any questions or ideas arise.

4. Launch a Fun Contest or Internal Campaign

We love launching fun social media contests for our clients. Not only are these contest fun, they are also very successful.  Reviewing the success of these campaigns, it only makes sense to create a internal contest among co- workers. We have yet to launch something like this, but the ideas are flowing!

5. Engage

As you push social media throughout your co-workers, assist their progress by engaging with them. Retweet, like, comment, or subscribe to something they do. This positive (hopefully) feedback will boost their social media confidence.

6. Get creative!

Remember: social media is fun and the opportunities are endless! By involving all your co-workers, more creative ideas for social media strategies, content, and contests will form. This will provide your social media presence and, in turn, your company with greater external potential.

For different insight and more information on this topic, check out Mashable‘s article, How to Make Your Company More Social.

When writing a retweetable tweet is your goal…

Getting a tweet retweeted is, for many, the ultimate goal because more eyes on a tweet means more potential followers. In order to get your 140 character blurb picked up and retweeted by all of your followers, you need to follow a few simple rules:

1. Include a link – There is no way you’re going to be able to say everything you want to with 140 characters, so point people to the place where they can read the rest of the story. Be sure to use a URL shortener like bit.ly so you don’t use up too many characters. Check out this list of the top 20 retweetable words and phrases.
2. Mix personal with professional – Too many “I’m at the mall” tweets are not going to boost sales for your business. And too many tweets to your business website will bore your friends to death. Make sure their is an equal work/play mix to your tweets. If you use Twitter primarily for business, keep things professional, but add some personality to your tweets so your followers get to know who you are.
3. Use your Twitter profile wisely – Even though it is a short amount of text, be sure to take full advantage of your Twitter profile. Immediately tell people who you are and what you are into. Provide a link back to your personal blog, website, or LinkedIn page. This will add credibility to your tweets.
4. Don’t use all 140 characters – Leave room for people to add their own pizazz when retweeting. Edit your tweets down using accepted abbreviations so your followers don’t have to worry about that when retweeting.
5. Be original – If you are retweeting a tweet, add something to it. If you can edit the original tweet down a bit and add your own two cents, you’ll be able to take credit for part of it, which will garner followers over time. Be careful with the retweeting, though. Too much of a good thing isn’t always wonderful! You want to engage followers in your own conversations as well.

Facebook and Twitter at the altar

We love this YouTube video and L.A. Times article that shows how prevalent social networking has become (even in a joking manner)!

Groom updates Facebook, Twitter at the altar

December 2, 2009, W.J. Hennigan

At nearly every wedding, there’s that picture-perfect moment when the couple seals the nuptials with a kiss.

This moment is usually preceded by vows to love and obey. However, Dana Hanna of Abingdon, Md., took the time to whip out his cellphone and update his relationship status on Facebook and peck out a Tweet, declaring he had just been married. (He also handed a cellphone over to his wife to do the same.)

Lucky for you the whole ordeal was posted on YouTube — by Hanna himself.

Hanna explains on YouTube that he did it for laughs and that the gag was a surprise to everybody in attendance except the minister. This would explain his wife’s look as he pulled “his” and “hers” cellphones from his tuxedo pockets.

 “This was just done to be funny — we really don’t Facebook THAT often :),” he wrote on YouTube. “I have a lot of family scattered around the country and we all use Facebook a lot to keep in touch.”

Here’s that tweet from the altar: “Standing at the altar with @TracyPage where just a second ago, she became my wife! Gotta go, time to kiss my bride. #weddingday”

Hanna’s Twitter moniker is TheSoftwareJedi. And looking at some of his recent tweets, it looks like he’s caught some flak for wanting to keep the world updated on his personal life on a second-by-second basis.

“To all the criticizers of my video out there questioning my sanity: You don’t get it. I was having fun at MY wedding! Loosen up, have fun!”

“Elf Yourself” is back with a social media kick

In 2006, OfficeMax jumped into the viral scene with the Elf Yourself virtual greeting cards. Last year, 35 million cards were sent out all over the world.

The site lets you stick your head, your kid’s head, your friend’s head, anyone’s head, onto a dancing elf body. You manipulate the photo until it fits perfectly in the space and voila…a viral phenomena.

This year they’ve taken the social media route. You can now tweet a link to your Dancing Elf on Twitter, post it to your Facebook wall, or embed the video in your website/blog. There’s also an option to sign-in with Facebook Connect and use your Facebook photos in the “Elfing” process.

And, as if that’s not enough, you can pay $4.99 to download the video and save it for years to come…my kid’s gonna hate me for this some day.

What is social media?

“Social media is online content created by people using highly accessible and scalable publishing technologies. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how people discover, read and share news, information and content.” —Wikipedia

A friend emailed me today and asked, “Am I missing out if don’t Tweet?”. And I replied by telling him that unless he had relevant content to share with his audience, it probably wasn’t worth his time…or theirs.

Social media is not just a contest to figure out how many friends you can make or Tweet followers you can grab. Social media is about sharing your content with an audience, engaging that audience and eventually, building a strong relationship with that audience based on your expertise.

Tippingpoint Labs has a social media model with content at its core: create, share, engage. Their advice:

“Create first, engage last. The typical approach is backwards. Creating content needs to come first. This is where your value offering is. This is the foundation for engagement. Because at the end of the day, what your customers want to be engaging with is your content.”

The old adage “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t apply to social media. You have to work at it every day. Study your audience, figure out what they need, create relevant content, and then share it.