You could be forgiven for thinking that if you are not head-over-heels with Social Media then you must be behind the times and missing the wave.
You could sign up for every account under the sun and find yourself spending your entire day updating such sites; so what is a sensible balance?
Why bother? Well it’s simple, you need people to engage with your charity/business and as people are getting increasingly lazy it’s better to go to where they are than hope they’ll search for you. Also Search Engines are adding more and more ‘Social Media’ results when you do search and ideally those will all be you.
The other reason is simple: we don’t know what the future holds but registering/reserving your brand’s name now will save you a headache in future as there are only so many usernames available and they’re going fast.
Big Social Players
The biggest network with 500+ million users and many of them no longer students or hip 20/30-somethings make it hard to ignore. A Facebook Page is starting to become a must, different from a personal Facebook Profile (though looks very similar) it can be found in search engines and you ‘Like’ as opposed to ‘Friend’ it.
Your personal privacy can be maintained and there are many custom things you can do, including inserting web pages within Facebook itself. It’s also easy to advertise specifically to your target demographic, eg. “39-42 year old females based in Sheffield with the words ‘pottery’ on their profiles”.
Do many tweets make a twit as David Cameron infamously suggested? A short message service of 140 characters or less with specially shortened links to relevant photos or links on the web it has grown massively in popularity, though is about a 10th the size of Facebook and certainly not as user-friendly.
The main draw of Twitter is that it is bang-up-to-the-minute updates, so if you don’t have that kind of work then it’s probably not worth it at the moment. That said, it can be linked to automatically publish your Facebook Page status updates.
YouTube
If you have video that you want to distribute online and don’t mind receiving comments on then why not host it on YouTube? It saves on hosting costs, works on all devices including iPhones/iPads (which don’t work with common flash players).
The only case where you don’t want to do this is if your brand is quite exclusive, in which case using a service like Vimeo provides a smart player but without the social comments. Note: YouTube is a Google product so if you have a Gmail or other Google service then you’ve already got a Google account.
FourSquare
A relative newcomer, this service is all about location and a bit like a game of sorts. You ‘check in’ to various locations and can become the Mayor if you’ve checked in the most in a particular location. As you check in at say your local Domino’s Pizza you may get a discount on a certain day and the Mayor might get a free one!
The value in this is that if you have a specific location, eg. a shop, then you can offer discounts that help to increase customer loyalty or even encourage them to drop in if they wouldn’t otherwise. As the community FourSquare grows it has an encouraging effect as people leave ‘tips’ like ‘try the vanilla milkshake, it’s divine’.
- Google tried with ‘Buzz’ and ‘Wave’ but has yet to really take hold, indeed Wave is being canned, but don’t write them off yet. Google Lattitude is a similar service to FourSquare that is growing, albeit slowly
- Microsoft is closing down their ‘Spaces’ service but MySpace is still a credible
- Apple has launched ‘Ping’ with an eye on being social in the music-buying space within their iTunes software, certainly if you’re in the music business it needs to be considered
- Social Bookmarking services like Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon and so on are definitely interesting and here to stay though their popularity has dipped a little of late as browser bookmarking has improved dramatically, including the ability to synchronise across computers and Facebook’s new ‘Like’ button
Double or Triple It Up
With limited time resources you can’t spend your entire time online, indeed traditional marketing methods are still relevant and valid and you have a business to run. It’s OK to duplicate content to some degree as each social media method is delivered differently and hopefully to a slightly different group too.
Example 1 (an article/ news item)
- Publish it on your website
- Link to it on your Facebook Page (if not automatic)
- Tweet a snappy link about it (if not automatic from Facebook)
- Put it on YouTube
- Embed it in your website with some text
- Link to it on your Facebook Page (if not automatic)
- Tweet a snappy link about it (if not automatic from Facebook)
Don’t forget Email!
All of this is lovely, but you have to get people to find you somehow on these services. If you’re not sending out email updates to your clients/supporters then forget all of the above and start with them. They are by far the most effective means of driving people to you and your services, often tripling website traffic.
In your emails you can then link to your various Social Media locations just like you should on your website. Do double-check though that you use their approved logos.
Getting Started
As always, start with what you know. If you have a personal Facebook account then start there, at least the interface will be familiar. Don’t try to add them all at once, just get good at a couple.
When you sign up there’s almost always an opportunity to check your address book to find ‘friends’/'followers’ and they will be initially your biggest social media supporters. Often it will seem a little pointless and disheartening at first – “why hasn’t anyone ‘liked’ or ‘commented’ on my post?” but stick at it. The more regular you are the more people will pay attention.
All the above services have a mobile form, so if you have a ‘SmartPhone’ like an Android, Blackberry, iPhone or Nokia N-series then see if you can find the ‘App’. The main advantage is that while sitting at a desk it seems like an additional extra to do an update, but if waiting for a train or bored in a supermarket queue it’s much less of an imposition and often the kind of place where you are thinking/ seeing interesting things worth commenting about.
Of course, if you need help with social media then just get in touch 
