#I’m on Twitter. Now What? #How to Think About Social Media & Brand Management

1. #I’m on Twitter. Now What?#How to Think About Social Media & Brand Management

2. About Christina Dennaoui • Brand Reputation Analyst for StrategyOne, a division of Edelman • Analyze reputation surrounding brands & companies in social and traditional media • Optimized websites for search engines & created social media marketing strategies • Clients include P&G, Starbucks, eBay, PayPal, Sara Lee, Kohler.

3. Assumptions About You • Have limited marketing and PR resources • Most of you ARE your marketing and PR resources • Knowledge of social media • Present in major social media spaces (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, etc) • Want more digital strategies & tactics

4. What’s the Point? • This presentation is not about selling you on social media marketing and branding. • This presentation is about helping you figure out how social media can benefit your marketing and branding efforts.

5. “I realize everyone is telling you social media is a unicorn, but maybe it’s just a horse?”– Jay Baer, social media strategist

6. Current Trends in Social Media • More aggregators and digital curators; fewer original content creators • The rise of social search and social web: experiencing the Internet through personal, social networks • Open Graphs: using personal networks as central hubs for using the Web

7. “Social media is just a buzzword until you come up with a plan.” – Anonymous

8. Where to Start? Questions to Consider Prior to Beginning Social MediaIntegration:  • Why do we want to participate? • What is ourparticipation about? Trends? • Is it an avenue for gigs? For Brand Awareness? • What are our goals for participation? • How will we measure success?

9. How To Start? 4 Steps Toward Social Media Integration: 1. Active Listening, then Participation2. Produce Sharable Social Media Content 3. Participate In and Create Collaborative (Niche) Communities 4. Establish Expertise or Authority in a Specific Field

10. You and your work are a brand. Act accordingly.

11. Google Yourself, A Lot • Social Media monitoring is an opportunity to track your reputation and work online. • Should be done constantly, at least daily Three advantages to SM monitoring: 1) Collecting all positive and negative content surrounding you and your work 2) Identifying potential influencers and advocates of you and your work 3) Discover organically developing industry and cultural trends that could create an opportunity to develop future work

12. Basic Monitoring Tools • Use SM search tools to track your reputation across all or specific social media channels - Social Mention - Ice Rocket • Create a ‘Real-Time’ search dashboard by integrating RSS feeds or search widgets into a iGoogle page • Twitter search widget • RSS feed of name-based search queries

13. Most of you won’t ever go viral. Get over it.

14. Getting Found Online • Search Engines work by crawling the HTML keyword content of webpages • Use SEO tactics to make your website more search engine friendly • Create alternative HTML pages for your website’s Adobe Flash content • Add keyword tags to your website’s photos • Add content including the keywords you want searchers to use to find your work

15. Example: Ami Vitale, Cultural Documentarian Ami’s blog: • Has photography collections integrated in a Wordpress platform for a complete content suite • Uses wordclouds to create crawlable keyword content & link to other pages within the website. • Integrated blog creates interesting content around images • Showcases images in slideshow instead of Flash, allowing them to act as HTML links and making them crawlable.

16. “You don’t have enough time to be both unhappy & mediocre. It’s not just pointless; it’s painful.” – Seth Godin

17. Create or Curate Original Content • Establish expertise by finding, linking to or creating interesting, original content • Refer to general or industry specific publications or aggregators for interesting content (e.g., Social Photo Talk, Buzzfeed, Photoshelter). • Linking to content can increase credibility and exposure • Blogs or websites with specific themes are usually more successful than sites with no clear themes • Be prepared to put in some work. Schedule posts or tweets in advance to cut down on time

18. Bigger is NOT Always Better • Participate in smaller, niche social media communities (e.g., Tumblr, Ning) • Niche communities are generally comprised of enthusiasts and ‘topic geeks.’ • Ning, a website that allows users to create their own social network, has over 1400 groups interested in photography. • Tumblr offers custom themes, widgets and project assistance to photographers, as well as a directory of user recommended photogs.

19. Examples of Niche Communities

20. Conclusion • There is no one magic plan to social media success. • Consider your time and resources when creating personal SM strategies. If you’re loaded, consider hiring a SM team. • Explore your options. Try every SM tool available. Stick with what makes the most sense for you. • Make your online and offline connections meaningful and relevant. Don’t network for the sake of adding new people to your social networks. • In the end, your social and professional connections are what help you land gigs. Social Media complements those connections but they do not replace them.

21. Contact Christina Dennaoui Twitter: @cdennaoui Blog: Modern & Im/material Things (modernandmaterialthings.tumblr.com) Email: cdennaoui at gmail.com Website: www.cdennaoui.com