Tag Archives: online social networking

Permalink to Social Media Budgets Have Plateaued. Here’s What Communicators and Digital Strategists Should Do.

Social Media Budgets Have Plateaued. Here’s What Communicators and Digital Strategists Should Do.

by Angie Sanders|on March 11, 2013 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , |Leave a comment

plateau credit commonsdotwikimediadotorgRussell Working with Ragan.com told us in January that social media budgets won’t increase in 2013.  According to a Ragan/NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions survey, “only 28 percent saw their budgets—excluding salaries and benefits—increase in 2012, while 69 percent stayed the same. Prospects were only slightly better in 2013, with 62 percent of budgets projected to remain static.”

Although this may sound like unfortunate news, this budget plateau tells us two things. One, companies must either be happy with the results they’re currently getting from their social media efforts or they just don’t have an understanding of how an increased spend could improve these results.

Two, it tells us that the days of easy social media money—making a living from providing strategy sans execution, evaluation and results—are gone. As social media has matured, companies have moved through three stages:

  1. What is social media?
  2. Social media could probably help our business. Let’s give it a try.
  3. We’ve been using social media for a while, but what’s it really getting us? How’s it affecting our bottom line? What kinds of things can we do to maximize our results? What kinds of data and analytics can we use to verify our successes?

Patrick Coffee with PRNewser told us that big brands are starting to bring social media efforts in-house. This move is possibly prompted by a desire to monitor these efforts closely and charge people with social media who have a closer connection to the company and brand.

Working’s article also shows us that though social media budgets are leveling off, the size of these budgets lie on opposite ends of the spectrum. “Twenty-three percent of budgets are below $1,000, while 14 percent top $100,000.”

“Social media manager” salaries run as low as $25,000 and as high as $125,000. (“Survey respondents ranged from “nonprofits to multinational social media sophisticates.”) This tells us that expected outcomes of social media strategy/tactics range as widely as budgets and salaries. For example, a social media budget of $1,000 says that an employee has been assigned the responsibility of handling social media — in addition to her normal duties —and “brand awareness” is probably the primary (or sole) goal of these efforts. On the other hand, budgets of $100,000 and above probably account for salaries and paid social media tactics. The primary goals of these efforts are directly tied to the company’s bottom line.

So what can communications professionals and digital strategists do to work within these fixed budgets, especially when they’re closer to $1,000 than $100,000?

  1. Set goals and expectations from the beginning. Be clear about what the client wants to achieve and what’s realistic for the money they have to spend.
  2. Don’t overpromise. If anything, under-promise and over-deliver.
  3. Work from where the client is right now. Clients’ understanding of social media and what’s possible may vary. Work with their current aptitude levels and slowly educate them on the tools and tactics that can maximize their results.
  4. Don’t be afraid to say “no” or to scrap client ideas from the budget if funds are limited. Don’t tell a client that their idea is possible when their budget says otherwise.

Share with us: Have you seen an increase, decrease or plateau in your clients’ or employer’s social media budgets? How do you deal with decreased budgets and increased expectations?

monarchMonarch is our content marketing and community engagement support product—a resource that backs you up and leaves you to free to do the job you’ve always done successfully. Monarch breaks engagement efforts into four packages that allocate set hours per month for content creation, community building and engagement. When you choose the package that works best for you, you know exactly what you’re getting per month and how much you’re paying for it.

Permalink to Why Auto-Tweeting Blog Content is Completely Okay

Why Auto-Tweeting Blog Content is Completely Okay

by Angie Sanders|on January 27, 2013 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , |Leave a comment

Let us start by saying that auto-tweeting blog content is completely okay, but there are some purists out there that frown upon automatically and repeatedly sharing “old content” on Twitter.

Okay, what are we considering “old content”? Unless our blog content falls into the TENS category—time, event or news-sensitive—we let it live for months. When we’re compiling research for an industry-specific e-book or white paper, we stick with content that’s been written in the past year, but of course, we’ll take a more recent article or blog post over one that was published earlier in the year.

The reason we, along with everyone else, auto-tweet our blog content is because the Twitter sphere is a never-ending vacuum of content. When you look at your timeline, you’re only capturing a snapshot of all the content the people you follow have published. Auto-tweeting ups the chances that our content will be seen by more members of our audience.

So which auto-tweeters irritate us the most? Two types: people who auto-tweet the same content every 30 minutes and people who do this without any other engagement with their followers.

The top three functions Twitter serves for us is sharing content, consuming content and interacting with others. Although I can see why some are annoyed by the auto-tweet function, sharing content automatically doesn’t take the place of engagement.

What suggestions do we have for bloggers and other content creators on how to use the auto-tweet function correctly? First, continually evaluate your content. The auto-tweet tool you use should allow you to pull posts from the rotation. Remember the TENS rule—any content that’s time, event or news-sensitive should probably be taken out of rotation a few weeks to a month from its original publication date. Or else your audience will be wondering why you’re still talking about that when they’ve clearly moved on to the next hot story.

Second, you should continue to share content that provides how-twos and strategy. If there have been any updates or changes to the advice you’ve given, write an update post, link back to the original post, but replace the original post with the new post in your auto-tweeting rotation.

Third, Twitter isn’t a set-and-forget medium. Read others’ content and share it. Ask them questions. Respond to others’ questions to you. Thanks folks for re-tweeting your content. And follow through on your social media strategy.

Wait, you do have a strategy, don’t you?


Share with us: Do you auto-tweet content? How do you decide which content to continually share?

 

Read 6 Myths Blocking Your Social Media Engagement, our special report that addresses misconceptions that are keeping your company from investing time into tools that will can help increase two-way communication with your customers—current and potential. Print this report. Read it on the train ride home. Highlight key points. Share it with your colleagues. And please, jump in the social media marketing game and get started.

 

Permalink to How to Use Content to Build Thought Leadership in 6 Steps

How to Use Content to Build Thought Leadership in 6 Steps

by Angie Sanders|on January 21, 2013 |in Content marketing, Just good business, Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |Leave a comment

thought leader credit damiencummingsdotblogspotdotcomAt a Washington Network Group entrepreneurs roundtable event last Wednesday night, speaker Angelique Rewers, also known as The Corporate AgentTM used two terms during her talk that caused some audience members to look at her like she’d sprouted eight arms: Content marketing and thought leader.

She explained that content marketing involves creating and distributing relevant and valuable information to attract, acquire, and engage your target audience and lead them to a desired action. “You want to be a thought leader,” she said.

“But the challenge is how do you provide good content without giving away all your strategy, right?” asked an audience member.

You may remember that I wrote a blog post a while back that reassured you that you can afford to give away some of your ideas without fearing that a potential client will run with them and never give you or your business a second thought.

The keys to content marketing and framing yourself and others in your company as thought leaders are to: 1. Give your audience simple information that they can either act on right now or that answers pressing questions and 2. Plant a seed in the audience’s mind that you and your company are the leading authorities on this subject.

Face it. If your audience doesn’t get this information from you, then they’ll perform a Google search and find someone else who’ll give them the answer.

Business owners think that being a thought leader means that you have spout Confucius-like, life-changing tidbits that no one else is close to even thinking about. If you can do this, then congratulations. But there’s not much new under the sun. It just has to be new to your audience.

So here are six steps toward establishing yourself and your team members as thought leaders online.

  1. Think about the pillars on which you operate your business.
    What are your company’s top business offerings? Why do you offer these services? Why should your audience come to you for these services?
  2. Define who you’re serving with those pillars.
    This is an important one. Who is your audience? Who usually buys the services you offer? Be very specific with this description. What do these people do for a living? What do they look like? What do they read? Even better, identify actual points of contact at your client organizations and use them to create a detailed profile of your target audience for each of your services.
  3. Determine what questions your audience asks.
    When potential clients approach you, or your ears perk up after meeting a potential client, what is it that they’re seeking? What problems do they tend to come to your company to solve before they become a client? What are their pain-points?
  4. Consider how you can help your audience answer these questions quickly and the best ways to present the information.
    Now that you’re familiar with your audience’s common questions and pain-points, how can you address these in succinct and interesting ways? Should your company start a blog? Which team members should contribute? Perhaps you should begin shooting short videos? Is there information that could be presented in infographics? Do you have PowerPoint presentations that you can upload to Slideshare?
  5. Create an editorial calendar.
    This step is tricky, but helpful. Determine all the channels through which you’d like to share content (blogging, video, e-books, etc.). Then create a calendar that details when these items will go live and be available to share. For example, you may decide that your company will publish four blog posts and create four short videos per month, release one e-book per quarter, and curate content via social media on a daily basis. Your editorial calendar should provide a brief description of subject matter for each piece of content, estimate when each will be completed/posted, and how all content will be shared.
  6. Be consistent.
    I realize that we live in an instant-results kind of society, but this process takes time. Be consistent with your content creation. Monitor what kinds of content resonate best with your audience and keep giving them what they want.

Share with us: How do you define thought leadership? How are you using content to raise your/your company’s professional profile in your field?


Read 6 Myths Blocking Your Social Media Engagement, our special report that addresses misconceptions that are keeping your company from investing time into tools that will can help increase two-way communication with your customers—current and potential. Print this report. Read it on the train ride home. Highlight key points. Share it with your colleagues. And please, jump in the social media marketing game and get started. 

 

Permalink to 3 Gems: The Top 3 Things You’re Missing By Not Using Google+ (Cynthia de Lorenzi)

3 Gems: The Top 3 Things You’re Missing By Not Using Google+ (Cynthia de Lorenzi)

by Angie Sanders|on January 15, 2013 |in Social Media, What's on TV |tagged , , , , , , |Leave a comment

CDLAre you on team Google+ yet? This platform is dynamic and helps to boost great content in the Google search rankings. But why is a tool developed by the undisputed champion of all things search and web related still treated like a social media stepchild? In the debut episode of our new web series, “3 Gems,” Cynthia de Lorenzi, gives us three reasons why we should all be riding on the Google+ bandwagon.

Cynthia is the founder of Success in the City, a networking organization for senior level women executives and CEO of Success in the City TV. She’s a frequent speaker, emcee, panelist and media guest on issues related to social media, public policy, workforce and technology and women’s issues.

Check our website monthly for episodes of 3 Gems in which we ask seasoned communicators three questions about their profession or specialty. Also, check out Over Lunch featuring Chief Content Architect Angie Jennings Sanders’s opining on all things business and content related. 

Permalink to 5 Ways to Distribute Social Media Responsibilities Among an Internal Team

5 Ways to Distribute Social Media Responsibilities Among an Internal Team

by Angie Sanders|on January 14, 2013 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , |Leave a comment

team credite onemillionskatesdotcomWorkflow management is crucial to any social media team supporting a small-to-midsized organization, including yours. A team of four or five people maintains all your organization’s social media accounts, but small tasks can accumulate and overwhelm. Just like your communications team, your social media team needs the support of all departments to succeed.

Which team member handles which social media account(s)? How will the team get content to share? What are the ground rules for speaking to journalists through a social media platform? These are all examples of important questions that need definite answers so that your organization’s social media strategy is deployed effectively.

Here are five ways that your internal social media team can distribute work among the group and execute your organization’s strategy seamlessly:

Designate department social media liaisons.
If your team handles organization-wide social media engagement, then they’ll need content from just about all departments to provide your audience(s) with a composite picture of your organization’s work. The team should work with these departments to designate at least one person within who will flag shareable content and funnel it to the team.

Set deadlines.
Department liaisons should be clear about when and how often the social media team needs content. The amount of content to be shared will be left to the departments’ discretion. However, if those staff members care about the visibility of their work, then this shouldn’t be a problem.

Divvy up social platforms.
Your social media team should be assessing their workload and making clear determinations on which team members will be responsible for what. Maybe your organization holds multiple Twitter accounts, so two team members may split those and handle an additional two or three other social media accounts each.

Revisit the social media guidelines document with department liaisons.
Your social media team should review this document with department liaisons so that they understand how content is shared, what content is appropriate and how the team responds to a variety of situations like speaking to members of traditional media, customer complaints and negative comments.

Create a workflow diagram.
Your department liaisons know their deadlines. Your social media team has split responsibilities among team members. Department liaisons and the social media team are clear on engagement guidelines. Now it’s helpful to diagram the workflow so that an easy-to-understand visual exists of how content moves from department staff to your audience(s). This diagram will also help your team see and correct holes or stumbling blocks in the workflow.

Share with us: What techniques does your social media team employ to obtain and share content? What roadblocks do you encounter and how do you overcome them?


Read 6 Myths Blocking Your Social Media Engagement, our special report that addresses misconceptions that are keeping your company from investing time into tools that will can help increase two-way communication with your customers—current and potential. Print this report. Read it on the train ride home. Highlight key points. Share it with your colleagues. And please, jump in the social media marketing game and get started. 

 

 

 

Permalink to 4 Things to Consider Before Opting for Multiple Social Media Accounts

4 Things to Consider Before Opting for Multiple Social Media Accounts

by Angie Sanders|on January 6, 2013 |in Content marketing, Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , |Leave a comment

IMG_2190Right now, you’re working on either crafting or revamping your company’s social media strategy. Among the many details you’ll need to work out is whether or not individual divisions within your company should start their own accounts.

The company engages (or plans to engage) audiences on roughly 3-5 platforms.  Sure, there are tools out there that will help to manage a number of accounts across multiple social media platforms, but agreeing to the idea of each department holding its own account(s) could still compound your workload by 5, 10 or 20. Saying no could affect your company’s diverse messaging.

So what do you do? When faced with this dilemma, here are a few things to consider before you make the final decision:

Company size
Consider how big your company is, how many divisions it comprises and how the audiences these divisions serve differ. If your employer is a large company with thousands of employees, offices that are dispersed geographically, a company that produces various products, then yes, multiple social entities would benefit you.  Most likely, these audiences don’t overlap, so maintaining separate accounts will help your employer communicate with these different groups.

Effectiveness
Would your messaging benefit from a siloed approach in the social space? Are you speaking to a number of audiences? Are you using social media for different reasons? For example, one division may use social media to communicate product offerings, while another could be communicating breaking news and information to the media. Determine if all the messages your company disseminates would be better served if they were pushed from one account or spread over separate ones.

Manpower
Does your team have the capability to handle many accounts? If not, are these divisions able to appoint staff within to handle these accounts? And if the departments handle their own social media engagement, how will their activity be governed? Do you have a social media guidelines document? How will these guidelines be enforced?

Content
Before you vote to allow these divisions to hold their own accounts, determine what content they’ll be sharing and where their content will come from. Do they have their own library of relevant content to share or will they be depending on other departments to create or supply it? What will be the workflow process to ensure that content gets to the appropriate person who’ll be managing the account(s)?

Share with us: How active is your company on social media? Do you maintain one account per social platform or multiple accounts for each of your company’s departments? Are these accounts maintained by a centralized team or do these departments take responsibility for their own social media engagement?

6MythsRead 6 Myths Blocking Your Social Media Engagement, our special report that addresses misconceptions that are keeping your company from investing time into tools that will can help increase two-way communication with your customers—current and potential. Print this report. Read it on the train ride home. Highlight key points. Share it with your colleagues. And please, jump in the social media marketing game and get started.

Permalink to 4 Ways Internal Social Media Teams Can Benefit from Outsourcing

4 Ways Internal Social Media Teams Can Benefit from Outsourcing

by Angie Sanders|on January 2, 2013 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , |1 Comment

social team overload credit business2communitydotcomYour social media team is overextended. Yep. I said it.

You don’t believe me, do you? You’re thinking, “A four-person team should be able to adequately manage our social media presences, funnel content from necessary departments, write content when needed and track and measure the results of their work.”

If this same team worked for a small or mid-sized organization, then yes. But they serve the behemoth which is your organization. Not only is this team charged with maintaining your presences across numerous social platforms, but they’re responsible for a staggering number of accounts on these platforms. They must figure out an airtight content flow from millions of silos within the office, devise and enforce guidelines for a million more silos that insist on managing their own social media accounts, and even write original content from time to time.

But a small social media team like yours could benefit from outsourcing a portion of the workload to an outside team. I know. You’re thinking, “We hired a social media team so that these duties can be handled in-house.” True, but the social media space and your engagement goals are ever-changing and have probably expanded beyond your internal bandwidth.

There are four ways that a contract digital team can make your internal team’s workload more manageable and ensure that your social media strategy is executed more effectively. An outside team can:

Fine-tune your social media strategy.
Perhaps your team has been working from the same social media strategy since 2009. Although I applaud them for even devising a strategy and sticking to it, this strategy was probably written to be a working document. Unfortunately, your team may be too close to this document and the parameters it has set to make necessary changes. An outside team can provide a fresh perspective, reviewing it against your fluid communications strategy and making some much needed adjustments.

Assist with the execution of your social media strategy.
Social media may or may not be your team members’ only jobs. Perhaps other duties—most likely ones that are communications or marketing related—have fallen in their laps or were there from the beginning. Even if maintaining the organization’s social media presences is their only function, frequency of posting, response to customer inquiries, effective measurement or other duties may have waned. An outside social media team can help pick up the slack and perhaps make suggestions for how social media work can be better distributed among the team.

Distribute workflow across platforms.
Your organization may only be engaging audiences on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but each division within your office has its own account that it expects the social media team to maintain. And you know that your office is heavily siloed. Funneling relevant news and information from these divisions and posting to social platforms in a frequent and timely manner is a considerable challenge. An outside team can shed light on ways to improve the information flow.

Help manage multiple properties.
Revisit the above example. Your four-person team is responsible for managing multiple accounts for each platform on which your organization engages. Not to mention that there are at least three other social platforms in which divisions within your office have expressed interest in experimenting. Again, this is a considerable challenge for a small team. However, an outside team can assume the maintenance of at least one of these platforms and explore the viability of the new platforms that interest some in your office.

Share with us: Does your office have an internal social media team or does this team comprise employees from other departments? How are you handling the rapidly changing social media climate and the diverse needs of your organization?


Read 6 Myths Blocking Your Social Media Engagement, our special report that addresses misconceptions that are keeping your company from investing time into tools that will can help increase two-way communication with your customers—current and potential. Print this report. Read it on the train ride home. Highlight key points. Share it with your colleagues. And please, jump in the social media marketing game and get started. 

 

Permalink to Forcing a Relationship Between Philanthropy and Marketing Might Not be a Good Idea

Forcing a Relationship Between Philanthropy and Marketing Might Not be a Good Idea

by Angie Sanders|on October 22, 2012 |in Just good business |tagged , , , , , , |2 Comments

Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, has a fantasy that involves philanthropy and marketing. You thought I was going to say something else, didn’t you?

Let me explain. As part of “The Social Media Roadmap” section in Fast Company’s September 2012 issue, the magazine assembled executives from Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and Zynga to discuss issues affecting not-for-profits’ and activists ‘marketing efforts, like passive activism—or “slacktivism”—and the “viral-hits mindset.”

Zynga Executive Director Ken Weber shared that following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Haiti and Japan respectively, Zynga’s gamers donated more than $3 million in a little over a week, just by buying items within the games they play.

“That speaks to one of my fantasies, which is that philanthropy is the future of marketing,” Stone said. “People who normally hadn’t given you their credit-card information were now doing it. You have their information, and they might become a paying customer. If people take their marketing budgets and use them for good, you’ll end up with something more.”

I appreciate Stone’s optimism for the transition from donor to customer, but there are two reasons why making this transition successful may remain a fantasy.

One, trying to get a passive donor to make the leap to a paying customer could make your philanthropy efforts seem disingenuous in the eyes of the individuals you’re trying to convert. For example, let’s say that after watching heart-wrenching footage of the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake, you’re moved to give money to help support the victims of the natural disaster. You see that Coca-Cola is working with the American Red Cross to raise money and you immediately donate online to help. Then a few days later, you begin receiving Coca-Cola coupons or email marketing. Depending on your loyalty to the Coke brand, you might appreciate the coupons, or you might feel like Coca-Cola’s partnership with the American Red Cross was only a ploy to get email or mailing address information.

Two, these donors might feel duped or violated. Some people may have never given to charity before, but trusted the Coca-Cola brand enough to donate. When these donors are encouraged to become customers afterwards, it might not sit well with these donors. And, worst of all, they may be discouraged from giving money to other brands who engage in the same types of philanthropy efforts.

By moving philanthropy towards marketing, we’re moving away from the real strength brands provide activism. Potential and current customers want to see brands work with causes that speak to the heart of that brand and corral others to get involved. These customers want to see brands drawing attention to the cause, not the brand itself. This motiveless philanthropy is what gets these customers excited about supporting the cause and ultimately the brand.

We agree with Stone that company marketing budgets can be used for good. But this should be done only if the company truly believes in the cause, not to specifically target potential customers.

Share with us: How does your company give back? Does your company take interest in causes because you believe in them or it makes for a good public relations move?

This post is the fifth in a series of five posts discussing ideas presented in Fast Company’s “The Social Media Roadmap” section (September 2012 issue).

Permalink to Why Facebook Engagement Beats Television Advertising

Why Facebook Engagement Beats Television Advertising

by Angie Sanders|on October 17, 2012 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , |Leave a comment

“Brands with more than 1 million fans reach only 3% to 5% of them a day,” Jeff Widman of PageLever, a Facebook page analytics solution, told Fast Company. The magazine labeled this their Unpleasant Truth No. 4 as part of their special “The Social Media Road Map” section in the September 2012 issue.

But is this truth really that unpleasant? Maybe not. Engaging 3-5% of one million fans works out to 30,000-50,000 Facebook fans talking about a given brand. These people may represent a small sample of the total Facebook fans this brand has, but these are people the brand knows detailed demographic information about and has engaged in two-way communication. And 30,000 to 50,000 is a lot of people.

Compare this level of communication, demographics and engagement to television advertising. Lucas Donat—founder of Santa Monica advertising agency Donat Wald—explained in a December 2009 Ad Age article that, “When it comes to measurement, most TV advertisers know audience reach, some demographics and probably some level of top-line results.” This information doesn’t match “the depth and granularity of data we can get for online campaigns, where we know who’s responding to our ads, what they’re doing on our websites, how much time they spend there and whether or not they complete a purchase.”

However, Donat says his agency has developed a method to gather and interpret data from television advertising that fills in the gap between imperfect, incomplete information and a clear picture that communicates the results of an advertising campaign.

“To deal with the relative ambiguity of TV ad measurement, my agency adapts the concept of fuzzy logic into what we call ‘fuzzy analytics,’” Donat says. “Here’s how it works: Find a level of tracking we can do, accept its imperfections, gather data, analyze it and improve our ability to understand it as we go. It evolves into a system that is nearly as accurate as following a click online.”

As an explanation for the “low” Facebook engagement numbers, Widman asked social marketers if they ever visit fan pages as users. “Oh, never,” they replied. This information could be viewed two ways: either social marketers don’t have a clear picture of how to engage Facebook fans because they’ve never visited fan pages themselves, or the social marketer isn’t an accurate representation of the audience set that would visit and interact in this space.

Whatever the reason, these numbers probably shouldn’t be viewed as “low” or a “failure.” Demographic information, two-way communication and any type of engagement and attention from 30,000-50,000 people is a win.

Share with us: How does your company use its Facebook fan page, or does it have one? Can a brand achieve a high number of fans and a high percentage of engagement, too?

This post is the fourth in a series of five posts discussing ideas presented in Fast Company’s “The Social Media Roadmap” section (September 2012 issue).

Permalink to Fast Company: A Social Media Executive’s Biggest Gripes about Working with Brands

Fast Company: A Social Media Executive’s Biggest Gripes about Working with Brands

by Angie Sanders|on October 15, 2012 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments

For our past few blog posts, we’ve been pulling interesting tidbits from Fast Company’s “The Social Media Road Map,” featured in the magazine’s September 2012 issue. First, we discussed 13 key takeaways from the special section. Then we talked about why social media engagement responsibilities will always fall into the hands of a chosen few individuals inside or outside the company.

We’ll continue rocking with the Road Map today by discussing another short article from the section (Insiders’ Secret No. 5) titled, “You Hired the Wrong People.” In the article, an anonymous executive at a social media platform reveals some of his (I’m only assuming this person is a man) biggest gripes working with brands.

“Their CEOs now articulate their social media strategy,” he said. “They track how they’re doing against their rivals But by the time they come to someone like me, whose job is to actually put their plans into action, they have no idea to get what they want.”

The executive’s problem is one that we’ve been noticing lately with our potential clients, which is a huge gap between social media strategy and implementation. Consultants and even internal employees are getting a better grasp on social media and its capabilities. But when it comes to acting on those capabilities, setting reasonable goals and producing results based on those goals, these teams are clueless as to how to proceed.

However, the executive in this article is concerned with the lack of qualified counterparts to work with on the client side to execute strategy. “Companies haven’t empowered the right people, and they’re not hiring or training or converting the right people for these jobs. To be a good social media person at a brand, you have to have a background not just in digital or marketing but also in your product. There are so few people with that kind of blend of experience.”

To the client’s credit, if employees existed with this perfect blend of social, marketing and brand experience, then there’d be no need to contract with the social media executive. There may be employees on the client side with one or two of those characteristics, but it’s unrealistic to expect a counterpart with all three because social media is still just a toddler.

Companies won’t invest in hiring or training or converting the right employees until they can see value in social media overall. It’s the consultant’s job—in this case the griping executive—to show this value until the client decides to invest in internal staff or it continues to pay the consultant’s retainer.

On the other hand, this executive seems bothered by clients who shove social engagement responsibilities into one department. “People are always shoving social into marketing, or they’re shoving it into digital. It’s actually all this stuff: It’s marketing, it’s digital, it’s creative.”

We discussed in last week’s post why this shoving is to be expected, but just to reiterate: Social media will always be shoved into any department that serves an external communications function simply because these are the people within the organization who are deemed best equipped to handle it.

And we should look on the bright side. At least we’re slowly moving beyond leaving social media to the interns.

Share with us: How does your company handle its social media engagement? Is it the responsibility of the marketing communications department or a separate digital strategy team? Social media strategists: do you also struggle with the lack of a counterpart on the client side? How do you work around this?

This post is the third in a series of five posts discussing ideas presented in Fast Company’s “The Social Media Roadmap” section (September 2012 issue).

Permalink to Why a Chosen Few Will Always be Responsible for Company Social Media Engagement

Why a Chosen Few Will Always be Responsible for Company Social Media Engagement

by Angie Sanders|on October 10, 2012 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments

In last Wednesday’s post, we gave you 13 key takeaways from Fast Company magazine’s “The Social Media Road Map,” that ran in their September 2012 issue. However, their Insiders’ Secret No. 3, an article titled “What Your Social Media Consultant Should Tell You,” warranted a post of its own.

Anjali Mullany, the magazine’s social media editor, says, “If social media consultants are doing their jobs, they should put themselves out of business. Your company will never be truly social if you silo social activity within a consultant or staff manager.”

Well, yes and no.

Saying that a company isn’t truly social if one person, small team or outside entity handles this function is like saying that that same company doesn’t really perform marketing or communications functions if everyone in the company isn’t doing it, too.

Shared responsibility for the actual act of engagement is a respectable goal, but it may be a bit lofty and impractical. Communications and marketing departments have a hard enough time getting buy-in from other departments to reach out to the company’s audiences outside of social media. Expecting all employees to participate in social may be a stretch.

Plus, by keeping responsibilities for social media engagement with a certain internal team or outside consultants keeps a good handle on messaging within the social space.

Because social media engagement is an external communications tactic, it will probably always remain in the hands of those who are already responsible for external communications—unless the company decides that developing a designated digital strategy team is warranted.

Now we’re not saying that the rest of the company should take a completely hands-off approach to social media because it shouldn’t be taking this approach to its overall marketing strategy. Whichever team(s) is responsible for both marketing communications and social media need support from the rest of the company in the form of free-flowing information.

The only way these teams can tell your company’s story to the audiences that live outside the four walls of your office is if you funnel the information to them that’s necessary to tell this story in a compelling way. This involves keeping these teams abreast of company milestones, achievement and impact.

If there’s a new product launch or breakthrough, new clients or partnerships, client or customer testimonials, video or photos from the field, or any other groundbreaking information affecting your current or potential clients, your marketing communications and social media teams need to know. The success of both these teams depends heavily on your ability to ensure that these teams get the compelling information they need to engage your audience and get them excited about your brand.

Share with us: How does your company funnel information through to your marketing communications and social media teams and out to your external audiences?

This post is the second in a series of five posts discussing ideas presented in Fast Company’s “The Social Media Roadmap” section (September 2012 issue).

Permalink to 13 Key Takeaways from Fast Company’s “The Social Media Road Map”

13 Key Takeaways from Fast Company’s “The Social Media Road Map”

by Angie Sanders|on October 3, 2012 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments

Fast Company published “The Social Media Road Map” in their September 2012 issue—the one with The Office star Mindy Kaling {@mindykaling} on the cover looking like a sexy geek. I curled up in bed with a batch of homemade trail mix (dry roasted almonds and dried banana chips and cranberries) to see where this map would take me. So here are my key takeaways from these 19 interesting yet far from mind-blowing pages that paint the picture of social media’s current landscape:

  1. A YouTube home page, half-page auto-play video ad is $500,000—for one day. This ad reaches more than 26 million unique U.S. visitors, but if you’re paying half a million dollars for that, then what’s your total marketing budget?
  2. Lady Gaga stole the title for most Facebook likes from Skittles, but Big Spaceship CEO Michael Lebowitz says there’s no way to tie this this bragging rights title to a bump in sales.
  3. Fast Company, along with a whole gang of other media outlets, really wants Mindy Kaling and her new show The Mindy Project to win, so I guess we should, too. But will realizing how much of a television industry insider she is make me watch her new show? Unclear.
  4. Let’s just set the record straight that it’s officially uncool and generally frowned upon to refer to yourself or anyone else as a “social media guru.”
  5. The women in the sexy photos used for spam bot profiles on Twitter are real people, and those chicks just might ban together and sue you for using their likenesses. Maybe.
  6. What the hell was Kraft thinking when they asked Klout to refer to their scoring as a “fun score”?
  7. There are already whole books about how to use Pinterest. How does it feel to write a book filled with information that’s probably instantly out-of-date upon publication?
  8. There are at least eight services that help you back up your social media platform archives. Never knew there was a need for this, but I guess it’s always good to keep a record of everything you’ve said or shared for future reference.
  9. “We use the phrase ‘social media’ but they’re really communications services, not media properties,” said Bo Peabody, creator of Tripod (the web’s first social network that debuted in 1992). In actuality, we probably refer to the collection of these platforms this way because each of them serves as a medium through which we communicate. And the plural form of “medium” is…
  10. If you want to see some forward-thinking ways of employing social media, then study the fashion industry.
  11. FourSquare’s first major deal was with BravoTV. Tristan Walker, FourSquare’s former business development executive, said the network had great local content which the digital company used to get people “to get out and explore new things, based on shows like ‘Real Housewives’, which felt very much in line with the product but without a sales pitch.”
  12. To support relief efforts following the Haiti earthquake and the tsunami that struck Japan, social gaming titan Zynga created items within their games for players to buy and donated the proceeds to charity. “In the first 24 hours, we generated $1 million, and it got up to more than $3 million over a week or so,” said Zynga Executive Director Ken Weber. “We had people paying for items in the games, but we also had players who don’t ever pay for anything who got their credit cards out to do something good.”
  13. It’s officially uncool and generally frowned upon to refer to any video you create as viral, unless it truly does become, well, viral. “Rather than ideas propagating for generations, almost everything terminates within one degree of the seed,” said Microsoft Research’s Duncan Watts. “If you want something to spread, generate an enormous number of seeds.”

Share with us: Did you read Fast Company’s “The Social Media Road Map”? Was this truly a road map for you? What new information did you learn from this piece?

This post is the first in a series of five posts discussing ideas presented in Fast Company’s “The Social Media Roadmap” section (September 2012 issue).

Permalink to Tweet Talks: How a Historian Schooled Me on Thesis Statements

Tweet Talks: How a Historian Schooled Me on Thesis Statements

by Angie Sanders|on October 1, 2012 |in Content marketing, Social Media |tagged , , , , , |Leave a comment

@grumpyhistorian had me scratching my head something terrible a few weeks ago.

On Sept. 8, Lee Kallerup @readywriting asked:

@grumyhistorian replied:

Write the paper first, then the thesis statement second? Not only was I confused, but this goes against everything I’d ever taught in my short former career as an adjunct English instructor. So I asked:

@grumpyhistorian replied:

I had never heard anyone describe an essay as a problem-solving exercise, but after a few hours of thinking this over, it made perfect sense.

Just a bit of background on how I normally teach essay structure: I first ask students to think about the assignment at hand and what their position is on the issue. I then ask them to state their position on this issue and the reasons they feel this way (briefly) in one sentence. This sentence is their tentative thesis statement. I then explain the tell them what you plan to tell them (introduction), tell them (supporting paragraphs), then tell them what you told them (conclusion) structure of essay writing. However, to have a position on an issue, a problem must initially exist.

I then asked:

To which he replied (I’m only assuming @grumpyhistorian is a man.):

@grumphistorian went on to explain:

I love having conversations about writing practice via social networking, but I especially love when these conversations give me a new perspective on ideas that I’ve held so tightly to or on methodology that I’ve taught.

Share with us: Have you ever had an eye-opening conversation with someone you don’t know via social media? What did you learn?

Permalink to For Businesses, Social Media Means Nothing Without These 3 Things

For Businesses, Social Media Means Nothing Without These 3 Things

by Angie Sanders|on September 26, 2012 |in Just good business, Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments

When I tell people about aiellejai and the services we provide, they’re often surprised to see me sitting in the audience at some social media panel discussion sessions. I like to attend these sessions to understand why people come, what they’re hoping to learn and to hear the questions asked. This helps us keep gauge the pulse of our market and develop products and services to best serve them.

I find that people who attend these sessions fall into three camps:

Do I need to set up a Facebook page?
These are the individuals or business owners who are new to social networking and how to use it to their advantages.

Why am I on Facebook or Twitter?
These are the people who are looking for strategy for participating in the social media space.

How do I measure success and how do I ensure results?
These are the people who are already maintaining social media presences in some sort of strategic way and are looking for ways to evaluate the success of their time and effort.

Most of the people I meet fall between camps two and three. But as they ask their questions and get good answers that still leave them scratching their heads, I suspect that these answers would be clearer to them if they had the following three elements in place:

A clear business model: Some of us business owners—especially those with service-based businesses—aren’t totally clear about the services we provide or the value of these services to our clients or customers. For example, aiellejai usually takes the standard, hourly-rate approach to our service offerings. We recently had to take an objective look at our business offerings, what services were most popular and how to create other products that will best serve the needs of our existing and future customers.

A laser-focused description of their ideal client or customer:  When I ask potential clients who their ideal client or customer is, they often say things like, “small businesses,” or “nonprofits.” It’s especially tricky to identify specific demographic information about your ideal client or customer if you run a business-to-business company. However, when you’re marketing your services, most likely there’s one type of person or one point of contact who you’re trying to attract. Work on identifying who that person is, what they look like, what their challenges are and any other information you can think of that will help you see your clients as individual people instead of whole companies. Visualizing your potential clients/customers this way will help you market to them specifically.

An overarching communications/marketing strategy: Some business owners are having a hard time wrapping their brains around social networking because they aren’t clear on how to reach their audiences outside of the social media space. Once you establish clear communications and marketing strategies and goals you’ll then be able to understand how to use social media engagement—along with other tactics—to reach these goals.

Share with us: How does your company’s communications/marketing strategy influence your social media engagement? How do you define and measure success?

 

 

Permalink to Four Reasons Why You Can Afford to Share Your Ideas

Four Reasons Why You Can Afford to Share Your Ideas

by Angie Sanders|on September 24, 2012 |in Content marketing, Just good business, Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment

During a local chamber of commerce networking event, an ambitious and interesting older gentlemen told me that he was looking for an entertainment lawyer to help him pitch a game show to Hollywood gatekeepers.

“Oh really?” I asked. “What’s the premise of the show?”

“Well, I can’t tell you,” he said. He was saving all his ideas for the entertainment lawyer and the bigwig producers to whom he’d one day persuade to give him the green light on this show.

I then joked that if he told me the particulars, then he’d have to shoot me.

This got me thinking about which ideas require such top-secret protection and which ideas should be shared.

Truthfully, there’s nothing new under the sun. And ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s execution that’s rare. Not to mention that executing is hard work. So I believe it’s a good idea to share a good deal of our ideas publicly and strategically.

Now you may be thinking, “My ideas are how I make my living. I get paid for my ideas.” Yes, that’s true. However, when I say ideas, I don’t mean the engineering plans for your new product. Instead, as a communications professional, I’d share best practices for how to communicate the particulars for how your new product works. So by ideas, I really mean information. I could hold my input until I get you to pay me for what I have to say. However, if you don’t get the information from me, you’ll just Google it.

Here are four reasons that I think that as business owners, we should be a bit freer with our information and ideas:

Most people need a sample before buying. Have you ever met a person at a networking event he asks you for quick advice upon learning what you do for a living? What do you say? “You better pay me”? No. Most likely you engage that person in conversation. It’s only natural because you’re an expert and are passionate about what you do. That’s okay. The best part of this situation is that not only do you reinforce in his mind that you know your stuff, but it gives him an incentive to pay you for your services.

It establishes you as an expert. Before social networking, a lengthy client list on your website stood as evidence enough that your business is good at what it does. Now, potential clients expect to see us sharing information online and through seminars and speaking engagements. Sharing information about your craft frames you as an expert. And who do potential clients want to pay to help them through their business challenges? Experts.

It draws people into your sales funnel. People I happen to meet and cultivate into clients don’t just learn that aiellejai creates content and throw money at us. They usually consume our content. Or they’ve heard me speak. Or they’ve liked something I’ve shared via social networking. Sharing information draws people in, much like a fishing hook. We can’t throw out naked hooks and expect the fish to bite. We have to cast out some juicy nuggets to get the fish to school and be intrigued. Not to liken potential clients to fish, but you get the message.

You want to be your audience’s first resource. If potential clients have questions, and I don’t answer them—especially if it’s simple for me to do so—then they’re going to get the answers somewhere else. And by doing so, they’ll most likely jump into someone else’s sales funnel. Even if I share information with someone and they don’t commit to becoming a client right away, the idea that I’m an accessible expert has been planted in their head. When they do decide that they need some paid help, hopefully aiellejai will be the first company they think of.

Share with us: Are you guarded with sharing information about your business or industry online or via social networking? Are you afraid someone will steal your ideas?

Permalink to Do These 5 Things to Ease Your Fear of Social Media Criticism

Do These 5 Things to Ease Your Fear of Social Media Criticism

by Angie Sanders|on August 22, 2012 |in Content marketing, Just good business, Social Media |tagged , , , , , , |4 Comments

Rashida, a former graduate classmate of mine, tweeted the following just a week ago: “It’s sad sitting in a meeting about social/digital tools and hearing the antiquated: ‘What if the customers say bad things about us?’”

I replied: “Then you say: ‘They’re probably already saying bad things. You just can’t hear it yet.’”

If we can count on our publics for anything, we can count on them saying unfavorable things about our companies or organizations at some point—whether it’s to their peers or to others in the social space.  However, if you haven’t done the necessary work to manage your company’s or organization’s reputation outside the social media realm, then you have just cause for concern.

Which brings me to Tim Worstall’s Aug. 5 Forbes article, “Maybe Business Should Not Invest in Marketing in Social Media like Facebook and Twitter?” I respect his argument, but the case he makes for “not investing in advertising” on social media had less to do with the money and return on investment involved but more to do with companies’ fears of setting themselves up for a barrage of criticism.  And what types of companies does he use as examples? Banks.

“You can imagine that a bank trying to market a new mortgage offer is going to be less than happy when Twitter explodes into a storm of ‘What about Libor?’, ‘What about the billions we gave you?’” he writes.

This banking example is weak because the industry’s track record of protecting customers’ money and interests is deplorable. Customers and the general public are scorned and distrustful. So an honest and accessible medium like social media platforms must scare the daylights out of banking.

So how can companies and organizations with less volatile relationships with their publics engage with the public using social media but ease the sting of possible negative comments?

Decide who’s responsible for engagement. Decide the person(s) responsible for managing your social presences and engaging your communities. Keep communication with them constant and clear. They should be plugged into the key messages coming from your organization. In turn, they should be able to report what’s being said about your brand on social media.

Listen to the conversation. Pay attention to what your audience is saying about your brand or about industry issues that affect you. Is the sentiment growing enough to warrant a response?

Decide how to handle one-off insults. There are haters out there who spew random insults. This is no fault of your own. But you should have a plan for how to handle these random outbursts.

Have a plan for issues in the social space that escalate. There will be issues that arise in the field concerning your industry or your brand. Just a few years ago, someone would call or email your office to let you know what’s happened. Now you’re more likely to hear about it on social media first. Have a plan for determining when to escalate a situation and spring into crisis communication mode.

Use social media in a way that coincides with other public relations/marketing efforts. Be sure that the messages you convey in social media coincide with your overall public relations/marketing messages and goals. Be purposeful about your social activity as you are about your activity in other media.

Permalink to Is Social Media Really Surpassing Traditional Media as a Top News Source?

Is Social Media Really Surpassing Traditional Media as a Top News Source?

by Angie Sanders|on August 20, 2012 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , , , , , |5 Comments

During a walk home from the bus stop in June 2009, Twitter told me that Michael Jackson was dead. After dinner at my in-laws in February this year, Facebook told me that Whitney Houston had died. However, in both instances, I relied on the confirmation of news sources like CNN and TMZ to confirm the facts.

Socialmediatoday.com released an infographic in June that details how we now get our news. Although the article’s title notes “How Social Media is Replacing Traditional Journalism as a News Source,” social media is still third behind TV news and newspapers as a top source for news. In fact, thanks to social media, traffic to news sites has increased 57%.

Though more than 50% of people learned about breaking news via social media versus traditional news sources, the infographic also shows that about half the news that breaks via social media turns out to be false.

So what does this tell us about the way we receive news today? One, the news cycle is definitely condensed. News outlets used to have time to confirm facts before reporting. However, the internet and social media have upped the pressure to be first and accurate. Two, as news consumers, we must be diligent about confirming the facts for ourselves and not feeding into the “be the first” mentality.

Hold off on retweeting that news story or sharing it on Facebook, especially if it seems outrageous or downright unbelievable. Poke around to see what other news outlets are saying.

Share with us: have you ever read breaking news via social media outlets only to find out later that it’s false or inaccurate? How do you judge the accuracy of news information before you share it with others?

Permalink to 4 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Following the Right Way

4 Ways to Increase Your Twitter Following the Right Way

by Angie Sanders|on July 30, 2012 |in Social Media |tagged , , , , |2 Comments

Ben Sarma {@bensarma} is the man in the photo to the right. Not Shirley Blackburn. Not Shanie Duff. Ben Sarma. But for some reason, Ben’s photo appears on the profiles of at least five Twitter accounts following presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

In the latest of communications faux pas committed by the Romney campaign, 140elect.com’s Zach Green noticed two sizable jumps in Romney’s Twitter following. And when I say sizable, I mean the account gained more than 140,000 followers in just three days when it normally gets about 3,000-4,000 new followers a day.

Though the campaign’s Digital Director Zac Moffatt insists that claims they purchased followers is untrue, the situation still appears fishy and dishonest.

Even if the campaign did buy Twitter followers, they wouldn’t be the first. There are even a host of services out there that feed this need for a boost in Twitter followings.

So why are we so obsessed with the amount of followers we have? Perhaps it makes us look more interesting, or like our company has more clients and connections, or like our brand is more popular than it really is.

We really should be focusing less on the number of followers and more on the quality of these followers. Your goal should be getting people to follow you who will most likely consume your content and later move to your website for content, information and/or for a purchase.

How do you find these followers? Start with the following:

People with interesting or related content—What kinds of content make you click links on Twitter? What blogs do you enjoy reading? Who generates this content? Find and follow these people on Twitter. Also, check out who else follows them. Most likely, these are people who’d enjoy your content as well—that is if it’s interesting and/or related.

People you admire—Who are the superstars in your industry? Who are the thought leaders? Follow these people.  Share and reply to their tweets.

People you meet in real life—When you’re attending network events, check to see if any interesting people you met are active on Twitter.

People you hear speak—If you sat and listened to these people talk for at least 30 minutes and didn’t fall asleep or get distracted, then you’re definitely interested in what they have to say. Follow them on Twitter and digest their content in smaller bites.

When you follow these people, they’ll most likely follow you back—especially if you interact with them enough. Also, continue to create content yourself and share it in the Twitter space. As this content is shared, you should see an uptick in your following. Remember, building community takes time and there are no quick fixes.

The sad part about the #MoreFakeMitt situation is that the campaign’s Twitter account already had 800,000 followers. It would’ve made more sense to segment this group by demographics and engage and share content that would get them talking and thinking about Romney and his platform.

Permalink to Martin: 5 Ways Technology Dated our Beloved 90s Sitcom

Martin: 5 Ways Technology Dated our Beloved 90s Sitcom

by Angie Sanders|on July 27, 2012 |in Social Media, What's on TV |tagged , , , |3 Comments

My niece Jasmine watches Fox Network’s hit show Martin. That means one of two things: either the 90s was a cool decade or she views Martin the way my generation does Good Times or The Jeffersons.

While in vacation in Miami last month, I caught the I’ve Got Work to Do episode of the sitcom featuring comedian Martin Lawrence. Martin was forced to find a new job after losing his position as a radio disc jockey. Detroit’s employment office placed him on one jobsite after another, but Martin quit them all after only a few days. He was just too great to flip burgers and deliver mail.

What makes watching throwback shows like this fun—aside from the great comedic timing and remembering the jokes we often took to school with us the morning after—is seeing the outdated technology. What looks like an enormous cell phone to us must look like a telegraph machine to Jasmine.

Nineties technologies not only appear in this episode, but what’s also evident is how far we’ve come in streamlining our processes, like searching for employment. Here are a few things from this Martin episode that will make you appreciate pocket-sized smart phones, the internet and job-seeking in the new millennium:

Martin called information to get the number for the employment office—from a landline. I only know a handful of people today who actually have landlines in their homes. Most of us would perform a Google search on our smart phones for the number and simply touch the screen to dial.

He couldn’t use the internet or social media to look for another job. Martin was a disc jockey for a radio station in Detroit, a major market. If LinkedIn existed, then maybe it would have been easier for him to work his contacts to find a new job at another station.

Afraid that people would recognize him, Martin wore a disguise to the employment office. Unfortunately, no one knew who he was. Because he worked in the age before the internet was a mainstay, the radio station had no website with photos of the personalities. Martin was embarrassed because he thought of himself as a local star. But there was no way for him to search for a new job from a computer in the privacy of his own home.

There were pay phones at the employment office. While driving back to the Washington, DC area from Lynchburg, Virginia, I saw a man standing at a pay phone outside the Crossroad Store on Route 29 holding a roll of quarters. Odd? Yes. When was the last time you’ve seen someone use a pay phone? When was the last time you’ve even seen a pay phone?

While buffing the floor at his new position, Martin is listening to a portable CD player. CDs were hot in the 90s. But now, MP3 players and devices that stream music are the norm. I’ll bet Martin would’ve loved Spotify.

Permalink to 6 Reasons Why Daytime Networking Events Are Worth the Price

6 Reasons Why Daytime Networking Events Are Worth the Price

by Angie Sanders|on May 23, 2012 |in Just good business |tagged , |1 Comment

Attending networking events can get costly, especially when you start event hopping in the quest to make the best business connections possible. In the Washington, D.C. metro area, networking has become a commodity. Why? Because CNN Money keeps telling everybody that the only job openings left in the country are found within a 50-mile radius of the beltway. And when mass emailing resumes doesn’t work, how else have we been taught to find jobs? Networking.

I allot $150 a month toward networking events. This amount may seem excessive, but it really only gets me to three, maybe four events.

Some people may balk at paying more than $10 to attend a networking event. I know.  I used to be one of them. But once I gave a few paid daytime events a try, I make sure I attend a few of them a month.  Here are a few advantages these events offer that may cause you to look beyond the admission fee:

You’re more likely to share the room with decision makers.
If you can pay $50 for a lunch event, that says: you have the discretionary income or company budget to attend the event, you have a bit of freedom to attend such an event in the middle of the day, and you may be a decision maker at your company (or you have some sort of influence on one).

You might learn something.
All the daytime events I attend feature a guest speaker that shares her knowledge with attendees. Last month, Amy E. Goodman {@amyegoodman}, author of Wear This, Toss That!, spoke to the Executive Women’s Roundtable about dressing in today’s professional environment. I even got to ask her advice on styling for on-camera interviews.

Learning yields good social media content.
While you’re learning something at these events, it doesn’t hurt to pass it along on social media. In a past post, I talked about how advantageous hashtags can be for networking events. Find out the event hashtag and tweet the tidbits of information you hear.

You get better acquainted with organizations you might want to join.
Before joining the DC metro chapter of International Association of Business Communicators, I attended a few of their monthly chapter breakfast meetings. I was always learning something and making great contacts.  During one meeting, a board member announced that the organization was looking for someone to head up their special interest group for independent consultants. I joined the organization and accepted the challenge.

The food’s usually good.
Whether it’s a breakfast or lunch meeting, your admission fee means the sponsoring organization will make sure you’re fed. The Women in Technology organization holds its meetings at Wildfire Restaurant. The good news is that the food is delicious. The bad news is that you’ll have to pace yourself so you don’t look like a hungry, hungry hippo in front of people you don’t know.

You’re more likely to actually talk about your business.
Organizers of most the daytime events I’ve attended encourage attendees to introduce themselves and deliver their elevator speeches. With each introduction, you have a chance to get to know what each person does and identify which people you’d like to engage further.

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