Saving Your Social Media Marketing Campaign

Was Simon & Garfunkel’s song “A Hazy Shade Of Winter” a song made to describe Social Media Marketing.

“Time,
Time,
Time, see what's become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.

I was so hard to please.
Look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.


Hear the Salvation Army band.
Down by the riverside's
Bound to be a better ride
Than what you've got planned.


Carry your cup in your hand.
And look around.
Leaves are brown.
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.


Hang on to your hopes, my friend.
That's an easy thing to say,


But if your hopes should pass away
Simply pretend that you can build them again.
Look around,
The grass is high,
The fields are ripe,
It's the springtime of my life.


Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?


Seasons change with the scenery;
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me
At any convenient time?
Funny how my memory skips
Looking over manuscripts
Of unpublished rhyme.


Drinking my vodka and lime,
I look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.”


Seems like today the talk on the street is how to revive an almost non-existent Social Marketing Campaign or how to save a dying one.


For the most part marketers and entrepreneurs have gotten the content for their Front pages down correctly, they have and are producing more than enough content and useful information about their companies and they have set up the sites for good search engine optimization but they are still missing that key element for social media marketing. They, you, we, I, are just not being SOCIAL.


With content on the internet growing at over 50% a year if you are relying on Search Engines only it’s just not going to happen. You can’t just publish and hope it will work its way up to the top of Google, yahoo or bing. You need to get out your soap box, get up and start proclaiming your message.


Soap Box 1: Start a newsletter. Start working with your existing audience. This is the easiest and most assessable group of people you have. With a delivery of monthly or more often, biweekly or weekly are not out of the question if it is a value option for the reader. Give them good solid content not just a bunch of gobblity gook advertisements about yourself.


Soap Box 2: Engage your key influencers. I’ll bet you that you have at least one or two major bloggers in your list of followers. You already have 1 here with me. Now the idea is to reach out to these key Social Media Players and get really personal. Ask to meet them or for a phone appointment. Comment on their blogs. Compliment them on their work, offer to republish something they wrote and posted, (some “experts” say if you need to offer to pay a licensing fee or something to that effect, Larson says forget that stuff. You are giving them a FREE outlet to your followers and that should be more than enough of a payback) If you can get them excited about you and what you are trying to do, they will send people your way with a number of online possibilities.


Soap Box 3: Let them in. Tear down the walls of hindrance. Ya drop the registration forms. Why they don’t work. If I see a white paper that I want I might take a peek, If I have to fill out a form the first thing that comes into my head is, “Ok if I do this I will either get a sales call from the company which I probably don’t want or I will get emails from them till the end of time. So I don’t down load, I don’t read and I don’t find out how good your company is. It is a fact over 50% of people leave a sight when a registration form appears so I am not alone. This blatant abandonment is a loss of possible referrals, retwitts or reposts to you. If I were you I would be thinking of ways to encourage people to though your name and content all over the web. Those that want what you do, will then find and come to you!


Soap Box 4: Invite comments. Try to have your blogs be through provoking and response generating. Fill it with feedback, ideas and questions that beg for your readers to make comments. Try to address each and every comment. You want to control the flow but not stymie the thread. Then go one step farther and use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best of the best.


Soap Box 5: Be Responsive. When a post or request for input brings you fruit thank whoever it is. If you are unable to (again) respond to each and every comment, at least acknowledge the thread or open discussion. Again use twitter Facebook and LinkedIn to repost the best posts.


Soap Box 6: Repackage and reuse. You can publish podcasts or video versions of your blog entries or put a few past posts together that have a synergy between them into a new post. Again give people a way to have some ownership in what you are doing. Show your expertise in how you handle the threads.


Larson Notes & Satire: Time time time, so put time on your side, these are ways to maximize your time and even mutiply your time buy getting action and reposts. This could be any of the seasons for your Social Media Marketing, winter, spring, summer or fall. It is all what you make of it; you are in charge of what you do and can’t do in The Social Media arena. It is all up to you, unless you go out and hire a Social Media Marketing Company (like Larson could be doing for you). But if you hide yourself under a wall of fear and not let in the full scope of what this Channel can bring you are only cutting off your own nose. Stand up. Get up on that Social Media Soap Box and start engaging. Hire a brass band and blow your horn!


Remember our 3 new programs for 2011
1st is our Virtual Sales Manager Program
2nd our Sales Function Outsourcing Program
3rd our Virtual Business Consulting Program


Howard Larson
Larson & Associates
Target Marketing & Telesales Professionals for new account acquisition
Making good businesses great and great businesses even better
847-991-0488
howard@larsonassociates.ws
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P.S. We make telesales for small business affordable by offering programs down to only 15 hours a week. Maybe you could add telesales into your marketing mix call today and find out.


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