5 Social Marketing Basics

Tips for Baby Boomers in Business:
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You wear many hats, and your time is valuable. You can't spend time twittering like Ashton Kutcher or Roland Hedley. How should you use social marketing, and what should your marketing plan encompass?

If you're a solopreneur, very-small-business owner, health care or arts professional -- your social marketing plan needs to be: carefully thought outsimplebrieftargeteddoableconsulted regularly.
My advice is to begin with the basics -- ignore Facebook for now, set up your profile as an expert on LinkedIn, and start using Twitter, sending a regular e-mail newsletter and blogging to stay in contact with your clients/customers/patients/fans.

1. Begin with your client list.

This should include not only family and friends, but also colleagues and acquaintances. Stretch out your circle to include even slight acquaintances, secure in the knowledge that your social marketing plan's goal is to stay in contact and nurture relationships, not to bother people with spammy ads. If you're a health professional, you may never have collected your patients' e-mail addresses -- they will feel flattered that you want to stay in touch.

2. Set up your LinkedIn page.

This is the basis of your bona fides as a business person or professional. You are the expert. This is where you explain precisely what you are doing: what your specialty is, and how you can be contacted. Be sure to pursue the Recommendations feature. LinkedIn will show you who you already know on the site, and you can write recommendations for these contacts. People usually reciprocate and recommend you back.

3. Set up a Twitter page.

Use your business name. Be sure to fill in your location and bio so that people can easily search to find you. Follow other companies in your business to see what your competition is doing. The most important thing is to establish your presence, and your value, by actually twittering. Don't just read what others write.

4. What to tweet.

Here's where I disagree with common practice. It is common for twitterers to send personal tweets about their day, as in "I was out running with my dog on the beach this morning." Who cares? These are, for the most part, boring, useless tweets, and they'll clutter up your followers' pages. Visit Mashable and follow their tweets. They always provide a friendly face and useful, usable information, or what we call good content. This, I think, is the prime directive.

5. Learn to Bit.ly or Tiny URL.
To add value to your tweets, add a link -- to your blog, to a Web page you find interesting and on-topic, to a home or landing page...to good content. To save room for your tweet, shorten the link's url by signing up on http://bit.ly or http://tinyurl.com, copy your chosen link into the box to shorten it. Bit.ly allows you to tweet right from its page, then provides information about how many people clicked on your tweet's link.

These are the basics with which to begin. In subsequent blogs, I'll cover more details about your social marketing plan.