Guest Post: Clarifying Social Media Strategy with the POST Method

By Christine Gallagher

It sounds simple, but before you implement a new marketing strategy in your business, you need to first know what your objectives are. That is, what is it that you are trying to accomplish? Social media is no different. It's not enough to want to add it to your marketing mix because "everyone else is doing it."

Luckily, Forrester Research came up with a handy little acronym, which my colleague Amy Miyamoto and I also included in our Social Media Made Simple webinar series. It's called the POST Method, and it's a really easy way to frame your social media strategy. Here's how it breaks down:

P: Who are the PEOPLE you would most like to attract via your social media presence on sites such as Twitter and Facebook? For example--mentors, colleagues, strategic alliance partners, raving fans, potential clients, local connections? Or a combination of these?

O: What are your primary OBJECTIVES for your Social Media presence? For example, is it to get found by those who are looking for your services or products, finding and interacting with current and potential clients and customers, building a community around your business, creating awareness of your content and offerings, building relationships with potential strategic alliance and referral partners, learning from mentors?

S: What Social Media STRATEGIES do you plan to implement? Will you have a Twitter profile, a Facebook Fan Page, a LinkedIn profile, join a Facebook Group, start a blog? Which ones have priority over others?

T: What TECHNOLOGIES will you use? For example--Hootsuite, Twellow, Ping.fm, Twitpic, YouTube, Bit.ly for link shortening? (The ones you determine to be of highest priority to you will influence the kinds of actions you take on the social media sites you have a presence on.)

Finally, for bonus points, you could also include "M" as in "how will you MEASURE your results?" Understandably, businesspeople still want to know the ROI of their activities--and although this is not as cut and dry to measure in social media, there are still certain numbers that you can look to: your number of newsletter or blog subscribers, number of followers and fans, your website traffic, the amount of comments on your blog, how many purchases made, etc.

The POST method is a good basic structure for starting to define your social media plan, objectives, and priorities. By identifying all the relevant parts of the structure you are creating a clearer vision and purpose--as well as implementing goals, strategies, and tools that will best enable you to effectively reach the ideal people you are looking to connect with through social media.

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Christine Gallagher is founder of ShesGotClients.com, a company dedicated to teaching women entrepreneurs all over the world how to use authentic relationship marketing and online strategies to attract raving fans, enroll more clients, and enjoy more income and freedom in their business, all while sharing their gifts and their message in a much bigger way.

Christine created The 6 Simple Steps to Kick Start Your Social Media Success System(TM), a real-world, step-by-step "roadmap" that teaches entrepreneurs how to consistently bring in new clients and customers using the Internet.

Through her coaching and training business, Christine helps entrepreneurs maximize their profits using an integrated social media and online marketing strategy, and teaches them how to stop trading dollars for hours by using online information marketing techniques.

Christine was recently featured as a social media marketing expert in the book Get Scrappy: A Small Business Owner's Guide to Marketing On Less, as well as profiled as one of "16 Brilliant Business Minds on Twitter" by The Huffington Post. Her blog was also recently chosen as one of the top 50 small business blogs by Konector.com, and her newsletters, products, and online reach now educate and inspire over 18,000 people every month.

Learn more about Christine, her products, programs and courses at ShesGotClients.com

Sign up for Christine's "Get Out There" Ezine. Click here.

Social Media Time Management Strategy: Make a Twitter List

In the newest issue of Resume Writers' Digest, the cover story is on "Social Media Time Management Strategies for Resume Writers." In the spirit of that article is this blog post, which addresses a time-saving tip for Twitter.

One helpful Twitter feature is the ability to make a List. You can add those you follow to a list so that you can see all related tweets at once. Think of it as a customized timeline.

 

Ideas for lists to create would be Recruiters, Colleagues, Family, Celebrities, etc.

 

Old Twitter:

To create a list in the old version of Twitter, you would click on “New List“ in the Lists section on the right side. Once you have created one or more lists, they will appear above where you create a new one so you can easily access them.

 

 

New Twitter:

 

In the new version, click on the dropdown arrow beside “Lists” and then click on “Create a list.”

 

 

 

The process of actually creating your list is essentially the same in Old and New Twitter. Assign your list a Name and Description then choose whether you want it to be “Public” or “Private”. When finished completing this screen, click on Save List.

 

Once you’ve created your list, you can add people by searching for them:

 

 

Or just go to your follower list and find the people you want to add. Just click the icon on the far right and you can select to add the person to any of your lists.

 

 

Once your list is complete, you can click on it to see the tweets of those on your list only.

Want more social media time management tips? Subscribe to Resume Writers' Digest -- it's free! When you've confirmed your e-mail address, you'll also get a link to download the Spring 2011 issue which features Social Media Time Management Strategies for Resume Writers.

 

CPC Awards of Excellence Deadline is July 1

The Career Professionals of Canada Awards of Excellence Program nomination deadline is July 1, 2011.

Nomination categories include:

• Outstanding Canadian Career Leader
• Outstanding Volunteer Contributor to the Organization
• Outstanding New Canadian Career Professional
• Outstanding Canadian Online Profile Developer 
• Outstanding Canadian Resume - New Graduate
• Outstanding Canadian Resume - Career Change
• Outstanding Canadian Resume - Technical
• Outstanding Canadian Resume - Executive
• Outstanding Canadian Resume - Creative 

Both non-members and members may nominate PROFESSIONAL MEMBERS, and PROFESSIONAL MEMBERS may also nominate themselves for awards. Award recipients will be formally recognized on the CPC Recipients page, CPC News and Views, and in the Career Connections Newsletter, which is received by more than 2800 subscribers. Award plaques will be delivered directly to recipients.

For more information, visit the Awards of Excellence page. And get those nominations in by July 1!

Best of luck to all nominees!

Converting Voice Mails to Voice Files

Okay, so this blog post isn't 100% directly related to resume writing ... but it is something that you might need someday, so I'm sharing it anyway.

I've had my current (nonsmartphone) for about 4 years now, and it's time to upgrade. (Actually, it's long past upgrade time...), but I have about a half-dozen voice mails on the existing phone that I don't want to lose when I transition it over. I've heard enough "horror stories" from friends and colleagues who have lost voicemails, photos, and videos when switching over their phones that I want to be proactive about it.

So I've been investigating services that will preserve the voice mails by turning them into digital files -- either MP3s or CDs. I use Google Voice with my cell phone (which automatically creates recordings of my voice mail messages), but the calls I want to save were ones that came into my regular cell phone line, not my Google Voice number (which also rings my cell phone), so I don't have them as a digital recording ... only as a regular voice mail message.

I'm looking at two services in particular -- each with different costs and different features.

The first is voicemailsaved.com, which charges $34.99 for preserving voice mails (up to 30 minutes of voicemails included). They'll send an audio CD for $12.50 ($5 each for extra CDs), or send a link to download the recordings at no additional charge.

The second -- a much less expensive option, but one that requires more "me work" -- is savethatcall.com. For just $.50 plus $.05 per minute, you can use third party conferencing to record your voice mails (or any calls, for that matter -- which may actually be useful to resume writers conducting phone-based interviews of clients to collect information on their resume development).

You can also try CBW Productions, which charges approximately $5/message. You can receive files via MP3 download or CD or cassette. They also provide notary services, should you have a message that requires legal verification. [This is the service I used; I paid approximately $30 to have six messages saved, including shipping. I am a previous Alltel Communications subscriber, so I used promo code ALLTEL and saved 10% (thru 12/11). I'll let you know how it went when I receive the CD in the mail.]

Anybody have any experience with either of these services -- or another service they can recommend?