The,beating,heart,effective,So DIY The beating heart of an effective Social Media campaign

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So you put a new business plan together for 2010. Whetheryour enterprise is big or small – and regardless of industry – you almostcertainly discussed Social Media.It’s the most talked about and misunderstood business activity around. It’salso one of the few business initiatives that companies are still spending on –for good reason. It can lower the cost of doing business and improve outcomes.A recent Web 2.0 survey by the legendary management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.found that two-thirds of respondents reported “measurable” benefits from theuse of Web 2.0 technologies.>>Lower communication and travel costs>>More effective marketing>>Higher customer satisfactionThose Web 2.0 technologies include blogging, video, wikis and RSS feeds, amongothers.Wait a minute, you might be saying at this point, where are the references toFacebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and YouTube? And what the devil are wikis andRSS feeds?Don’t even worry about wikis and RSS feeds at this stage of the game. It’sblogging that we will concentrate on in this article,because blogging is the centerpiece of sensible Social Media campaigns.It’s all fine and well to have business accounts with Twitter, FacebookLinkedIn and MySpace,but what information do you feed to them? What can you really do with a140-character Twitter message if you don’t have a link that takes readerssomewhere meaningful to them and profitable for you?Granted, other Social Media sites give you plenty of space to tout yourbusiness, but who are you going to bet on? The first big Social Media site wasMySpace. It is now in fast decline, losing members at a torrid pace. Twitter,YouTube and Facebook were hardly a mention a few years ago and are now SocialMedia’s 800-pound gorillas. But what about a few years from now? Will they sufferthe same fate as MySpace, as social networkers migrate on to swankier newsites?That’s very likely, which is why you don’t want to make those sites theflagship of your Social Media outreach. If you build a major reservoir ofcontent about your company on Facebook, how do you transfer all that data overto the hot, new, emerging Social Media site? That’s a problem. That’s a hassle.And we all try to minimize business problems and hassles.Do this instead: Create a company blog integrated into your website, and usethat as the centerpiece of your Social Media campaign. It has lots ofadvantages. As PatrickSchwerdtfeger points out in his excellent book Webify Your Business, searchengines like Google, Bing and Yahoo favor blogs. Here’s why. Search engines hunt for three primary thingswhen assessing the value of a website:>>The quantity of unique, relevant content>>The newness or freshness of that content>>The link structure surrounding the websiteBlogs cater to all three of these metrics. Bottom line: As you consistently addrelevant content to your blog and, hence, your website, it will climb up thesearch-engine rankings. That means more people searching for information aboutyour products, services or industry will find your website, blog and company.Now that you’re creating blog content, use the dozens of Social Media sitesthat exist to blast that content out to the world. Yes, that’s right, I saiddozens. Most people are familiar with the big five sites but have never heardof Social Media sites such as Yammer, Vox, Shout’em, LiveJournal, Jaiku, Plurk,Bebo and many others.To give you some idea, I send my blog posts to more than 30 Social Media sites.Right about now you’re probably freaking at the thought of managing aconstellation of Social Media sites. Set down the valium. It’s not as difficultas it sounds. Registering for all these sites can eat up an entire day. But youcan population those sites in one fell swoop by using a site like Ping.fm. Ping allowsyou to post and send a message one time through its interface – then Pingautomatically posts your message on the dozens of Social Media sites whereyou’ve opened accounts.And, yes, all of these sites are free.So, for example, if you own a jewelry store you might write a blog article that explains how lay people can tell the differencebetween a diamond and a cubic zirconia. Because sites like Twitter and Shout’emrestrict messages to 140 characters, you might compose a Social Media messagethat says: “A diamond is a woman's best friend and a CZ her worst enemy. Here'show to tell the difference http://tinyurl.com/yk4bv2t.”Peak the reader’s interest with an enticing teaser, then give them the link toyour blog article to learn what you have to teach. Yourblog’s URL is likely to eat up many of those precious 140 characters, so useTinyURL or Bit.ly and other similar sites to shrink it down to size. Pingautomatically shortens your URL to economize on space.Although using Ping or similar web services solves the issue of having to dealwith too many Social Media sites on a one-by-one basis, the bigger issue isblogging. Many businesspeople find themselves at a loss for subject matter. Ifyou run a frozen yogurt shop then, yeah, you’re probably not going to findenough topics to write a year’s worth of blog posts, let alone keep the blogrunning strong for the next five or 10 years.Lesson one, blogging and Social Media are not for every business. If you cannotcreate oodles of content about your business, industry and related matters youwon’t be able to sustain let alone interest people in your blog.Lesson two, you probably have more to write about than you think. Make yourblog personal. Write about yourself. Write about your customers. Write aboutyour employees. Remember, a blog posting can run from just a few paragraphs tothousands of words. Just make sure it’s interesting, educational or engaging soreaders subscribe and stick with your blog.Lesson three, blogging and Social Media are long-term commitments. Don’t evenexpect to start seeing results for at least six months, though a year is morerealistic. Over the course of years the blog really starts to do some heavylifting for your business because the content has been piling up and the searchengines are directing people to your site with increased frequency. Then again,if you don’t have the stamina or discipline to write two or three blog posts aweek for the rest of your business career you better have the budget to paysomeone to do the work for you.No, it doesn’t take a full-time person to blog and manage your Social Mediasites. Yes, you could easily employ two full-time people if you worked all theavailable internet channels and best practices. You don’t have to do it all toget results. Just do it and do it consistently.There are a million things to know about blogging and its intersection with theSocial Media world. That goes way beyond the scope of this article,which is why I recommend you get a copy of the aforementioned book Webify YourBusiness and follow blogging hotshots like Denise Wakeman, who has a freefive-part video course on business blogging, and Darren Rowse of ProBlogger,whose articles include one titled Blogging Tips for Beginners. To learn lotsabout Social Media visit Mashableoften and check out its guides to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.You’ll be surprised how quickly expertise is assimilated and you’re bloggingand working the Social Media channels.As Denise Wakeman is fond of saying, Blog on!