Category: LinkedIn

10. Don't take yourself too seriously. Your success in social media may be dependent in large measure on what you have to share with others, but how you come across – your online persona – is also very important.     Whether you're on Facebook or YouTube, tweeting or blogging, you need to be as affable as you are knowledgeable, as charismatic as you are smart. You need to lighten up. Sure, many of the most effective social media practitioners are opinionated and authoritative, natural born leaders at the top of their fields. But if you take a closer look, you’ll find that they’re also easygoing and deferential, not afraid to share some of their personal lives with their professional peers. They’re approachable and responsive, people who are comfortable having impromptu, informal conversations with a diverse range…

9. Measure the results of your activities. If you’re serious about using social media, not just in it for fun, then you need to measure the results of your online activities so you know where you stand. If you publish a blog, you can use such tools as Technorati to see how it compares to others in your industry or Google Analytics to find out which posts people are reading, where they’re coming from and how long they’re staying on your site. But that’s not all you want to analyze. You also want to look at how many readers are subscribing to your blog, how many comments you’re receiving, how many other blogs are linking back to yours and how often it’s turning up in search engine results. And that’s just…

This “blog post on video” was recorded on March 20, 2010 in my own back yard in Sudbury, MA. It’s the video version of a post I wrote and published on January 27, 2010 called “10 Ways to Succeed in Social Media, Part Three,” which you can read in its entirety here. If you can’t see the video on this page, you can check it out on my YouTube channel by clicking here. Bob Cargill is a copywriter, creative director and social media marketer who helps brands to strategize, develop and implement successful new marketing programs. He is always interested in new speaking, consulting and freelancing opportunities. To contact Bob, click here.

8. Educate others more than you promote yourself. A big mistake many organizations make is to use social media the way they use traditional marketing vehicles such as direct mail, email, print and broadcast. Instead of listening to their constituents, they’re tooting their own horns and focusing on ROI. They’re doing everything they can to force one-way, top-down, interruptive marketing messages into channels that were built for permission-based dialogue that doesn’t necessarily conform to a preconceived agenda. What they're doing is like trying to place a square peg into a round hole. Their efforts are futile. But that’s not to say you can’t generate leads and sales in social media. In fact, if you conduct yourself appropriately in these spaces and places, chances are your efforts will result in a multitude of new business…

7. Overcome the social media "dip." A common mistake made by many business folks is to think that social media will be an instant cure for what ails their traditional marketing activities. And while in many cases it can and will have an overwhelmingly positive effect on an organization’s ability to connect with its constituency, it’s not a panacea for an inferior product, poor PR, inept communications or a lackluster brand. The truth is that it’s a long and winding road to social media success. And as anyone who’s been blogging, tweeting and the like for a long time knows, it’s often an uphill climb, too. But if you can tough it out – listening, creating, engaging and opening up to others – for an indefinite period of time, making sure…

6. Leverage a number of channels. It’s one thing to tweet a few times a week, write a blog post once a month and update your profile on LinkedIn if you happen to land a new job. But it’s quite another to be active on a handful of social media channels on a daily basis. That's right, the most accomplished social media mavens don’t occasionally go online. They practically live online. Instead of checking email and voice mail, they’re responding to a steady, endless stream of comments, questions and requests from their friends, fans and followers. Instead of sitting in meetings all day, they’re sitting in front of a variety of screens, tap, tap, tapping away in the name of meaningful engagement with their constituencies. Instead of working nine to five,…

5. Work as a team. While most social media programs have a single champion at the helm, the best among them have a crew to provide support. Never mind the extraordinary demands of the job on almost a 24/7/365 basis. From project management to PR, customer service to marketing, creative to analytics, there are simply too many different skills required for one person alone to be successful on the grid on behalf of a big brand. As I wrote in a previous blog post (Social Media is a Team Sport, Not a Solo Act)…  An exceptional writer with a strong body of knowledge, a charismatic personality and a boatload of enthusiasm can make a huge social splash – don’t get me wrong. But to sustain an effective strategy for an indefinite period of time requires…

In case you missed it, John Cass and Toby Bloomberg pulled together an exhaustive joint post recently on how agencies, consultants and freelancers handle the notion of transparency when using social media on behalf of their clients. They reached out to dozens of their colleagues in the industry (myself included), asking them how they dealt with this issue while not only providing social media content for their clients, but in many cases posting that content for them as well. I applaud John and Toby for spearheading this initiative. It was a considerable undertaking on their part, the result being a diverse range of opinions from those on the cutting edge of social media, a body of work of great value to the industry. In my opinion, if a brand doesn't have the capabilities in-house, it makes perfect sense to outsource its social media…