Stuart Buchanan from The Nest writes:

This week, I am at the 2010 Australia Council Marketing Summit and I’m participating in a panel discussion titled “Tweets and blogs – Who’s the Critic Now?”.  As a companion piece to the panel, I’ve put together six practical actions that you can do today to take charge of your online presence and reputation.

You might already be well in control and be six steps ahead of everyone else, if so – congrats!  Maybe you can comment on the post, and share some of your insights – what worked, what didn’t work?  What would you do differently next time around?

If you’re undecided about whether you should be jumping in feet-first to the social media world, be assured – social media is a huge business in Australia.   In fact, in a recent Nielsen poll, Australian social media use was – quite surprisingly – deemed to the highest in the world, ahead of our counterparts in U.S., U.K. and mainland Europe.  And the big heads at Forrester have also noted that so-called “Midlife Australians”  were particularly notable in their increased web usage – two thirds of online Australians aged 35-54 use social media each week.  All of these numbers are just in fact a short way of stating the obvious: social media is not just important to your communications, it is in fact absolutely critical.

So here’s six ways to get on top of it:

1. MAKE SURE YOU’RE IN CONTROL

Some basics first off – have you created profiles on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube?  If not, get to it – quickly!  It’s fast, easy and free – even if you’re not sure how you’re going to use these sites, at least make sure you claim the territory and lock in a profile name that matches your organisation.

If you have already created profiles, can you actually access them if you need to?  Do you know who usually manages them? Do you know what the passwords are?!

In the unlikely event that someone else has grabbed your potential profile name already (perhaps they’re a fan, or a supporter?), ask them to pass it over to you.  Generally, they’ll be happy to agree, and in the extreme case that they don’t, all of the main platforms have a clear and sensible dispute resolution process.

2. SET DOWN SOME GUIDELINES OR PROTOCOLS

Whether your a small, medium or large organisation, it’s always a smart idea to set out some ground rules – what should you be saying, how often, what language, what’s in and what’s out?  If there is a singular protocol that holds most sway in the social media environment, it is this: ‘be honest”.  An honest and straight-forward dialogue is by far the best way to navigate through the social web, and to build loyalty, trust and traction with your audience.

However, if more than one person is using your social media accounts, you should think about setting out some basic written guidelines – it needn’t be too elaborate, but even some key pointers can be hugely helpful for everyone.  At the more formal end of the spectrum, larger organisations may consider putting in place a Social Media Policy as part of their HR operations.

3. ENSHRINE SOCIAL MEDIA INTO YOUR COMMUNICATIONS PLAN

There are many different ways you can use social media.   Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff wrote a widely regarded book in 2008 on the subject called ‘Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies’ – highly recommended if you have a keen interest in this space.  They suggest five broad tactics that social media can be used for:

  • LISTENING: Gaining insight into the wants and needs of your audience, and using that intelligence to further develop your organisational & marketing strategies
  • TALKING: Generating awareness and visibility of a project; Turning awareness into traffic – getting people to visit your site
  • ENERGISING: Establishing credibility and influence within your particular field and target audience
  • SUPPORTING: Establishing a ‘customer service’ space to respond directly to requests or issues
  • EMBRACING: Developing and encouraging feedback and suggestions; ‘crowd sourcing’ for ideas and intelligence; develop user generated content

These tactics are all very different, and only one falls into the ‘just tweet your latest media release’ category.  Social media can be used in a much more thoughtful – and ultimately – rewarding manner.  Consider social media in the same way would approach your tried and tested communications plan – plan your actions in advance, work out the optimal way to leverage each platform, have an end goal in mind, stick to a timeline and so forth.  You should also look at how ‘content‘ can be repurposed from one media or one platform to another.  Make sure your social channels are clearly visible (on web site, media releases, even stationary etc.) and that your content is flexible and sharable (allow users to embed vour videos on their blogs or post to Facebook and such like).

4. BUILD CREDIBILITY – TALK EARLY AND TALK OFTEN

Social media is quite literally a conversation – you need to either be starting conversations, or responding quickly when conversations start about you.  Keep it consistent – a couple of tweets, a regular status update or a latest info post will only take a few moments each day, but will keep you highly visible.

Other content work will take more time – such as blog posts, sourcing & compressing photographs, dealing with flash points and areas of critical interest, working with partners to get agreement on the release of content, encouraging dialogue by creating new groups, and new discussion points.  This activity however may only be needed 1-2 times per week, and only a few hours would be required to ensure a good quality of activity.

5. FOSTER THE CHAMPIONS – INTERNALLY & EXTERNALLY

As we increasingly connect to more and more people, our connected network naturally expands – a single message can now reach many hundreds of personal or professional connections in an instant, tapping into what is known as our ‘social graph’ or ‘influence network’.  Whether it be ten people or ten thousand people, with the right tools available, every online user has the power to syndicate a message to a network. 

Individuals close to your organisation (supporters, friends, followers, fans) can act as passionate, authentic ambassadors – the more you foster those ‘champions’, the more they are likely to help you to spread your message.  And they’re easy to find – who regularly tweets about you, or posts on your Facebook wall?  Contact them directly and start a dialogue – they’ll be thrilled that you think so highly of them!

 Internally, you should also find those members of staff that are social media junkies – their passion and experience can be invaluable to you, and they are likely to have their own, highly relevant ‘influence networks’ that you can tap into.

6. MONITOR THE ENVIRONMENT

Social Media marketing is a very different beast to traditional marketing – it is intrinsically more fluid, which can be both challenging and tremendously rewarding.  The main benefit of this is that responses (both quantitative and qualitative) are often swift – and any particular activity can often be measured and reviewed in a matter of days or even hours, rather than weeks or months. Fortunately, there are some great free tools available that can help you to monitor conversations about your organisations.  These include:

  • Google Alerts – fast and easy to set up – Google will locate web content matching your content and email you daily updates when new content appears.
  • Twitter Search scans all Twitter posts for your selected keyword, phrase or hashtag.
  • Twinfluence, Twitter.Grader.com and Twitalyzer are Twitter-specific tools that measure how influential and far-reaching your Twitter presence is.
  • SocialMention and Who’s Talkin enable you to search keywords and phrases by specific channels (blogs, images, news, video, etc.) and to receive email alerts when a new mention is posted.
  • Klout tracks the impact of your posted content and links, including which audiences are exposed to the content and how they interact with it.
  • If you’re feeling flush, there are also some more advanced paid services, which will bring you even more detail about your online presence – have a look at Trackur, Nielsen Buzz Metrics, Socialcast and Dialogix.

Hopefully, this short(ish) and sharp introduction will help you to start thinking about the key areas of managing your online reputation.  If you want to take things further, help is at hand!  Here at The Nest, we offer a range of services in the social media space, including a full package of hands-on management for those who just don’t have the time or space to engage directly.  We can also help you to develop campaigns and holistic strategies, or run in-situ workshops and training for you and your staff.  Contact us at hello@wearethenest.com or on 02 9518 3259 for a chat about how we can help.

img: Aristocrat via Flickr.