I recently put together a short presentation on getting some social media 101 content together for a partner in our ecosystem. This kind of exercise is harder than it looks. As with most industries (social and digital media marketing is no different), there is so much that can go into a “if you do anything, make sure you do this” presentation that it’s a challenge to pick the right content to yield a useful, short, and readable presentation.

1. Social Media 101 for an
Ecosystem Partner
Alan Belniak
http://www.SubjectivelySpeaking.net
@abelniak
May 2012

2. Breaking It Down Into Elements
 WHO
 WHAT
 HOW
 NOW
 NEXT
 MORE
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3. WHO
Who is your audience? Do you know? Are you sure? Who are the
contributors?
 ‘Common’ social media places:
– LinkedIn (company page, groups, Q+A,
personal profiles), Twitter (company and
personal), Facebook (company), Google+
(company)
 Other social media places
– discussion boards+ forums, your customer
community site, YouTube, SlideShare
 Action: take some time searching around
these places for mentions of your company
name and sub-industry terms
– spend some time on persona identification
and development
image sources: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10271567@N05/3363872519/ ; http://www.flickr.com/photos/ant_3000/6796318577/ 3

4. WHO (continued)
 Who are your content contributors?
– marketing? PR? sales?
– many people inside an organization have a
viewpoint
 Action: identify who is inherently good at
creating content, and who might have the
raw knowledge
– pair strong writers with strong
subject matter experts
image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/edyson/183734074/ 4

5. WHAT
Content is more than just words: text, video, images, and audio
 Text
– blog posts (on your own site or guest-posting in
other places), whitepapers, ebooks, slides
(SlideShare), email newsletters, even tweets
 Video
– YouTube videos – can be instructional,
informative, entertainment, or info-taintment
 Images
– create a Flickr account, Instagram account, or
Pinterest account, and share images of your
products
 Audio
– interview executives at your company or
industry leaders
– or, grab customer sound bites from an event
floor
image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/eloqua/4690626051/ 5

6. WHAT (continued)
 Bonus:
– the non-text content can often be embedded
into blog posts, thus combining multiple forms
of media
 Action: create a content calendar (.xls) with
rows as weeks (12 weeks) and columns as days
(Mon – Fri)
– start plotting out content posts and items
– update every 4 weeks (rolling basis)
image source: http://creo.ptc.com/2012/05/03/creo-parametric-2-0-new-design-software-delivers-great-graphics-performance/ 6

7. HOW
Moving from strategy to tactics… now what?
 Outposts – the social networks in the ‘who’
stage are all outposts
– ultimately you are driving them back to your site
to get them to download something, give you
information, sign up for a meeting or call, etc.
– if you haven’t yet, create accounts on these
outposts and get presences up and running
 Go create some content!
– use the calendar in the ‘what’ stage with the
people in the ‘who’ stage and start creating
content
– it doesn’t have to be perfect – it needs to be
‘good enough’ (“MVP”)
 Look at what others do for ideas, what you can
(and can’t) get away with, and frequency
image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidmasters/2516902376/ 7

8. HOW (continued)
Moving from strategy to tactics… now what?
 Promote content – just because you create it
doesn’t mean people will see it
– propagate your content (smartly!) across Pro Tip:
channels Aim to plan content for ~85% of the cells
– use a common shortened link and track the
statistics Save the remaining ~15% for silence, or
real-time reactions to news
– time the posts correctly to reach the proper
audience
 Action: in the content calendar,
create an extra row to store
the shortened link so you can
go back and track the content
item easily
 Also, go read this
image source: Heinz social media content planning 8

9. NOW
OK… so now what?
 You’ve hopefully used bit.ly (or similar) to
shorten links – now track them
– how are they performing? when? where?
 Hook up to Google Analytics – see what content
works and what doesn’t work
 Engage
– if people are commenting on Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, or sharing your SlideShare content –
interact with them, thank them, ask them a
question.
 Action: aim to reply to everyone who @s you
in Twitter, shares a piece of content, or asks a
question on any of the sites
– aside from bullying and downright negativity
image source: screen capture of https://bitly.com/KCXyV4+ 9

10. NEXT
Pause for a moment and look at what you did.
 Google Analytics and bit.ly (or similar)
– make adjustments in your content calendar
based on the results of the data
 Identify your top contributors/commenters and
look at them via an ‘influencer’ lens
– Klout (free) or FollowerWonk (free + pay) or
SocMetrics (pay) or Traackr (pay)
 See who has the most reach and influence and
work with them – interview them
 Action: once a week, ID your top commenters
and contributors
– look them up in LinkedIn and connect
– reach out privately to establish a rapport
image source: screen capture of http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/measure-social-media-with-free-tools/ 10

11. MORE
 WHO
– audience identification and personas
– listening
– SocialMention (free)
• be sure to learn what the content on the left, top and right means, before digging into the
content on the main part of the page
 WHAT
– FAQ = content goldmine
– conduct a Q+A on Twitter or other networks
– look at search traffic on site for ideas; subscribe to a content marketing blog for ideas
+ tips
– roll up all content you produce in two weeks into a twice-a-month “sideways
salesletter”
 HOW
– fun fact: On average, 84% of the content from Facebook pages (brands/companies,
not personal) isn’t seen
• Facebook throttles what you can see based on the engagement of that brand and content
– look for tips on content creation, headline writing, and so on – learn to think like a
journalist
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12. MORE (continued)
 NOW
– get free data from bit.ly on your links OR others’ links
• take any bit.ly link (example: http://bit.ly/KCXyV4)
• copy it and paste it into a URL window
• DON’T hit enter
• add a “+” sign (like http://bit.ly/KCXyV4+)
• NOW hit enter – see the stats
– learn more on Google Analytics and social sites
 NEXT
– run an ‘Analyze Followers’ report on FollowerWonk
– pay the cash for the credits if you need to (ongoing, or one-time [via PayPal])
– look at best times to tweet, and most influential followers
– read more about influencing the influencers
– use free tools to measure social media and understand more
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