#1: USE SOCIAL MEDIA TOOLS
Who’s online? Why are they using these tools? Before you develop a presence online, it’s important to try the tools out for yourself. Create your own blog, sign up for Twitter, fill out a profile on LinkedIn – where ever you want to start. They all have something in common: they are tools for researching, aggregating, organizing and conversing—whatever YOU decide they are for. The Internet is about the user, what is relevant to the individual.
Once you have an idea about how you like to use these tools, you can be a better judge of how it makes sense to use these tools as a company. You don’t have to use every tool. You just need to be a good judge of when and where it makes sense to use the tools – where you should be connecting and who you should be connecting with and what the end goal is for the company.
#2: IT’S OK TO SAY, “I DON’T GET IT”
When in doubt, YouTube it. There are so many tools, how do you keep up? Why bother learning about the next one? Well, the good thing about new tools is that hopefully the next tool is better at serving all of our needs at once and even more user-friendly. Better than having an abundance of tools to choose from, is having even more ways of explaining them. If you are a visual learner, or would like to see the tool in action before you sign up for it, or just need a little more prodding – there’s usually a “how to” or mini-tutorial styled video on YouTube.
#3: READ TERMS OF SERVICE
Always read the terms of service (TOS) agreement before you sign up to use any online tools. Most online tools are free. Wrong. They are offered to you free of charge, but in return, they may be collecting your data or selling the opportunity for advertisers to promote their products and services to you. As Adam Smith said, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” There isn’t anything wrong with this business model so long as the practice of what they are doing with your information is transparent. For you and me, it’s a question of privacy. You are in control of what you choose to make public, but once it’s up on the screen, do you have control over it? The option to delete it?
THE FIRST STEP IS LISTENING
#4: MONITORING MADE EASY.
What is being said about you right now? Not last year, or even last week – but within the last 10 minutes? Knowing what is being said about you and in response to what you have published online (and offline) is pivotal to anticipating issues or crisis before it hits. It also means taking advantage of opportunities before they surface – before your competition sniffs them out. Using Google Alerts, is a great way to monitor information that may relate to your business or industry. However, key word searches, regardless of how specific your search terms are, may not always return relevant information. So use RSS feeds in conjunction with google alerts. Seek out credible, in-the-know people who blog about things pertinent to your industry or your business itself. Subscribe to their RSS feeds so that it is either placed in your e-mail inbox, or use tools like iGoogle or Google Reader which aggregate all of your feeds in one window. Using a tool like Google Reader is great because your RSS feeds can be read right away, without having to link to the page of origin. Secondly, your inbox will be limited to items that require responses (hopefully).
#5: RESEARCH IS DELICIOUS
Research what is relevant to you, bookmark it so you can refer to it later and now… share your list of favourites, in real-time, with anyone who has access to the Internet and the address for your de.licio.us page site. Social bookmarking tools, like this one, allow you to access a list of links to your favourite or most frequented sites at any computer that has an Internet connection. They can also make research easy. For example, if you are interested in a green lifestyle, you could research the term “eco-friendly,” click on a few links that interest you, check out who saved those links and see if they saved other relevant links on this subject. You can then subscribe to this person’s network and every time they find something of interest on this subject matter, it will show up on your network. It’s almost effortless and if done correctly, you will get targeted, quality information. Instead of spending time searching for the information, you just have to sort through it. Now that’s “e.ffic.ient” (however, “delicious” sounds and looks much better).
THE SECOND STEP IS SPEAKING
#6: BLOGS- Enough listening, have your say!
Blogging can be a great tool to set yourself and your company up as leaders in your industry. It can be a great way to stay in touch with both your employees and your customers. You can control the content that is published, including some, none or all comments from readers. You should start by reading all sorts of blogs. Check out what comments are being made, by whom and how the blog author moderates them. When designing content for your blog think about how it will provide your company with a name, face and personality.
#7: No time to blog? Too busy reading blogs? MICRO-BLOG.
Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk – these are all examples of tools that allow you to say/post/publish something in 140 words or less, as frequently as you see fit. You can use these tools like you would on Facebook, to tell other people on your network what your online status is, what you’re doing at the moment, or maybe post an interesting quote. OR, you can use it to add value to the conversation online by providing a link to an interesting article, posing an interesting question, or sharing a quick tip, piece of information. As a many-to-many medium, I would recommend focusing on the latter. When sharing links, use Tiny URL to free up space.
#8: USER IS KING, BUT USE FIRST-PERSON INSTEAD OF THE ROYAL “WE”
When you communicate online, as opposed to a one-to-many medium (such as television, radio, or print) remember to make it personal or at least conversational. When you respond with a key message, like
“we pride ourselves on providing the best price, selection and service for our customers,”
it is not useful and it’s a little stiff. How can you add value to the conversation? Or solve the user’s problem? “Key messages” sound like this online: “blah, blah, corporate blah, blah, blah.” Solve the problem, provide some options, ask how you can help, or tell us how else we can have our say.
#9: HIT “PRINT SCREEN”
Links expire. Content changes, gets deleted, or becomes hidden. If you want to be 100 per cent sure that the links you provide will take your readers to the right page — every time – use the print screen button to capture an image of it. Also, if someone has said something negative or inappropriate, capture an image of it and ensure that administrators of that site or tool are aware.
In the same light, everything in writing is just that – public record and in writing. The same rules apply online for everyone.
Happy “creeping” surfing!
This is a good start, but I get the impression that you’re underestimating the power / impact of feeds. Almost everything you list here has a feed (which noobs often think means “RSS”, but the feed term is, technically speaking, broader). Thus, those del.icio.us links you like (yours, other people’s, your network, other people’s networks, and so on) all have feeds that you can “subscribe” to. The same goes for all those micro-blogs.
Thus, it’s possible to “mash up” those feeds into something more useful. You can use a tool like Yahoo Pipes, for example, to create a narrowly targeted feed from a variety of sources — e.g. “give me everything PR-related from here, here, and here”.
It’s also possible to use these feeds to pull everything into one place — e.g. Google Reader. That gives you a one-stop dashboard for all your info sources.
Clever usage of the feed-based aspects of these tools is key to being able to “surf” massive amounts of data ala Scoble. Somebody recently asked me “how do you find the time to find this kind of stuff in the benthic miasma of the Web?” (which is such a great line, I’m probably going to blog it), and I answered, truthfully, “I don’t. It comes to me”.