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Twitter Business Guide

Do you need a social media policy?

Let’s try to understand what constitutes a progressive social media strategy. The basic idea that social media marketers want to base their strategy around is direct and personalised engagement with the consumer and there is no dearth of effort from companies in trying to explore ways to use social media for marketing.

However, forming a concrete plan for a business by bringing together various aspects of social involves proper resource allocation, constant involvement, making use of analytical tools to monitor progress, loads of patience, and effective social guidelines and rules of engagement for employees. In a way, social media demands virtues such as patience, openness and transparency.

However, often in the hype around social media strategists can easily overlook some important areas. Internal social media education within organisations is one such aspect that often gets ignored resulting in social media setbacks.

Employees though their interactions on social networks can leave a trail of comments, threads which can nullify the positive impact of the efforts of social media team of the organisation. While organisations cannot and should not force employees to abstain from discussing their work life on such platforms, it is still important for the employees to be aware of the potential damage their actions on social networking sites can cause their organisation.  

Training and educational programs on the topic will help the employees understand the importance of social media integration and adoption, even if they are not directly involved in the organisation’s social media plans. As a social media consultant cannot apply a one size fits all strategy to businesses, he also cannot have a common education for all the employees. There needs to be a marked segregation of people based on their profiles and interests. Employees in an organisation can be broadly divided into these categories:

Strategists     

Strategists are responsible for the overall social strategies and how they impact the medium to long term business objectives of the company. Their training should focus more on planning and goal setting. Since the role of strategists is to provide direction, it is important they communicate effectively with the rest of the team. A personalised and transparent approach in dealing with other employees can go a long way in developing effective social practices within an organisation. An updated LinkedIn profile, a personal blog and regular interaction with employees will help this group engage better with both internal and external stakeholders. 

Overseers   

Managers are responsible for the day to day implementation of these strategies. Not only should this group fully understand the company’s social media policy and monitoring tools, they must also remain up-to-date with the latest technologies. As this group is directly responsible for the deployment of social media programs, ongoing training and participation in workshops and conferences is important. Regular interaction with specialists as well as fellow employees should also be encouraged as often the collective wisdom of a team far exceeds that of any individual.

Operators   

This group of employees is involved in direct interaction with customers, therefore it is imperative that they have a clear direction about their role. This group should fully understand the social media guidelines set by the company which will help them interact more confidently with customers. They should also have a reliable point of contact for their queries. Further they should be able to prioritise customer complaints with little or no supervision.  Again regular interaction with their managers will provide them a sense of direction and help them promote the organisation more effectively.

Observers

This group may not be directly involved with the implementation of social media plans of an organisation, but they may be impacted by the outcome of those plans. It’s important that even these employees are part of a practical training on the benefits of social and how to engage on social media platforms. This understanding will also help them understand the importance of behaving more responsibly on social networking websites.

Basic social media training

Needless to say that social media does have cascading effects though an organisation. Information sessions on the benefits and risks involved with social media can prove to be extremely helpful for employees.  Regular interaction between management and other employees also helps in identifying areas where further training can help.

A short mandatory training session as part of an employee induction program is a good idea. The core social components of this program will depend on the organisations to which they are applied. Broadly speaking, some of the areas which could be covered in a basic social media training program are:

·            A brief introduction on social media, and the business case for involvement

·           Social media goals of the organisation

·           Social media engagement guidelines and the potential risks involved

·           Clearly defined social media roles in an organisation

·           Effective measurement and monitoring practices, including data gathering and benchmarking

·           Feedback mechanism and sharing of best practices

It’s important to remember that social strategy is fluid. It requires constant monitoring and changes in strategy. Employees should be encouraged to attend regular conferences and webinars. Regular sessions with internal and external specialists should also be encouraged.

A good internal social media strategy boils down to ensuring that the basic things are done right. Overall, the emphasis should be on bringing in a more open and transparent culture which encourages participation from everyone. Remember that the most important aspect of social media is engagement and that is unlikely to change. The best way to do social is by being social.   

Social media integration

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In search for quality links

As a marketer you probably know by now that obtaining links is one of the most important methods in order to get proper rankings in some of the major search engines. Is that right?

Well, obtaining links is may help your website promotion but it does not necessarily means that all links are equal or that all links actually provide useful value.

Not all links are created equal. A lot of mythology and misinformation exists on the World Wide Web about obtaining the right kind of links. Our intentions are not about revealing the truth as some things are not clear and simple but to set the main points on which one should base his decisions.

Many professionals would suggest that in order to know what a good link is one must follow Google and try to discover every daily algorithm change and that failing to do so can be a real obstacle in the way to the number one spot.

Guess what? Some of these people are actually after your money. Sure they know a bit about Google and search engine placements but the truth is plain simple. Search engines provide site owners with the best practices. There is no need to be an expert to follow it. The basic guidelines stand the test of time and seem to hold the real value.

Since Google's business model relies upon filling the surfers intentions it also needs to ensure that website owners know how they will deserve the top spots so that competition will lead to better websites. Trying to understand the basic search engine intentions in relationship with the algorithm task, the two step process is all about deciding:

• What is the web page really about?
• Is the page worthwhile in this topic?

Using basic methods one can tell the visitor about the web page content and what keyword or key phrase is in focus. Being worthwhile, on the other hand is about getting the right recommendations which are the right links.

It is not hard to find out which are better links, links that are bought from a non-relevant old established site or some that are diverse and originate from established and known sites in the industry.


The value of links is measured by three simple indicators

1. Relevancy- the link should be from a relevant page. Better be a relevant page within a relevant site
2. More trust for old and established sites- links for older sites tend to have a greater value than those from newer sites
3. Placements within the page- Links that are part of the page's unique content are more likely to be clicked and thus hold greater value from those who are laid in the footer of the page or below the fold.

If you get links from well established, old and relevant pages rules you will find out that fewer of these quality links will more than outweigh dozens of others' originated in non-relevant sites. This, works for site owners for years, regardless of the minor or major amends to Google's algorithm.

Getting good links is a different story. It does take a lot of effort and earned knowledge on how to promote a web site.


Where can we find great links?

The most common and easiest way of finding good links is to use the basic tools the web provides for inspecting who links to your competitors.

One simple way is using the Yahoo Link domain query. In Yahoo site explorer just use the following search query:
linkdomain:domainname.com -inurl:domainname.com
Were domainname.com is the name of your competitor domain; the domain that you would like to check for its backlinks.


About the source:
WAO internet marketing provides SEO and web-marketing releated guides for website owners who would like to gain the basic knowledge on promoting their websites in global and local search engines.