FIRST STEPS:

* Identify advocates. "Advocacy is the nirvana of social media...it is through a

dvocacy that your efforts scale and grow. You're doing such an amazing job that
your customers shout about your brand from the rooftops."
* Identifying potential advocates:
-- Social tools
-- Site data
-- Customer data
-- Your own observations
* What's most important to those potential advocates?
-- What are they looking for?
-- Are they fishing for recognition?
-- Are they excited by exclusive access to news and/or content?
* Figure out what type of advocates your brand attracts.
* Find ways to recognize them for their advocacy.
* NOTE: most of your greatest community relationships will be built organically.
Relationships take time.
* Your research and brand knowledge encourage people and helps you put the right
foot forward.
* At first, just get people to simply like you, whether on Facebook, Twitter, wo
rd of mouth, whatever. The people who like you are consistently having their exp
ectations met. "This typically feels transactional with a low level of engagemen
t, though there's certainly nothing wrong with that."
FOSTERING ENGAGEMENT:
* Two flavors:
-- Responding to users' mentions, questions, commentary, etc. Very prese
nt and active (critical in the beginning). Respond to most user commentary and A
LL questions. The volume should be fairly manageable at this early stage.
-- A solid, data-driven content strategy. Build the foundation of a soli
d content strategy by looking at things like search queries and social conversat
ions. Collect data on how the audience reacts to and engages with your content.
This data is feedback on how you're doing. You might reevaluate the timing of up
dates, the format or sentence structure (are you asking questions, making bold c
omments, etc.) and even the type of media you're using.
* Ask for help.
-- Ask for survey participation.
-- Ask for product feedback.
-- Ask for whatever you need, such as supporting or sharing a piece of c
ontent.
-- You must have earned their allegiance by building value and investmen
t into the relationship before asking for such help.
* Monitor and listen.
-- Use services that will help push notifications to you so you can ensu
re you're not missing meaningful conversations across the web.
-- There are countless tools for this available, esp. for FB and Twitter
.
-- Monitoring and listening in a geniune way is your product feedback ch

annel, your user experience consultation, your early warning system.

* Keep it simple.
-- Too many options might as well be no options.
* Cross-promose for discoverability.
-- Ensure your blog is linked to from your social properties, and crosspromote your accounts.
-- Develop and sell a unique value proposition for each account.
-- Why would a customer need or want to follow you on Twitter, if they a
lready follow you on Facebook? Make sure to give them a reason.
* Gamify.
-- People enjoy competition and like being rewarded for achievements.
-- Adding some game-like elements can help you motivate a community.
-- Identify ways you can incent your own community in ways that align wi
th your business goals.
-- Make engaging with your brand fun.
-- Incenting your community is a great way to increasing the number of a
nswers your community is providing in a help forum.
-- Add levels of achievement for answering questions, for high-quality a
nswers, or for sharing out unanswered questions.
-- Match up behavior and goals with reward systems.
-- Badgeville and BigDoor have products that can help you use rewards.
-- These efforts can build on your existing social marketing; increasing
sentiment, retention and loyalty; while decreasing churn, acquisition expense a
nd customer service costs.
CONSISTENT BRANDING AND VOICE:
* Many visual and non-visual elements go into a brand -- but ultimately your bra
nd becomes your promise to your customers.
* You define the experience of what your product offering tries to fulfill.
* (#1) Have BRAND GUIDELINES develeoped.
-- 1. How your logo is to be represented.
-- 2. What fonts and colors can be used and in what manner.
-- 3. A full brand description and what it stands for.
-- 4. Situations in which the brand can and cannot be used.
-- 5. Tone, voice and manner qualities.
-- 6. Other topographical and structural elements (primarily for adverti
sers).
* Once you have BRAND GUIDELINES finished, address how they translate to social
media.
* Most of the visual components (logos, colors, etc.) will remain the same. Make
sure all those setting up your social profiles have access to any relevant crea
tive assets. Look at Cambridge Identity Guidelines and MailChimp's guidelines, w
hich are probably overzealous for most small and medium businesses -- but you ca
n glean inspiration for the parts that make sense for you. A graphic design team
should be able to help you with a lot of this as well.
* (#2) Know your audience.
-- Be on-brand, but relevant to the environment in which you're working.
-- Your audience (the social platform you're engaging on) may slightly c
hange your tone and voice from your brand guidelines.
-- This is where it's important to have a really solid understanding so

you can adapt as necessary.

-- It's not vital to be absolutely consistent, but it is vital to demons
trate cohesiveness.
* (#3) Be human.
-- The obvious goal of social media.
-- Human engagement is where the magic is -- keep that in mind as you're
developing your brand, because this will help you craft a voice that is solid a
nd cohesive, but also one that users can relate to and build relationships with.
* (#4) Integrate your campaigns.
-- Integrating your campaigns across all of your social profiles can hel
p solidify your brand and amplify your efforts.
-- Using similar visual elements across all of your profiles will help i
ngrain your messaging and drive home the point in ways that are relevant and cus
tomized to the platform.
INCONSISTENCY IN THESE MATTERS CAN LEAD TO A DISJOINTED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE OR E
VEN A NEGATIVE IMPACT
* Key questions
-- What
-- What
-- What
-- What
tc.)?

to answer:
is your "brand voice and personality"?
do you stand for, and what do you represent?
are your value proposition and differentiating factors?
are your defined visual branding elements (logo, font, colors, e

* If you don't answer these questions first, your social presence can veer towar
d one of two extremes:
-- Your communication will come across as stiff and corporate and the pe
ople you're engaging will feel like they're dealing with a robot.
-- Your community manager will use his own voice in your communications,
leading to an inconsistent or even inauthentic experience.
* Providing a cohesive, branded customer experience that is completely agnostic
of site, network (or, archetype, or demographic?) or location will serve to galv
anize your community's comprehension of, memory of and hopefully preference for
your brand.

What behavior am I trying to drive, and to what business end?

== I'm trying to drive buying behavior that would have been lavished upon larger
, more expensive competitors.
Of the social channels out there, which types lend themselves to the specific pr
oducts and/or services I offer?
Who are my target customers, and what do I know about their online behavior?