It is a reality that today’s social media will only get bigger. It is definitely not going anywhere. Social media can affect your brand in a serious way. So if you are serious about marketing your brand online, social media must be a big part of your overall marketing effort. Social media is an effective and efficient way to interact with customers. Everything your company does online will most likely affect your image and ultimately your brand. SMM is one of the most successful ways to quickly grow your online community and make you and your brand well known to a large number of people. Here are a few ideas to establish consistent social media practices.

1. If you are blogging, make that a home base for all of your other efforts. Home base is your blog/website. Not everyone needs a blog, but most people who want to develop a personal brand do. Buy an easy-to-remember, easy-to-spell, content appropriate domain name if you can.

2. Your “about” page should be about you and your business, should the blog be professional in nature. If your blog is less for professional purposes, make sure that section is at least about you. Make sure it’s easy to comment on your site.

3. It should be very easy for people to subscribe to your site’s content. Use easy to read fonts and colors. A site laden with ads is a site that doesn’t cherish its audience.

4. Load time is key. Test your blog when you make changes, and ensure that your load times are reasonable. Register your site with all of the top search engines. Use WebsiteGrader.com to make sure your site is well built in Google’s eyes.

5. Use “passports” for blog promotion efforts. Passports are accounts on other social networks and social media platforms. It’s a good idea to build an account on some of these sites to further extend your personal branding.

6. Build ego searches using Technorati and Google Blogsearch. Comment frequently (and meaningfully) on blogs that write about you and your posts. Don’t forget the conversations hiding in Twitter (use Summize.com) and Friendfeed. Be sure to stay aware of those. If you can afford it, buy professional listening tools, like Radian6 or others in that category.

7. Use Google Reader to store your ego searches. Use Yahoo! Site Explorer to see who’s linking to your site. Heat map tools, like CrazyEgg, will show you how people relate to your site. Listen to others in your area of expertise. Learn from them. Listen to thought leaders in other areas, and see how their ideas apply to you.

8. Don’t forget podcasts. Check out iTunes and see who’s talking about your area of interest. Track things like audience/community sentiment (positive/negative) if you want to map effort to results.

9. Build RSS outposts on Facebook. Add Flog Blog, and several other RSS tools. Build a similar outpost on MySpace, if your audience might be there.

10. Make sure your social media is listed in your LinkedIn profile. Add a link to your blog in your email signature (this is still an outpost). Be sure your social network profile on all of the sites has your blog listed, no matter where you have to put it to list it.

11. Use social networks respectfully to share the best of your content, in a community-appropriate setting. Don’t forget places like YahooGroups, Craigslist and online forums.

12. Email newsletters with links to your blog makes for an effective outpost, especially if your audience isn’t especially blog savvy. Podcast content can have links to your URL and might draw awareness back to your content too.

13. Create new content regularly. If not daily, then at least three times a week. The more others can use your content, the better they will adopt it.

14. Write brief pieces with lots of visual breaks for people to absorb. Images draw people’s attention. Try to add a graphic per post… that seems to help keep the reader’s attention.

15.  Mix up the pieces of your site. Interviews, how-to articles, new information and more can help you keep things new and draw more attention. Limit the number of “me too” posts you do in any given month to no more than three. Be original, in other words.

16.  The occasional ‘list’ post is usually very good for drawing attention. Write passionately, but be brief (unless you’re writing a list of 100 tips). Consider adding audio and video to the mix. The occasional YouTube video with you can add to your personal branding immensely, especially if you can manage to look comfortable. Brevity rules.

17. Commenting on blogs is an important tool that helps in starting good conversations. One should be patient on the comments as that helps in creating awareness among people. Commenting on other people’s blogs builds awareness fast. The more valuable your comments, the more it reflects on your ability and your character.

18. Use your listening tools to stay active in pertinent discussions. Try not to brag too much. Be humble.

19. Ask questions with your blog posts. Defer to experts. Learn from the conversations. Be confident. Asking for external validation often is a sign of weakness. Try never to be too defensive. Don’t be a pushover, but be aware of how you present yourself when defending. Disclose anything that might be questionable as quickly as possible.

20. Good conversations can show up across many blogs with links to show the way.

21. Don’t delete critical blog comments. Delete only spam, abrasive language posts, and offensive material. (Have a blog comments policy handy, if you get into the deleting mode.)

Your mileage may vary, and some of this advice ranges from dead simple pretty complicated. It will require some customization, depending on your industry, goals and interests. Consider it as a starting point. If you need to know more, take a look at this blog post by Chris Brogan.

References:

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-steps-to-establishing-a-consistent-social-media-practice/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/50-ways-marketers-can-use-social-media-to-improve-their-marketing/

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1. 5 Ways to Get Your Blog Noticed
2. Monitoring Social Media Marketing
3. Developing an Effective Social Media Measurement
4. 5 Pillars of Social Media Marketing
5. 10 Interesting Social Media Marketing Blogs