Social Media for Publishers

Making Twitter and other Social Networks a successful part of your media mix…

“You just have to do it!” exclaimed one publisher at a recent roundtable discussion.

The “it” is Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and the dozens of other components that make up a successful social media program. And while I agree and appreciate their enthusiasm for social media, let me make the business case in terms that publishers can understand. (Us retreads need to stick together in this topic least we be overwhelmed by the many options that can turn into an uncoordinated mess).  Allow me to explain…

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Bringing Order to Social Media Activities

Social media for publishers is about building awareness, traffic, audience and brand preference. It starts with creating great free content that leads to someplace you want users to go, and then distributing that free content (or part of it) on as many platforms as you can. In the old days we called this PR, but today we call it content marketing, organic marketing, blog marketing and social media marketing. These are all different ways to describe a process that uses free content and personalities to achieve marketing goals.

The Basic Parts of a Social Media Marketing System

1. A Multi-Author Blog
2. Topics
3. Keywords
4. Free Content
5. Email Newsletters
6. Search Engines
7. Referring Websites
8. RSS Feeds
9. Twitter
10. Facebook
11. Linked In
12. Social Bookmarking
13. Clear Marketing Objectives
14. Measureable Goals
15. A Publishing Calendar

An Integrated System, Not Independent Activities

The foundation of your Twitter headline publishing schedule is comprised of the headlines from your blog which, when properly coded, can turn into a large source of website traffic. The full blog post can then expand on the Twitter headline to build awareness and preference for your brand, and point visitors to all manners of direct response transactions. A savvy online editor will add to the headlines other more personal posts to give the followers a sense of the editor beyond the blog content. A myriad of tools exist to make the whole process easy, fast and cheap. And the same blog posts can be used to power email newsletters, RSS feeds, Facebook, bookmarking networks, and on and on. Much of the process can be totally automated.

A Final Key Point about Social Media Content

Professional publishers with full-time writers, editors and researchers can use a social media marketing system to share the vast amount of valuable content produced by their entire organization.

Register today for Twitter for Publishers 2010, the live webinar on Tuesday, March 16^th… or if you can’t make the live event, pre-order the event on CD-ROM or join Mequoda Pro for unlimited Encore Access today. This discussion is crucial to making social media an effective component on your online marketing mix.