"Social" Spring: Plant your "Social" seeds now

It’s spring time which is an early or flourishing stage of development and it’s around the corner. Nearly every business in the world has considered using social media for their business (or at least been told by someone to do so). It’s an important concept because social media has all of the characteristics of an excellent set of venues for getting out a brand message – popularity, ease, reach, and interactivity. The challenge is that with so many businesses doing it, many ideas start with great intentions and end up falling on deaf (aka nonexistent) ears. 

Why do I bring up spring time?  I like to refer spring and "spring time" as the "#SocialSeason", and also to ideas of rebirth, rejuvenation, renewal, resurrection, and regrowth.  It’s a time that a business can create new ideas and take chances again.  Let’s look at 4 ideas how this can be accomplished for your business in the “Spring”:

• “Social Messaging” can take a message and spread it out over time (these can be daily posts, tweets, blogs, etc.)
• “Blogs” can diversify the message and “chop it up” into individual components (this blog is an example because topics are chosen on what readers are looking for)
• “Creativity” plays a monumental role in the social media channels; remember that the competitors are reading this too and taking notes so the key to creativity is diversification
• “Social Channels” are important and require a presence at the least and domination at best to be truly successful

The most common mistake that companies make when trying to create “Social Messaging” is that they simply pick the wrong topic. It may seem impossible; how can the topic be anything other than obvious? The reality is that time and time again businesses focus on the wrong portion of the news because they go after what is most important to them rather than selecting something that will resonate properly through social media to the consumers to make them take action.

“Blogs” make for a lot of work but it can be rewarding if done properly. For example, one might post a full article on their blog, shrink it and link to it from Tumblr, shrink it further for Facebook and Google+, then truly reduce it down to its bare minimums for Twitter and LinkedIn.

“Creativity” is a matter of reach. While hundreds of millions of people are on Facebook, not everyone uses it often. More importantly, the network is designed to be closed based upon preferences, so building a presence through a page or a profile requires reciprocation. If Facebook takes the bulk, the "leftovers" can be found on the other 3 major social networks.

Twitter, LinkedIn, and now Google+ are the other obvious sites that individuals and brands need to be on if they want to be leaders in social media. Many have ignored one or more of these, believing that they can extend their personal or business brand without them. This is a mistake.

People love videos. Whenever the talent and time are available, (“Social Channels”) videos should accompany much of the content that people post if they want to become social media leaders. One does not have to be a strong video personality to utilize videos.

Well we have come to the end and I know that this process isn’t nearly as easy as putting together a “Spring Time” release and pressing it through the proper channels. It’s not designed to be easy, and that’s a good thing. Your efforts will be greater than your competitors’. You results will be greater as well. Put in the effort…it will pay off!