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Get ‘sociable’ online to grow your brand

Thursday, January 28, 2010

By Anna Grimes
Venue: Renaissance Vancouver Hotel Harbourside

Social media enthusiasts Shane Gibson and Stephen Jagger.

The ‘polished’ marketing of old is going by the wayside, and according to social media enthusiasts Shane Gibson and Stephen Jagger, getting ‘sociable’ online is crucial to long-term organizational success.

Gibson and Jagger’s new book, Sociable: How Social Media is Turning Sales and Marketing Upside-down, outlines the new rules of engagement in company brand management and customer service.

Sociable outlines the roles social media and social networking play in today’s hyper-connected marketplace, and share tips for how any company can – responsibly – get involved in this new dynamic.

Despite the shift towards online networking and messaging, the authors cautioned that it won’t ever replace offline networking.

“Find a way to get real somehow in your social media strategy,” reinforced Gibson, saying it’s not about the number of followers you have on your blog, but about the quality of those relationships. “The point of all this is to still meet in real life, to shake hands and say hello,”

Steps to develop your social media policy:

1. Identify your business goal for engaging in social media
2. Identify your target audience, and determine which social media tools they use.
3. Pick the right platform for your audience (ie. Twitter vs. Facebook vs. LinkedIn vs. YouTube, etc)
4. Map out your internal social media policy and etiquette guidelines for staff.
5. Implement a listening and engagements strategy (ie. How will you respond to negative – or positive – feedback? How will you engage your audience?)
6. Know the “core pains” of your audience – what bothers them? To which questions are they looking for answers?
7. Know how to uniquely communicate to your audience, solve their problems, and answer their questions so their needs are met, by using a mix of marketing and community engagement.

For more information, see www.sociablebook.com

Sociable!

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