Applying Social Media to Your Business

Using the trilogy strategies to apply social media to your business.

I’ve recently fine tuned a four step practice that will help you effectively apply social media to improve your business and to help remember the steps in the four simple trilogies I’ve created.

Step 1 is my 3E goals that everyone regardless of what type of business they’re in should embrace. The 3E’s stand for entertain, educate and engage your audience. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. People’s attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter each and every day and content must be brought to life in an entertaining and memorable way. When you entertain you can effectively educate and ultimately engage an audience. Statistically video has proven to be the most effective tactic to reach these goals.

Step 2 is my 3R formula that stands for re-allocate, re-purpose and re-distribute. Without increasing your overall marketing budget simply re-allocate a portion to re-purposing press releases, white papers, articles and even ads into short video presentations. Then re-distribute the videos to all of your social networks. The highest penetration of online video viewing is in the 18-34 age groups. And as of March of 2010, a year ago, over 136 million viewers watched 12.9 billion YouTube videos. It’s estimated that within three years better than 90% of this group will be online viewers. And obviously, as they age, they will be very comfortable accessing all type of content online.

Step 3 is my 3I process that stands for interest, integrate and interact which needs to be applied to all of your socials, website and blog touch points. Creating an interest amongst your fans, friends and followers is of the utmost importance. We all know content is always king, but incentives like seminars or promotions will also help drive traffic back to your website or blog. A seamless integration of all online touch points will ensure the opportunity of establishing key relationships with your targeted audience.

Step 4 is a constant that I refer to as my 3M’s, for monitor, measure and maintain. Online transparency provides the ability to constantly and consistently monitor not only our own social networks, websites and blogs, but also our competitors. It is essential to constantly measure the effectiveness of your online communication tactics and adjust the activities and budgets accordingly. But other benefits of consistent monitoring are the ability to proactively enhance your brands integrity whiling protecting it against any possible online sabotage or harm.

I hope my four step practice and simple trilogies help you to better apply social media for your business. As a final note, don’t let the techies and so called online marketing gurus confuse you. Data is data and any professional marketing or business strategist is more than capable of interpreting the information and adjusting your social communication tactics and budgets to be the most effective and efficient they can be.