Can you please help with my social media strategy?

[happycalculator382]

I'm looking for someone to tell me more about what a good social media strategy is. I kind of know what social media is but what do I do with it?

[JamesP]

Strategy implies that your competing with someone, so what tactics would you use to be competitive in a social media.
The Huffington post is a good example.

You can create user profiles, ratings, levels similar to YA
freinds and fans etc

[Bradley]

First off, you didn't say what you would need a social media strategy for. Do you have your own online company? Do you blog? Are you trying to get into Internet marketing? Social media is a marketing way to increase the traffic to a website or blog.

Before you can even establish a strategy, you have to know what your goal is. Do you just simply want more traffic to your site? Do you want to sell more products? Are you looking to make money off Adsense or a pay per click? Or do you just want to reach new people and network in order to get your name out in the Internet? All of these questions should be answered before you can build your strategy.

There are tons of different social media places that you can use. Networking sites like Twitter and Facebook are two and then there are social bookmarking sites like Digg and Stumbleupon. Each of the different sites is going to be used differently. I would check out http://www.mattbacak.com for more information as I have learned a lot from him. He has made it his livelihood doing Internet marketing using social media.

[Stuart_Crowder]

I think you really need to sit down and think about what you know about social media and what you really want to achieve by using it for your marketing. I would suggest starting off looking at the biggest ones and most prolific ones e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin etc. Twitter is great for finding interesting and up to date blogs about Social Media so for research purposes I would start there to ascertain exactly what Social Media is and get a better idea of what to do and include in your strategy.

Read books on the subject to get a better knowledge of what people have done in the past and what ideas and opportunities there are out there. I would suggest 'secrets of social media marketing - how to use online conversations and customer communities to turbo-charge your business" - by Pauly Gillin, its one of the best Social Media Books I have read and will give you so much inspiration and ideas about how to go about starting a Social Media Campaign.

Next I would see if you need to get some help. If you have a budget and would like to make sure that your Social Media Strategy is successful you should look into getting some professional help, e.g. http://www.receptional.com/social-media
If you are a small business with limited funds and you are going to do the social Media alone, make sure that you don't jump in all guns blazing and end up doing more harm than good. make sure and be transparent, to listen as much as you communicate, and also to really use Social Media to its full potential. It can be time consuming but the more you get the practice of how to use the platforms, the more you will see where future and more opportunities are for you.

Check out some of the links below and let me know what you think, if you need anymore help of info drop me a line.

Cheers!