Rebecca Rivera – Digital and Social Media Writer, ACD

Crash course in social media

// February 26th, 2009 // Blog

The question I am most asked these days is: how can I start using social media? Whether you’re an individual or a corporation, the answer is the same. Start with your reputation. Here are a few things you can do NOW to protect and build your reputation via social media.

Find out what your reputation is

Google yourself and your competitors. Go to sites like compete.com and summize.com (Twitter’s search engine) to see how you stack up.

Get online identities

This may sound obvious, but it’s appalling how many individuals and/or companies are not yet embracing social media. Beat your competitors to the punch. Sign up for Twitter. Get a Facebook page or Facebook Group going. Create a LinkedIn profile, company page or LinkedIn Group going. Depending on your age and industry, you might want to also get a MySpace page.

Create a blog

Wordpress is quick, easy, and free. Publish content often (quality over quantity, however) to gain an audience. The good news: at first no one will be reading what you write. So experiment. And ask friends & colleagues’ for their opinions of your practice runs. Iterate and reinvent until you feel ready for prime time. Then send out a public link to friends/colleagues/clients.

Listen to what others are saying

Don’t just blast out your opinion, product or services. This is your opportunity to hear what others are saying about you and/or your brand. Surf all over the web to find out where your community is. Interact and leave comments that are helpful, not promotional.

Be responsive

If your friends/customers take the time to write something, take the time to respond. The more responsive you are – even with negative issues – the better your company’s reputation will be. Studies show that when customers have a problem if they get a response from the company quickly, they actually become more satisfied with the brand than if they had never had an issue to begin with.

Link your identities together

Once you’re feeling more social media adept, install the Twitter App on Facebook so updating your Twitter status automatically updates your Facebook one. Encourage your social network to set up their own Twitter accounts and link them to their own Facebook statuses. Sign up for Twitterfeed and link your blog(s) to it. Encourage friends/employees to do the same. Then, when anyone posts a new blog entry, this service will automatically update the associated Twitter accounts, and if the Twitter accounts are linked to Facebook, those Facebook statuses will get updated automatically as well.

The above tips represent a crash course in online reputation management and using social media to send out blog posts, press releases, product announcements, and really anything you or your company has to say. Remember, in order to stay relevant, push content out fairly often, and respond quickly to what others are talking about. Do it right, and your social media presence will quickly become more relevant with a greater return on investment than anything offline.

NOTE: This post borrows heavily from the musings of the fine folks at fluidesign