I-4 Social Media Strategies #1 (the podcast begins)
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
This is me just tryin’ out somethin’ new … so please bear with me — and definitely leave me some feedback!
The text below is a transcription of my first voice-recording on the topic of social media strategies. And this was recorded while driving on I-4 through the rush-hour traffic in the great city of Orlando, Florida!
Click below to listen to the raw audio and follow along through the transcript … or (if you’re really brave) just read the transcript text below without audio. I can’t believe I’m podcasting! 
podcast transcript:
OK, here’s the deal. For the strategy of using Facebook and Twitter the best for your business, what you need to do is first, of course, have a web site … and with that website, you need to connect it. Even if it’s just a “brochure web site”, you can still connect it to Facebook and Twitter just by using the right tools and having the HTML and some JavaScript on the page that pulls in those connections.
And so what you’re doin’ is you’re showing through Twitter your latest “tweets” on your site — and what’s cool about that is that it shows activity — it shows constant content that’s being updated daily, at least tweeting once a day — some people up to ten times a day! … will tweet something about their business, something interesting, something personal that connects with business.
But the coolest thing — the most real interesting, incredible connection between your website and social media is through Facebook! Because with Facebook, what you can do is you can have a profile (of any kind that you want), you know, whatever — it can be a personal profile — ideally …
Let’s talk about if you’re promoting a book. If you’re promoting a book … so you have a profile on Facebook that is the author. Then the author can have a page, and that page on Facebook can promote the book itself, that the author has written. And say the author is the author of multiple books. You know you could have a separate page for each book.
But then what you do is by having a page, you can ask people to be fans of that page. And so with being a fan of that page, or allowing people to be fans of that page … what you do then is on your main web site, you have some sort of a connect box … “Facebook Connect“. And so you actually have a box on your web site that allows people to click on a “become a fan” button. And when they click on that, if they’re already logged into Facebook — which, TONS of people now, when they’re browsing the Internet, they’re already logged into Facebook and then they’re browsing other pages!
So if you’re already logged into Facebook, you just click on the “become a fan” … and without even leaving the site, they are now a “fan”!
So you’re showing now, on your web site, this box that shows how many fans you have and allowing people to become fans, then that’s promotion enough, just to show that you’re popular … but what’s even cooler than that is once somebody becomes a fan … then you can, as the owner of that fan page, you can start to send messages — start to send promotions out to them. And … so you can go to your Facebook profile, go into your page, and then Facebook will allow you to send a message to ALL FANS, no matter how big the group is! I don’t think there’s a limit on it!
So you could have 10,000 fans and you send out one little message — a lot like a tweet [on Twitter] but through Facebook … and it would send out that message to those 10,000 fans with a link or whatever! … and that gives you a way to connect with them — that they don’t even know that they’ve subscribed … they don’t know that they’ve subscribed to … a … medium that allows the owner of that book site to send a message out [to them].
Say it’s something like you just got your book posted on Amazon, and you have a promotion code for them to get 20% off of that book. Well you could send a message to all the fans of your book [or of your other books] … saying, if you use this promotion code, you can buy that book on Amazon for 20% off!
And so it encourages people to go there. It also — that becomes a post on your Facebook of course — and so people can go to Facebook and find it there as well … and then you can tweet about it so it shows a Twitter entry there as well.
And so all of this is connectivity — all of this is multi-dimensional, cross-polination, of your brand — you know, showing activity … And so it’s really cool, and it makes it so much more powerful. Because you’re connecting with thousands of people through Twitter and through Facebook … and if somebody “re-tweets” one of your entries … then say you have 10,000 fans … one of those 10,000 fans sees that this is of value, and they want to “re-tweet” it to their thousands of people that are following them on Twitter … and it is SO COOL because you’re not only multiplying, you’re now … it’s where it’s exponential … and … it just goes on and on from there.
And so, I mean, this social media thing … when you get into really getting your message out there effectively, consistently … with a purpose … and make postings to your site … make tweets to go in your Twitter feed … allow people to become fans … and then even posting messages to those fans … with links … It’s just amazing how fast your business can grow!