10 Simple Steps to Get Started With Social Media

Guest Post by Lisa Hendrickson, Owner of Call That Girl. Lisa has published her proven social media strategies in her latest eBook, "Call That Girl’s Guide to Social Media". Lisa has been a featured writer for Technibble in 2010 and is a contributor in the Business and Marketing forums.

Everyone is talking about social media lately and the craze doesn’t seem to be going away. If you’re not utilizing it in your business marketing plan, you might feel like you’re behind the times. Many people who are not using it, don’t know how to even get started. As it is one of the top marketing strategies I use for my business, I found it to be easy to learn, affordable and not something I needed to outsource. You can do it yourself and start seeing results in one day by following these 5 starter steps and these 5 action steps.

1.) Collect your contacts emails. Go through all of your emails, client databases, email accounts and create a generic list. An excel spreadsheet will work fine or use notepad.

2.) Create a LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com). It’s recommended you use your real name for your profile, not your business name. Fill your profile with your credentials and as much information as you are comfortable sharing. Most people on LinkedIn share most of their career highlights, past positions and skill sets. Of course there is more to using LinkedIn than just creating a profile, but this is a good start.

3.) If you have a website, add a blog page or sign up for a free blog like http://www.blogger.com.

4.) Start an email marketing program. Many popular email marketing companies have free 30 or 60 day trials. For 2011, I am using Constant Contact.

5.) Upload the emails you just collected to your email marketing program and LinkedIn profile. You will need a few contacts to build your network and to have people to send your email newsletter to.

Those are the 5 easy steps to get going, here is your action list.

1.) Write a blog about a simple value-add tip you know of about your industry that others would enjoy learning about. (Example: Tips for buying a new computer).

2.) Create a newsletter with a welcome message, a blog tip (the one you just blogged about) and offer a coupon or discount for services. Be sure to write a short paragraph about the blog and then in the newsletter, put in a hyperlink to the blog to encourage folks to go to your website or blog to finish reading the story. Remember to track the analytics of the newsletter.

3.) Join your local city and state groups on Linkedin. After you join these groups, be sure to introduce yourself to the group. After you have done that, post your blog link “Tips on buying a new computer” in a new discussion. A tip for being effective on LinkedIn is to make sure that your discussion is not pushy or gives the appearance of spamming the group. Try to peak the interest of the members with hopes they read it and remember your discussion later for if they need your services. It’s a good idea to use your professional signature with all discussion postings.

4.) Invite members of those discussion groups to your LinkedIn network. (These are all potential new clients as everyone on LinkedIn has a computer available to them). Many of the people in these groups have the potential to be commercial clients and of course, they are all residential clients.

5.) Attend local face to face networking events. Many of your LinkedIn groups will have free or low cost events. Be sure to watch for those and attend. Meet as many people as you can and when you get home, invite them to your LinkedIn network and add to your email marketing. Meeting new people in person is a very important factor to winning big with social media.

I hope these 10 steps will help you get started with social media. If you would like to learn more, my latest eBook will help you with step by step instructions.

Good luck!
– Lisa