Christian Whamond Leadership learnings

Here are six ways you can use social media to enhance your leadership.

11/4/2012

Create a Leadership Dashboard
Don't just monitor the Web for intelligence about your business and brand; mine it for ideas, news and research that will help you develop as a leader. Use iGoogle, Google Reader or an iPad aggregator like Flipboard to subscribe to a range of blogs, columnists and news searches that offer insights into new leadership models, profiles of high-functioning executives, academic research on leadership and summaries of the latest business books. Set aside 15 to 30 minutes a day to read the articles that speak to you, or make this your end-of-day reading for the homeward commute.

Stay Focused
For you and your team, social productivity, planning and visualization tools can keep your focus sharp and creative powers strong.

Mind-mapping tools like those at MindMeister.com can help you get organized by making a diagram of your priorities for the year or quarter. The diagram should make clear your areas of responsibility, and those of your team members. It should be a constant reminder of who needs to do what to reach your goals. Share it with your direct reports or closest teammates.

A diagram is a good starting point, but you also need to be sure everyone is doing their job. Project-collaboration tools like Basecamp make it easy to track each team member's tasks and progress. For those of you who get overwhelmed by a packed to-do list, try a tool like OneTask, which feeds you tasks one at a time.

Don't get so bogged down in details that you lose sight of the vision. To keep the team inspired, you can create an online vision board. Pinterest.com gives users a way to create galleries of images that remind everyone what they're working toward. Your gallery might include a picture of a crowded auditorium (representing the hoped-for size of your growing company) or headshots of Fortune 500 CEOs (the ones you're trying to acquire as clients). Let the whole team add images. It should be a collaborative effort, building a touchstone that refreshes energy and creativity in each of you.

Change Channels
If it's getting difficult to spot the urgent emails amid the accumulating CCs, FYIs and LOLs, escape the inbox by switching to Twitter as your preferred channel for high-priority or time-sensitive communications.

Set a Twitter account to follow all your direct reports, key clients and trusted colleagues (the ones who don't abuse your time and attention). Let these folks know the best way to reach you is via Twitter Direct Message, and set your smartphone so that Twitter Direct Messages (but not other kinds of tweets) show up in real time, just like a text message.

Reading and replying will be a lot faster when your correspondence is limited to 140 characters. And you can leave the job of clearing your email inbox to the beginning and/or end of the day. Instead of Twitter adding to your communications burden, it's now making the job easier.

Join a CEO-cial Network
As a business leader, the demands of building your brand, customer relationships and industry networks may require you to connect with a very large number of people on social networks like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook—far too many to sustain meaningful connections with all of them. That's why you need to consciously build a CEO-cial network: a set of five to 15 respected and trusted executives, leaders and advisers whose knowledge, insight and loyalty will have a meaningful impact on your own professional capacity and performance.

Make a point of following that highly select group on all the social networks you use; create a separate private Twitter list, Google+ circle, and/or Facebook friend list that contains only these people.

You won't use those networks to consult with your advisers online, but rather to cement your personal, professional and intellectual relationships with each of these key colleagues.

Make this list of people the first thing you look at when you catch up on any of your social networks, so that you know what they are thinking about, reading, and dealing with in their own working lives.

You'll know who to reach out to when you have a specific challenge, and you'll be able to jump right into intense conversation because you are caught up on each other's personal and professional lives.

Build a Golf Course
If your mental paradigm of CEO regeneration looks like an afternoon on the golf course, it's time to bring that golf course to you. Find or build a social-media space that is purely relaxing and restorative—something you can enjoy in that miraculous five-minute gap between meetings.

It might be a lovingly curated gallery of your own photographs—a personal version of the Pinterest vision board—a blog where you review the latest wines, or a vicious game of Words With Friends. Unlike doing karate or playing the violin, your social-media escape will be something you can do anywhere, while wearing a business suit. All that matters is that it be genuine downtime, and an energy restorer rather than an energy drain.

Amplify Your Voice
Charismatic leadership is a tremendous asset for any company—but it also creates pressures to project your charisma online through a CEO blog, Twitter feed or YouTube channel. If your day is already more than full, never fear. Most of the material you'll need is already out there, waiting to be repurposed.

If you're constantly sending "read this!" emails to your inner circle or staff, start tweeting those links instead: The articles and posts you consider must-reads will be fascinating to your Twitter followers. Whenever you give a speech, get it recorded and posted to YouTube. Set up an internal blog where you post excerpts from the "job well done" emails you send throughout the week; your appreciation will mean even more when it's made public.

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Here are six ways you can use social media to enhance your leadership.

10/4/2012

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Social media can be a double edge sword for leaders within a organization. Be careful. Here are some tips.

6/1/2012

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Social media can be a potent way for Leaders within organizations to share personal perspectives. But without the right approach, it turns into a double-edged sword. Speak off-the-cuff and you risk hurting your reputation; don’t participate socially and your company’s voice is muted, leaving ample room for others to shape your story.

Here are the top five must-dos for social media:

Realize as a leader within a organization you shine bright in social mediums and you will bring attention.

Social media participation is a public appearance where everything is on the record. Assume that comments will be picked up by the critiques as well as examined closely by your staff and others watching your company. Speak and act accordingly.

Recognize your role as Chief Narrator.

Social platforms like Twitter, Facebook and no even more so LinkedIn aren’t a sounding board for a CEOs innermost thoughts; they’re an extension of other modes of communication you use as the lead executive of your organization. There’s great opportunity to share thoughts on your company or industry issues that get amplified through networks that reach employees, investors, customers and staff. As with existing communications efforts have a plan in place as you engage.

Anticipate social remarks being a part of a permanent public record.

Avoid posting or tweeting on topics that you would never discuss aloud in a public forum. Badmouthing competitors, going too deep into personal affairs, commenting on staff or speaking about divisive issues is not the way to go. Don’t be gun-shy when engaging online, but anticipate that what you say will generate the same reaction as if it were published in a email to all staff members.

Don’t court controversy if you can’t take the heat.

Opinions on relevant industry issues and current events that affect your business are fine. But steer clear of statements that might be controversial – unless you want to be at the center of the storm. Off the cuff remarks can have a massive ripple effect to be managed your staff, PR & HR team's and others tied to the issue after the fact. Pause for a moment in private before you go public.

Despite the inherent risks embrace your humanity.

Words of caution don’t mean you can’t let your personality shine through. In fact, this is one of the best ways Leaders can engage on a deeper, more human level with stakeholders. Personal insights into what it’s like to lead an organization show authenticity. Just remember that there are limits to what’s appropriate to share.

Any leader looking to engage through social media can harness the power, or suffer from the peril, of the medium. While it provides a forum for new interaction, new communications policies have similarities to traditional media guidelines.

Keeping that in mind will help you participate in ways that adds value, not headaches, to your organization.

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Social media

29/12/2011

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Social media is the buzz word, everyone want's to get into it but unfortunately it can be daunting for many businesses who have never entered this area before.

The purists will contend that everybody should do their own social media because of the “authenticity” value. Certainly that is an ideal, but I’m also a realist. If people want to out-source their social media and there is a buck to made, it will certainly happen somewhere. I also think there is some value to a consultant or agency helping people along for some period of time. When you first got your driver’s license somebody still had to sit beside you and teach you how to drive, right?

In my job as a consultant, I see many approaches to social media management. In general, here are some broad trends in social media management:

Mega brands – I have had a chance to witness some AMAZING and sophisticated social media marketing programs. These companies are beginning to make correlations between “share of voice” and true marketshare, using listening platforms to track micro-trends and the “cool kids,” and taking location-based marketing to a whole new level.

These companies have the resources to hire the biggest agencies and best minds in the world to help them navigate social media labyrinths and determine a strategy, but generally, they are organizing and resourcing to respond to the new opportunities. One brand has renamed part of their marketing department “Customer Connections.”

Medium-sized companies. In my opinion, unless you are an elite brand, I believe at least 95 percent of the companies I see are desperately confused about what to do about social media. I think they would just like for it to go away so they can return to having a trade booth and shop front.

They probably don’t have a corporate culture that can easily adapt to the transformation needed to “listen” instead of “broadcast” and they simply want to check a box to do SOMETHING. You, know … I actually think there is some value in that. A company that is at least thinking through the platforms, attempting to listen on the new channels and dipping their toe into content marketing is taking a step in the right direction. Most of these companies at least have the vision and budget to hire an agency to get them started on social media marketing.

Small businesses. I think social media can provide an advantage to most small businesses, but that doesn’t mean it actually does unless they are working on it! Why isn’t it happening?

They’re overwhelmed by the concept and don’t know where to start.
They started a Facebook page and nobody “liked” them so they quit.
They understand the concept but don’t have the time or resources to do anything consistent and meaningful.
Their marketing budget is tied up in local newspaper, Yellow Pages, Google and TV ads and they don’t have anything left for something new.
When you bring it up, they stare you down and tell you they “Don’t need the Facebox or the Tweeter."

Unless customer falls into Category 5, they are probably looking for help in managing their social media program. I see the following business models emerging:

Local support. The new category of social media gurus are trying to teach best practices and perhaps do some hands-on social media management. My take is that most of these efforts eventually fail because you are communicating for somebody else, which is probably not sustainable, and the labor cost to actually do this stuff is so high –and the results so undefinable in the short-term — that customers lose interest. People with a limited budget need this to work NOW.

Cookie cutter. I am seeing a ton of people and small agencies offering social media packages — “our gold package features two tweets per day, a Facebook update, and one blog post per week!” This is handing your social media campaign to someone who has no idea about your business. This is fine to get you started but the company acting on your behalf needs to get to know your business as if they actually work with you each week. You should insist on weekly meetings (phone meetings are fine) where you get a chance to coach the person managing your campaign on what changing in your industry and guide them to the style of speak you want to see within your campaign. If you don't take a hands-on role in your social media campaign I feel that it will fail because at some point, you are going to wonder when all the new sales are going to start coming in from these two tweets per day you are paying for.

Overseas. Kind of a hybrid. Let’s solve the labor cost problem by hiring low-cost virtual assistants in Vietnam or The Philippines to do the tweets and blogs for you. There are a multitude of problems associated with this approach but it at least addresses the labor issue.

Coaching. I think the only viable long-term solution for most small businesses is to get some coaching. start out with the cookie cutter method but stay actively involved with the campaigns. Each week while you are coaching the Campaign manager on your business, take the time to better understand how the campaign is working, the objective of the campaign and the reasons for some of the posts. Buy additional time for further education and coaching each week. Methodically work on a step-by-step plan to eventually create a culture, an organization, and an actionable strategy appropriate for the company resources and budget.

It is not fast (and a lot of people hate that! ) but it does slowly integrate these practices into the fabric of the company, get real employees involved, and become a natural extension of their sales and marketing strategy.

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Social media marketing schedule.

12/11/2011

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Why have you joined the social media world?

Some social networkers are there for purely egotistical reasons. They don't want to engage in the conversation. They simply collect followers and friends in order to have bragging rights every time they collect another thousand. But connecting, following or befriending just anyone dilutes your influence and standing among those in your audience.

Others join because they feel they must. They spend a few days setting up their profiles and then abandon them when other tasks call.

The real motivation for any business social networker is connection: You should want to connect with like-minded people who can help your business and whose businesses you can assist. You want to add to the conversation, and not come across as desperate, spammy or a waste of time. If you develop a bad reputation in these communities, it will be hard to shake off.

But making such strong, real connections takes time, effort and thoughtfulness. If you never return to your profiles, you and your business will be forgotten (best case) or seen as unconnected, clueless or lazy (worst case). If you post too much, people might consider you a pest and stop following you.

Some social networkers are the worst of both worlds: They don’t post to their blog or text their friends or colleagues for weeks at a time. They don’t reply to messages sent to them, and the company site looks like it has gone out of business. Then, without any warning, they’re back . . . alive . . . and conversing. Was the organization’s social networking person out of the country? Did they suffer a grave illness? Nope. They were just distracted, disorganized, sidetracked or overworked. There’s no method to the company’s madness in being a social networking participant. Not committed. No strategy. Its influence will never be felt. The competition will soon fill the void.

Whether your company is a one-person business or a large organization, your commitment to social networking should be consistent, compelling and informative. The social networking community is a fragile, collaborative ecosystem. Make the commitment. People will follow a trail of dependable, exciting, instructive news. But once the trail goes cold, they’re gone and likely never to return.

Being a social media maniac isn’t the right persona either. You know who we’re talking about. These people can answer emails on their laptops with one hand while texting friends or colleagues on their iPhones with the other. They can’t be looked in the eye when talking because their heads are always looking down at some screen. This behavior may be seen as good technology gone bad.

The key is to strike a balance somewhere in the middle. Avoid becoming a social media ignorer or a social media maniac. Develop a social networking schedule that does not run your life but does keep you accountable. The goal should be consistency. Choose a schedule and stay the course for at least six months. As you find success, you can slowly grow your social networking persona.

The sample social networking agenda below can be used as a springboard for designing one that suits your schedule and the community channels you’ve joined.

Twice Daily in the Morning and Afternoon

Check Twitter via a program like HootSuite. Respond when necessary. Follow the @replies that make sense.
Check Linkedin. Reply to emails and comments when appropriate.
Scan Twitter followers for relevant conversations to join.
Check your business's Facebook Page for questions and respond when necessary.
Scan Google Alerts for brand and company mentions. Respond as appropriate.

Weekly or on Weekends

Build Twitter Lists to better organize ongoing discussions and special interest groups. Set up saved searches in Hootsuite to find out if people are talking about you or your company.
Scan LinkedIn questions from network connections and respond when appropriate.
Catch up on LinkedIn discussions. Add to discussion when appropriate.
Send LinkedIn invitations to connect with clients when beginning a new assignment.
Ask for LinkedIn recommendation after successfully completing a project or engagement.
Add new content to Facebook like videos or photos.
Think of ways to repurpose this content and energy to reach a larger audience with the social networking gospel.
Keep an eye open for new social networking venues, tools, and functionality that will make the social networking experience more enjoyable and easier to traverse.
Identify new social networking influencers and build relationships where appropriate.

Through the Week

Mondays: Schedule tweets through HootSuite to go out three times per day at regular intervals.
Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: Join one hot trend conversation on Twitter, if appropriate, and add new content to Facebook (new items you are selling, photos, discounts and other promotions).
Tuesdays and Thursdays: Respond to Blog comments.
Fridays: Check traffic at your blog or website.

Obviously, your daily social networking to-do list will be much different, given your available time and commitments. Just be sure to make the schedule livable. If it’s not working, change it. Keep making modifications until it works for you.

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6 Ways to Use Social Media for Business.

9/11/2011

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In just a short time, social media has become a ubiquitous mainstay in the lives of consumers. Popular platforms have rapidly grown to hundreds of millions of users, and the adoption of social media platforms has no end in sight.

This social media “revolution” has changed the traditional, corporate monologue into a two-way dialogue with customers and prospects.

Social media:

Allows companies and brands to learn more about target audiences easier and more affordably
Levels the playing field for brands of every size and industry
Provides cost-effective communications in comparison to traditional channels
Emphasizes great content, empowering companies to leverage helpful assets to attract fans, followers and friends
Harnesses the importance and relevancy of “now” – real-time, immediate communications
Delivers a greater reach, with a multiplicative effect of pass along, as compared to other marketing communications channels

What this means for businesses is the time to embrace social media channels to reach customers and prospects is now. And while social media marketing and communications is no small task to undertake, there are six objectives every company should consider to have at the core of their social activity. These include:

1. Building Brand Awareness
2. Making Customer Service Personal with Social Media 3. Adding Events to Social Media Programs
4. Adding Social Media to Product Introductions
5. Embracing Social Media to Build Your Sales Pipeline 6. Activating Your Community to Take Action

This guide walks through each of the “Big Six” objectives and provides a tactical overview of the business case, team considerations and actual content examples and templates to use for your social media initiatives.

In other words, the following pages can be used as a cheat sheet on how to get started today using proven tactics and best practices, with sample content and examples to help jump-start your social media success.

Using social media to build brand awareness is the number one goal of most social media marketers. Hundreds of millions of people are talking, learning and engaging through social media channels. If you don’t have a presence in social media, your company is missing what’s become a fundamental communication channel in the marketing mix.

It’s arguable that there isn’t a single company or organization that doesn’t have brand awareness as one of its core organizational goals. Social media has quickly become one the best ways to reach large audiences who are hungry for information and conversation. For professional communicators, having social media as a tool in the arsenal for building brand awareness is no longer a nice to have. It’s a must have.

Top four arguments for using social media..

1. reach
Building branding awareness is centered around reaching more people. One of the strengths of social media is wide reach, and employing the use of these channels can help extend your brand’s presence tremendously.

2. traffic
Social media drives traffic to other corporate channels.

3. New audiences
As media becomes more fragmented, social media helps reach new and growing audiences, as well as compliments other efforts to interact with these people.

4. Expertise
Illustrate your domain expertise by allowing staff and/or corporate accounts to share, educate and provide relevant information to your prospects and clients. You will be building a public profile filled with helpful information that highlights the expertise you hold in your respective industry.

Content..

1. Details about the company, including Services and offerings..
People follow brands to learn more about them. Don’t be afraid to talk about your culture, employees, what you offer, services you provide or general conversations about who you are as a company.

Tweet pictures or details around a fun company function.
Post on Facebook sharing the latest information and updates about your products or enhancements in services.
Post a YouTube video showcasing clients talking about how they use your product.
Upload a presentation to SlideShare highlighting your industry, services, and importance of your area of expertise.

2. Thought leadership content..
Beyond corporate collateral, your business is probably publishing content that illustrates your domain expertise. This is commonly referred to as thought leadership and is powerful in raising awareness. If your focus is B2B, this might be a white paper or best practices guide. If you are consumer focused, this might be tips or creative ideas on how to use different products. Either way, it’s content that provides value, while elevating your placement as a leader in your space.

Share a link on Facebook of the latest whitepaper or helpful article published by your organization.
Create a series of Tweets sharing interesting product facts tied to interests that resonate with your target audience.
Upload pictures to Flickr, tagged with your company and keywords, showing your clients benefitting from your services in different ways.
Share a YouTube video of employees giving advice on how to use your product or service in creative ways.

3. Company News..
Every company has interesting activities happening regularly. Maybe you hired a new leader who brings an exciting or unique background. Or perhaps you have a new corporate initiative worthy of sharing publicly. All of these news updates help highlight what type of company you are and promote the growth of your network by building interest in your corporate activities.

Interview new team leaders about what they are excited about and include as a post on corporate blog – written or videoed.
Post a Flickr image of a corporate social initiative promotion poster to share what your company is doing to give back to the community.
Post pictures on Facebook of your office and teams that work there.
Post public facing presentations for product and service announcement details on SlideShare.

4. Questions for Feedback..
Building brand awareness isn’t just about sharing your own content. It’s also based on asking for content from others. Asking for input gets more people engaged with your brand and sharing ideas across their networks. As a bonus, input can be used to learn about your network and potentially used for aspects of future marketing.

Tweet a question of the week about users’ favorite aspect of the latest product, service or communications campaign focus area.
Introduce a Facebook poll asking what areas of your product, new features, or services your community cares about the most.
Always pose a question at the end of blog posts asking if readers have any other ideas or helpful feedback.
Ask what type(s) of industry-related content and resources your community finds most useful to help inform what the best content is for your brand.

5. Community Content..
Many people keep up with social media accounts to learn about industry news. Employees of companies are followed because they talk about their industry – not just the product they sell. Marketing agencies are followed because they share content from leaders in their space – not just their services. And millions of people follow companies because they share noteworthy news about their industry, the people in it and third party resources – not just for discounts or product news.

Write a blog post sharing helpful resources from industry leaders.
Share links to industry events in which your network may be interested in attending.
Post links to and reflections about thought leadership content from market influencers.

6. Research..
Despite the size or industry of your company, new research or community findings are always interesting. If you work in a B2B company, this may be a study on industry business trends. Companies offering tangible products may conduct research on user perceptions or quality of ingredients. This research elevates the expertise of companies. It also can build awareness of product or offering strengths and unique positioning in your industry.

Post industry infographics and charts on Flickr with relevant tags.
Interview the person(s) leading research projects on video to post to YouTube for additional insights.
Share your research with well-known bloggers and invite them to share insights with their readers.
Break up interesting findings into a multi- part series of blog posts to grow readership over time.

7. Customer Success Stories..
There’s no better way to grow brand awareness than to have customers share their success stories. Sometimes these are formal case studies based on lengthy results. Other times, they are prompted or spontaneous content shared by your community. Regardless, sharing customer success allows results and personal feedback of customers to speak on behalf of your company.

Invite customers to write guest blog posts to discuss interesting product experiences and/or success.
Tweet links to success stories, tagging customers and partners discussed to make them aware they can share the content, too.
Ask for user submitted videos of anecdotes about your product or service. Interesting stories and testimonials help break through the clutter and get attention.

Measurement..

1. Activity to engagement ratio

Comparing activities published by your organization to engagement (or interactions) from your audience will help determine the value of your content. In social media, value is displayed by engagement.

2. Potential impressions

Mere exposure to your content is important when the goal is to build familiarity with your brand. Content shared by your organization will reach your network and potentially further - to the connections of individuals within your network. The pass along effect of social media is especially powerful because information is being delivered via trusted sources.

3. Confirmed impressions

Similar to the change in network, confirmed impressions represent time vested in your brand via views of your content, social media sites or homepage. It is important to remember confirmed impressions are not necessarily in network because not everyone will publicly display their commitment to your brand.

4. Change in current Network

When someone opts into your social network as a fan, friend or follower, a relationship is established with that user. A positive change in network will confirm users’ exposure and commitment to your brand.

5. Comments & replies

Comments and replies are great resources for qualitative
data. You will gain insight to your target market’s interests, concerns and sentiment, and you will gain validation that your network is paying attention to the content and messages you share.

6. Mentions by audience

Keeping track of independent mentions by your audience will help to identify how often your brand is being discussed publicly and if you have any brand advocates. You will know when your initiative has gone beyond the pushing of a message by your brand and has become something people are spreading awareness of in their personal networks.

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What Twitter Users Think About the Brands They Follow

9/11/2011

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Followers are a loyal base of current customers

eMarketer estimates there will be nearly 21 million Twitter users in the US by the end of this year, and a sizeable minority of those will use the service at least in part to follow brands.

Research on Twitter users from Constant Contact and Chadwick Martin Bailey put the share following brands at 21% of the total. That falls closely in line with April 2011 research from Compete, which found 19% of Twitter users found brands to follow on the service.

In the Constant Contact/CMB study, most brand followers kept up with just a few favored companies on Twitter. Their top reason for becoming a brand follower, cited by 64% who did so, was that they were already a customer of the company—far ahead of the 48% who did so just to get discounts and deals.

While Twitter followers may already be loyal customers, that doesn’t mean following has no effect on them. Overall, 50% said that after following a company’s tweets they were more likely to purchase from the firm, and among men the share was 55%. An even stronger majority said they would be more likely to recommend the brand to others, at least in the case of a few companies they followed.

If brands what them to do so, they will have to give their followers what they want. Aside from promotions and discounts, that means information—61% follow brands so they can be the “first to know” what’s hot—and exclusive content (36%), along with content they can share with others and pass along via retweets (28%).

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Customer experiance and Social media

4/11/2011

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There’s bad news and good news about the way consumers interact with brands on social media.

The bad news? When customers complain on social media, those complaints can tarnish your brand’s name for a wide audience faster than ever.

The good news? Just as complaints travel at light speed thanks to social media, so do compliments.

If you think you’re not “on” or “doing” social media, you’re wrong. Your company may not be active, but I guarantee your fans and your non-supporters are there. Because of this, it is the brand’s responsibility to create a social media experience that can turn a dissatisfied customer into a raving fan.

To help your brand do this, here are seven ways to create a memorable customer experience on social media.

1. Give Your Customers a Place to Talk Some companies are afraid to set up facebook pages because they allow customers to comment, which means someone might write something negative. It seems counterintuitive, but you should actually want customers to complain on your company’s Facebook page. If your customers are complaining about you on their personal, privacy-protected Facebook profiles, you have no way to know if they’re complaining, much less reach out to them and make it right.

When customers complain on your brand’s Facebook page, you can respond and resolve issues. If you do it right (and get a little lucky), unhappy customers will turn their opinions around and recommend you to friends because of your fantastic customer service.

2. Integrate Social Media Into Your Customer Service Neglecting your social media properties when they’re full of customer complaints is suicide for your brand. It’s like publishing a customer service hotline phone number that no one ever answers. (Except worse, because the whole Internet can see your negligence.)

Don’t open up the floor for complaints without a plan to handle them. Predict the complaints you may get and construct policies for replying to them. You should also plan on responding to fans who compliment you. At the very least, you should thank customers for the compliment. But if you really want to make customers happy, show happy customers your appreciation with coupons or other rewards.

3. Activate Your Existing Customer Base Most brands have more customers than they do Facebook fans and Twitter followers. Start building your social media fan base by reaching out to your current customers — after all, they already “like” your brand in real life.

Think about how you currently contact your customer base and how you can use those communication channels to draw customers to your social media properties. For example, you could run a contest or promotion on Facebook and then include that promotion on your product’s packaging, in your next email, and in any touch point you have with your customers.

4. Be Proactive Don’t just wait for someone to post on your wall or tweet your account. It’s especially easy on Twitter to monitor for mentions of your name and reach out when someone has a problem, even if they haven’t mentioned your account. Set your brand apart by proactively interacting with customers who are talking about your brand, whether you’re thanking them for a compliment or helping them solve a problem.

Think about why your customers use social media sites like Twitter — it’s because they want to “connect” and to have a voice out there. Make them happy that someone, most importantly your company, is listening to what they have to say.

5. Reward Influencers
Find the social media influencers for your audience and give them extras. This could be as simple as giving them advance notice of a special promotion, or complex as giving them a free trip and tour of your facilities. For example, check out what Musselman's apple sause did for its blogger network. Making people feel special will help turn them into advocates for your brand. Reward your brand ambassadors when they least expect it and you’ll see some pretty phenomenal results.

6. Create Compelling Content Give your fans something of value on your page. For example, Nordstom’s Beauty Central on Facebook provides a ton of relevant, useful content. You can do something similar to this in every industry. If you’re a movie producer, post behind-the-scenes photos, and if you’re a bank, write money saving tips. It’s hard to get people to engage with your brand when you don’t have anything interesting to say. Every brand can (and should) create quality content.

Social media can be a channel to make customers or followers feel special, like they’re in an exclusive club with your brand because they follow you. Make them feel this exclusiveness whether you have ten social media fans or 100,000.

7. Stand Out From the Crowd Some of the most memorable social media experiences are created by going beyond text. This can be as complex as Starbucks’s Pumpkin picture app, or simple as using voice applications to let your brand’s spokesperson actually speak to your fans. The more interactive and engaging your social media presence, the better. In part, social media is a little anti-social because there can be a lot lost in plain text. By giving your fans a true voice on social media, or encouraging participation through photos and videos, you humanize the experience that much more. You’ll be doing so when most of the other companies out there aren’t really participating effectively this way.

Has a brand ever given you a truly memorable social media experience? Let us know in the comments.

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Here are six ways you can use social media to enhance your leadership.

Here are six ways you can use social media to enhance your leadership.

Social media can be a double edge sword for leaders within a organization. Be careful. Here are some tips.

Social media

Social media marketing schedule.

6 Ways to Use Social Media for Business.

Top four arguments for using social media..

Content..

Measurement..

What Twitter Users Think About the Brands They Follow

Customer experiance and Social media

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