Simply put, reduce the number of parties you join. You will find more success by focusing on key social spaces like Facebook, Twitter, GetSatisfaction, and LinkedIn. That is not to say that other spaces will not be successful either, however, you will need to listen to learn what spaces will be important for your brand moving forward. To begin with, stick with the ones you know people participate on and draw the attention to yourself first. Once you have their attention, you can look at other networks.

When considering a new network or creating a new profile, consider following these steps before activating your profile:

1. Are people on this network my target customer (what is that)?
2. Are people on this network interested in my brand, niche, region, etc.?
3. Are there any other companies like mine on this network? Are my competitors on this network? If not, why not?
4. Are there other complimentary companies on this network? If not, why not?
5. Is this network friendly to businesses/companies?

If your answers lead you to believe that the network/community might be a good fit for your business then create a profile.  Once you commit, do so properly.  Complete your profile including your company domain name, description, logo, head shot, about and contact info.  If the community turns out to be less than you expected, at least you have another referral link out there that may (or may not) drive traffic back to your main site.  If the site has an RSS feed, then add the feed to your feedreader or Google Alerts and start listening.  Before you spend time writing content and posting updates, make sure the members of the community are interested it what you might have to say, otherwise you may just be wasting your time.

For more details about the listen, engage, articulate, demonstrate phases of the L.E.A.D. social media strategy, take a look at the social media series on the SavvyOperator.

PhotoCredit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ninjanoodles/2092357947/sizes/m/

You can measure your success by correlating bookings or inquiries directly from content created for your blog or other third party sites. For example, if you write a piece of content for a travel blog, make sure to use a Google Analytics referral code with the piece in order to directly track your conversions from these articles.  If your tour or activity booking software supports referral codes, you could apply a unique promotional code or referral code to your links to track revenue from these sources.  If this is not possible, then measure your referral traffic through your analytics in order to compare direct traffic or organic traffic versus referrals from your blog or third party sites. It is important that this is measurable so that you can determine how successful your articulation practices are in terms of impact on your business. Remember that, although the direct marketing costs are limited, there is a time cost associated with the successful implementation of the articulation phase. If you take the time to listen carefully to your audience and focus your writing efforts on addressing their specific needs, your results will be much better than if you simply attempt to write for the sake of attracting traffic.

Your posts and articles will be indexed very quickly and you should see alerts for the content almost immediately. Don’t expect to see comments from readers right away. It will take time for your content to be recognized by others in the community. To improve your chances of being seen and heard by others, make sure to use your experience with commenting on other sites to draw more attention to your own posts.  Some simple ways to drive traffic to your content include:

1. Mentioning that you have written a post about a particular subject on another blog site.
2. Contacting bloggers with whom you have created a rapport and asking them for their feedback on your posts.
3. Sharing your post on Facebook or Twitter using the tools like Facebook share, notes, and Twitterfeed.
4. Including a summary of your post in your monthly newsletter.
5. Syndicating your posts through credible blog sharing sites like BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog, and Technorati.

The build it (or in this case write it) and they will come philosophy really doesn’t work for social media.  With so many blog sites (many of which are spam sites) there is actually a decreasing likelihood that your content will be found if it is not good, relevant, and timely.  Out of all the phases of the L.E.A.D. social media strategy, the articulation phase has the potential to have the most impact, but also be the most costly.  How effective your content will be is completely based on your commitment to writing good content and your consistency in producing it.

If you are not already using a content management system that supports blogging, I would highly recommend that you consider setting up a blog on a CMS that supports blogging.  Joomla, Mambo, and Drupal can all be made to support blogging.  In addition, the WordPress platform (which was originally developed as a blogging platform) can be used as a CMS.  If the platform does not support blogging, then I recommend you create a separate blog site hosted on your domain, for example blog.yourdomain.com or www.yourdomain.com/blog.

Additional modules that should be part of your blog include:

• Disqus comment system
• Gravatar support
• Facebook Like Button Support
• Tweetmeme or Twitter Button support

These additional modules are available for various blogging and cms systems and will increase the social sharing of your content and give your readers the ability to spread your content when and where appropriate. In addition to your blog you can now distribute your content from your blog to your Facebook fan page and through Twitter using Twitterfeed. In order to connect your blog to Facebook and Twitter you need to make the following adjustments:

• Facebook – Connect your fan page notes to your blog feed. Facebook will allow you to import your blog feed on a regular basis and re-publish your blog posts on your public fan page.
• TwitterFeed.com – Twitterfeed allows you to post notices to your twitter account whenever you add posts to your blog. It is important that this should only be used in conjunction with regular conversational tweets. If not, your account will be perceived as a push marketing mechanism and will not be actively followed.

The bottom line is that the technology to get your content on-line is the least challenging part of the equation.  In order to be successful during the articulation phase, it is imperative that you produce content that specifically meets the needs of your customers based on what they tell you during the listening and engagement phases.

For more information about building your content strategy and plan, I suggest you review these post:

• Your content plan
• Are you web content ready?
• Choosing a content management system

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jlhbrown/2714089935/sizes/m/

Don’t violate the golden rules

From the beginning of the process where the customer is researching options and reading about the experience, to the technical portion of payments and reservation confirmations, you should abide by three key principles which should apply to every step:

• Don’t make it difficult. If a customer is ready to buy, is it easy to click and do so? If they need help or have questions, is all of your contact information up to date and easy to find?
• Don’t make it obnoxious. Flashing lights, spinning widgets, and videos that start unannounced don’t make the sale. Clear, informative content does.
• Don’t make it scary. Have you reassured your client that you have appropriate data protection policies in place? Did you tell them that you won’t sell their email address to spammers? I know you won’t do that, but does your customer know?

If your user feels frightening or uneasy at any point during the process, they’ll abandon ship and you’ll lose the sale. So be sure to think about each and every step and ask yourself those same questions along the way.

Great Content will close the deal

We touched earlier on content that doesn’t sell: flashy, loud, obnoxious content. You need quality materials in order to convince your customer that you’re the experience they want. Here’s a quote from my free eBook, Preparing for Takeoff, which illustrates this point nicely:

If we use an example, think about a photograph in a frame. If you put a lousy photograph in a shiny frame, what do you get? A lousy photograph. Now picture (pun intended) if you have a really engaging, beautiful photograph and put it into a beautiful, amazing frame, what do you get? Art. Which do you want to sell?

Looking at your online content, does it:

• explain the products/services you are offering in easy-to-read language
• illustrate options and flexibility, if any
• answer the question “is this right for you” (or alternatively “this isn’t right for you if…”)
• have testimonials or comments from previous/current customers

Less is more in this case, but don’t be afraid to explore using a combination of text, photos, and video to clearly and succinctly show off your product or service.

Get an external opinion

One difficult problem we face as small businesses is that we’re doing everything and sometimes we’re too close to our work to notice things that could be causing problems. Usually just a “tweak” or two is all that is needed! So ask someone external to the process to test and give you feedback.

Why not give a good friend a coupon code to make their reservation cost only a few pennies and have them walk through the process and send you input? Or how about asking one of your business partners to spend a few minutes using your website and then making some suggestions for improvement? The key is to get someone detached and able to see everything from a fresh perspective. But you need someone who will give you honest feedback; a close family member who stumbles through the process and then says “oh, it’s great” isn’t going to help. If you can’t get honest feedback, then you can pay for a professional review with someone like myself or a usability expert. Either way, get an external opinion.

Photo courtesy of hyrck.