Social Media is about 3 things — connecting, creating, and engaging. Sounds easy enough, but the value of everything you do using social media will all go back to who you are engaging with.  This is a real case of “garbage-in, garbage-out.” If you “friend” or connect with anyone and everyone without any concern about who or why, you won’t get much out of all the time you may invest in your social media strategy. To make your social media strategy productive, efficient and successful, here are tips on creating a strong network.

There are two preliminary steps that are critical: First, have your target audience in mind. Your services/offer/store/business won’t appeal to the entire world. Are you focusing on small business, a particular industry, a certain demographic, or a geographic region? Keep this on top of mind whenever you decide to seek out or accept connections. Second, have your objectives in mind. Are you creating visibility for your brand, driving traffic to your website, selling product? These questions may be harder to fold into your decision-making process, but keep them in the back of your mind as you proceed.

• Start out with a group of people/clients/prospects that you KNOW are the right audience for you, and connect with these folks first. Upload from your Outlook, ACT, GMail, AOL databases and invite all that make sense.
• Search your connection’s connections. Who are they connected to?  If it’s a good business contact, chances are their connections/friends will work for you as well.
• Are there industry thought-leaders who talk about your topic? Connect with them. Who are THEY connected to?
• LinkedIn and Facebook make suggestions — examine these daily for more possible additions.
• Search for your old contacts, school-mates, work-mates, soccer-team buddies, church friends. These may be great direct sources for business (or they might not?) or may be great for referrals. Peruse membership of relevant groups — connect with members
• If you have been ReTweeted on Twitter, connect with that person.
• Ask a carefully- and strategically-chosen question on LinkedIn. Connect with the responders.
• Has anyone commentrd on your status post in Facebook or LinkedIn?  Would they be a good connection?
• Use strategic hashtags in your Tweets to have people interested in your topic find and connect with you, then connect back
• Use the search function for Twitter http://www.search.twitter.com and use the advanced mode. Target well and you will find many great potential connections. Save it as a feed and you can revisit daily to find more good connections.

My own Point of View: beware of the applications that promise to connect you to hundreds and thousands of people. They will. But so what? Quality and relevance trumps quantity.

It’s important to keep expanding your connections in social media. But always be sure there is a well-thought-out strategy every time you go through the exercise. The quality of your network, and the payback it will give you, will be worth the extra time.

I’m delighted to announce the agenda for the March meeting of the Morning Forum on Emerging Media.

SVAMA Presents:

Twitter for Marketers: Lessons from the Enterprise

Learn about the best practices of how big brands use Twitter to engage in real life conversations with customers. You will be presented with real case studies from the social media managers who are responsible for driving customer engagement at Cisco and HP. They will present case study examples of how they drive consumer engagement on the social web. We will discuss:

• How organizations use Twitter?
• What happens if there is negative feedback about your brand?
• Is there a process for filtering feedback back to the appropriate SMEs (subject Matter Experts)?
• How important is integration of Twitter when using other social media channels?
• How important is having a twitter strategy across the organization?

Moderator: Tatyana Kanzaveli

Panelists: LaSandra Brill, Sr. Manager – Digital and Social Media Marketing, Cisco; Tony Welch, Lead Social Media Strategist and Community Manager for HP PSG, HP

WHEN: March 30 , 2010, 8:30 – 10 AM

WHERE: [NOTE NEW LOCATION]
UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley
2505 Augustine Drive, Suite 100
Santa Clara, CA 95054

COST: Currently $5 SVAMA members, $15 for non-members

RSVP: info@elymedia.com

Speaker bios:

Tatyana Kanzaveli, CEO of Social CRM World, has broad experience in sales, marketing and business development, technology and professional services. She held executive roles in number of start-ups and large multinationals. She was an early adopter of social media and social networking channels, using them to build successful online and face-to-face communities. Tatyana runs strategic Social CRM and social media marketing consultancy – http://scrmworld.com. She can be reached on Twitter: @glfceo

LaSandra Brill, Sr. Mgr, Digital & Social Media Marketing, at Cisco Systems, is a social media enthusiast, avid blogger and marketing innovator. As Senior Manager of the Service Provider Digital & Social Media Marketing group, LaSandra Brill shapes Cisco’s marketing strategy to include a mix of social media marketing techniques leveraging Web 2.0 technologies. At Cisco she is known for building and executing the social media strategy of one of the top five product launches in company history. LaSandra holds a Bachelors of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in Management from San Jose State University.

Tony “Frosty” Welch is the Lead Social Media Strategist for HP PSG, and the Community Manager for The Next Bench – http://www.thenextbench.com. His Twitter handle is @frostola

Hope to see you there!

I’m in love with my new FlipCamera and like a little kid, am carrying it around everywhere I go. 

Unleash your inner James Cameron

Video is becoming a common communication tool.  These inexpensive and very portable cameras have made video production a snap.  But there are a lot of horrible and ineffective videos out there. Video is best suited for product demos, intensive discussion, interviews, client testimonials, or establishing thought leadership.  Here are 10 tips that will help you create excellent footage – not just add to the visual clutter:

• Format is important. Keep it short — 3-5 minutes will hold your audience’s attention.
• Commit to some frequency — a weekly or bi-monthly series will build momentum.
• Use established third-party sites and services for delivery (examples: YouTube,  blinkx.com, Vimeo and others) along with posting videos on your own site.
• Test for compatibility with all Web browsers, plug-ins, and operating-systems.
• Record several takes and edit the best parts of each one into a single video.
• Smile!
• Vary the tone and pitch of your voice — do not speak in a monotone.
• Move your head when speaking to help emphasize your words. Use subtle movements of your head when speaking to help emphasize what you say, along with eyebrow movements, widening their eyes, pursing their lips, and other facial “punctuation marks.”
• Look at yourself in the mirror beforehand and make sure you look good, that your hair is in place, and that you don’t have a collar or a tag turned up or worse. Don’t trust the image on the screen — use a mirror and look at yourself closely.
• Learn your editing software and be reasonably proficient in it. You should be able to:
  • Cut and rearrange clips
  • Add titles, transitions, and effects
  • Blend or overlap scenes
  • Add separate audio tracks
  • Modify audio levels

If you haven’t introduced video into your marketing activites by now, run out and buy one of these tiny gems.  You may be surprised at your own creativity!