Jay, I am trying to figure out how to start our social marketing as you recommend. Our information is so technical that we cannot hire someone off the street to blog or answer questions in the different medias. Our technical staff is so overwhelmed with work that they really have no time to monitor the different sites. Help?

Here is my reply:

Not all Social Media needs to involve a two-way conversation. For example we could develop YouTube videos. A series of 8-10 videos explaining common tips for your target market could gain a lot of popularity on YouTube, we would search engine optimize the videos so they would come up in Google and YouTube searches and they could be easily uploaded to your website and blog. Did you know that YouTube is the #3 website in the world and the #2 search engine!

Speaking of blogs, they are primarily a  1-way informational medium, they don’t require a lot of moderating and conversation. I check the comments on my blog a couple times a week or so, it only takes a minute to approve comments.

I love podcasts!!! These are another 1 way medium, primarily. You could do a series of 7 or 10 podcasts with tips for your target market. There are very few podcasts on any topic, but there are now millions of iPhones, iPods and iTouches – 25% of users download podcasts. It is a great way to build a following with an audience looking for this content, very few competitors are podcasting. You could also add the shows to your website. Here’s how we do it for our internet marketing podcast.

Another good tip, take 5-10 minutes every couple days and log onto LinkedIn. Click on the ‘More’ tab, and click ‘Questions’. You can search for questions in your niche, provide answers and position yourself/the firm as experts. You will likely generate leads and build your valuable LinkedIn network.

We should create Facebook ‘Fan’ Page. By offering valuable tips and including the videos this page would gain a small but loyal and valuable following among your target  community.

One last idea. We could create a community for you, like the Internet Marketing Club . You could have your experts develop a short webinar, if you have 5-6 experts,  they could do 1 webinar every 2 months, and you could invite authors of books and some complimentary professionals to do a webinar once in a while – voila! You’ll have an active community, a weekly webinar series with more content to add to your website, more leads and more links! The webinars keep the site growing because they are very viral, people tweet about them and tell friends. We just landed a great new customer thanks to Internet Marketing Club, it really works!

All of these approaches will get noticed and build links for your website and support search engine optimization.

Please let us know if you’d like to test drive any of these new mediums.

Best regards,

Jay