Small, Consistent Social Media Steps Add-Up to One Big Branding Gain

According to Benjamin Franklin, “Little strokes fell great oaks.“ These words ring true today when it comes to Social Media branding for your company.  Whether you are just getting started, have a limited or an extensive presence in Social Media, regular, consistent small steps are the most important aspect of your involvement in Social Media.

It makes sense for most B2B companies to have a blog, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn pages. When it comes to content for all these pages consider making small, consistent strides to building your Social Media brand. Here are a few thoughts for your consideration related to using Social Media to build your brand:

It’s not a job…it’s an adventure. If you haven’t done it already, you should have a specific goal, audience, overall brand strategy and message in mind as you develop your Social Brand. You should have at least one person in the organization that is knowledgeable, accountable and responsible for updating and expanding your Social Media program and presence. It should be part of that person’s annual or monthly MBOs but it also needs to be fun!

Repurpose, repurpose, repurpose. You shouldn’t have to invent a bunch of new content for postings. In fact, repurposing existing content can reinforce your brand message across multiple touch points. With branding, consistent messages and exposure are the keys to success. Press releases, new industry or product information, excerpts from case studies and company announcements make great content for Social Media. Always look at each piece of content with an eye on your specific goal, audience, overall brand strategy. 

Dance with the ones that brung ya! Think of the potential reach if your partners and customers are part of your Social Media strategy and outreach! Imagine if your partners and customers use your content on their LinkedIn or Facebook pages! If each of your partners and customers has only 100 followers or connections, your message reach can increase significantly for each partner leveraging your content! That’s a lot of value for you, your partners and customers since most of them are probably participating in Social Media but may not have the resources to generate regular content.

Here are a few ideas to get started leveraging content across your partner and customer base:

1. Survey your partners and customers to determine the extent of their participation in Social Media -- you’ll be surprised by their participation. Ask them if they are connections with you or if they want to be then invite them to connect! At the same time you can ask them how often they post and how they generate content.
2. Identify Content Sources: If you haven’t already done so, determine all the internal and external sources of content for your program. Potential sources include PR, technical information and trends, Analyst information, partner and customer newsletters, case studies, Webinar invitations and content, blog postings and whitepapers.
3. Make sure your content reflects your partners’ perspective: Determine what content can be positioned from a partner or distributor point of view – that is what might be important for the partners to share on their pages and with their customers. If you have a newsletter that you send to partners start there. Suggest in your newsletter that partners should share appropriate content on their Social Media pages.  

Ultimately, sharing your content for use by your partner on Social Media should help provide a new outlet for branding, gaining mindshare and providing more value from your partner program. As far as results tracking, don’t think of it as demand generation but track it like you do press releases, PR coverage and Web page views. 

When you think about Social Media, always remember the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Little strokes fell great oaks. “ Small Social Media steps can add up to one, big gain for your Social Media branding.

For more information about starting, integrating and improving your newsletter into your social media strategy, contact Larry Fournier on LinkedIn or by email at: fourthman@usa.com.