Step Into The Spotlight! Welcomes Guest Blogger, Toby Bloomberg

As I confessed in my very first post, I don’t have a microwave or even a toaster. But I did recently open a Twitter account ’cause how’s a girl supposed to market a book without one? Here to give us the scoop on where to get started with social media is one of our 50 Top Marketing Bloggers, Toby Bloomberg. Take it away Toby…

Tsufit it’s an honor to be part of your Step into the Spotlight Series.

In today’s world where clutter is the norm and marketing managers are scrambling to get their brands noticed stepping to the side of the lime light just might be the way to get into the spot light. By that I mean before you take center stage understand the basics:

1. Who are your customers and prospects?
2. What makes your brand unique to your customers?
3. Where do your customers hang out?

The answers, to what may first appear as simple questions, become the cornerstone of your successful marketing strategy. Traditionally organizations discovered those elusive secrets through marketing research studies or mining internal data sources. However, social media research or listening to the raw conversations of your customers provides marketers with an additional resource.

Through blogs, social networks, social sharing (videos, photos) and micro blogging a la Twitter we have an exciting, new opportunity to not only hear these unfiltered conversations but to join in the discussions. The powerful bonus is the relationships that can be built and nurtured through the exchange of ideas.

As with any marketing imitative, it is critical to begin with a plan that includes goals and success measures. Without a specific direction social media can quickly turn from a credible strategy to nothing more than cocktail conversation. Following are five social media tools or put into marketing vernacular let’s call them tactics to get you started.

Listen, Learn With Five Social Media Tactics

1. Blogs- You can authentically reinforce your brand promise, ask for feedback from your customers, build thought leadership positioning and provide extended customer support with this website fondly called a blog. And if that were not enough blogs can also increase your lift in the search engines.

2. Microblogging/Twitter – Believe it or not 140 characters per message or “tweet” is perfect for busy marketers to not only develop relationships but extend a personal resource network. Pop in several times during the course of the day to connect with different people. Through Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com/) you can subscribe to key word searches to keep up to date on the tweet-buzz about your brands, company and industry trends.

3.Linked In – LinkedIn is an ideal first step for people who are new or hesitant to step into social networks. Positioned as a business-to-business “rolodex” networking tool, LinkedIn is aggressively adding social networking functionality which support building relationships and creating stronger brands.

4. Facebook – Facebook is not only your teens social network. “Adults” and branded pages are coming on this platform in record number. If your brand has champions and a target audience active on Facebook, there are two options to consider with this social network. One is creating a personal page and the other is building a group page for “fans.” In addition to branding, Facebook provides an opportunity to “mix” it up with your customers and build stronger relationships.

5. Google Alerts- While more internet marketing than social media, creating Google Alerts provides you with a free way to keep tabs on the pulse of your industry. Google pulls its sources from news sites to blogs. Create several alerts that include: key words for your industry, your company name, branded products and throw in an “ego alert” with your name.

Toby Bloomberg, known as the “social media marketing diva” , has one of the highest ranked marketing blogs in the world, Diva Marketing Blog according to the Ad Age Power 150. She’s also an adjunct professor at Goizueta School of Business at Emory University where she teaches an innovative course on management consulting. Toby has been quoted about social media marketing in various publications including INC magazine, BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal and Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Entrepreneur.com, MSNBC and the Atlanta Business Chronicle.