11th Day of Christmas

Road Trip!

LinkedIn, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube and Flicker are a few of the large social sites that combine with your industry and local sites to become the foundation of your online community. These sites are your marketing outposts. This is where you go to develop and deepen relationships with peers and customers. You go there to engage with customers, influencers, peers, friends, neighbors and others.

You have been asked over and over again to “join the conversation.” The naturally gregarious among us jump right in, but there are some of you scratching your head wondering what to say. There are only so many hours in the day and you want to make sure that you are spending your precious resource of time wisely. Yeah, remember your budget!

You do this by being useful and credible. The reason for being there is to build your reputation by participating and being a member of the community. Yesterday’s tidbits were all ways to contribute to this process. You create interesting content and share it with your outposts. You bring information back to your site. Information is shared from outpost to outpost with your site as the hub.

Today’s gift is a ticket to visit and inspect outposts. I want you to evaluate your position there. If you are not there, determine whether or not you should be. Find out which ones are working hard for you and why. Your criteria should be based on results. Were you able to gain a lead or sale from your participation? Ask yourself: are your customers there? Look for the best locations for you to engage with those who share your interests.

By taking this trip you will discover which of your marketing outposts could use more support, which should be dropped, and for which ones you need to create a presence.

Behave. Remember, this is social media and not Vegas. What happens at an outpost does not stay at the outpost. It gets tweeted, uploaded to YouTube and blasted all over FaceBook. So be prepared to stand behind (and not regret) your comments.