This is post two of a three part series. Article one covered Part 1: An Introduction to Social Media Marketing. This article will cover Part 2: Three Types of Social Media and What to Publish.
Three types of social media
There are three main types of social media: publishing, sharing and networking. Each social media service should fall into at least one of these categories. There will be some overlap, and services like Facebook can fall right in the middle.
What should I publish?
Publish everything you have, anywhere you can. Paul Lavenhar of PL Communications says:
Most businesses have subject matter experts with tons of “inside” expertise, which is often what they leverage to persuade new clients to buy their products or services. When that same expertise is “repackaged” as a blog entry or web content, it serves the same function to a potentially much wider audience. Plus, the content has the added bonus of helping with SEO.
Spend some time finding this inside expertise. Unlock it by turning it into web content such as a blog article or instructional video. Then, publish it! Here is a small list of popular social media sites where you can publish your content:
- Flickr – Photos
- Upcoming – Events calendar
- Yelp – Local reviews
- Google Groups – Discussions
- Wikipedia – Encyclopedia articles
- Podcast.net – Podcasts/audio
- YouTube – Video
- Twitter – Blogging
- Squidoo – One page guides
Publish whatever you have
Mike Volpe described how hiring an intern to upload YouTube videos helped SolidWorks, a former employer, increase business exposure. These 100+ (somewhat dry and technical) videos were already published on their company web site. By uploading them to YouTube, they generated an additional 10,000 views per month. Many people (particularly 3D CAD engineers—their company’s target market) found them useful, and the company’s brand awareness was improved.
Monitor what’s published
Sign up for Google Alerts and monitor what people are saying about your company or brand. Using an advanced search query like the following will allow you to be alerted whenever someone posts something about you, while still filtering out content from your own web site:
yourbrandname -site:yoursite.com
You can also search for your brand name on Technorati, a popular blog search engine. Subscribe to RSS updates for your search results and you will be able to stay current on what popular bloggers are saying about you.
When people say good things about you, promote it
Promoting flattering content is a good way of helping others in your social network while still helping to promote yourself. When another blogger writes a wonderful article about your product or company, promote it by submitting and voting for it on social news sites or by linking to it from your own web site. This is what social media is all about: making friends.
Tomorrow I will cover Part 3: How to Share, Network and Measure Results.
Please comment with your experience in social media publishing here.
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Good post.
All of this withstanding the biggest problem I’m having these days is to get my clients to understand the important of social media in terms of brand building. They still think it’s some kind of novelty that teens are into. I’ve been trying to get people to understand that social media sites are having a huge influence not only in the conversations people are having about a brand, but also on the search results that are coming up.
I recently wrote a post about the tools that people are using to monitor the online space and that clients are still hung up in web analaytics to judge their brands health in the online space, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on it. E-mail me some time!
-Freddie
Digital Strategist / TakeMeToYourLeader.com