Guide to Social Media for Marketing

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P O W E R E D B Y :
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CompTIA Quick Start
Guide to Social Media
for Marketing
A practical guide for solution providers

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CompTIA Quick Start
Guide to Social Media
for Marketing
There are over 100 million people with accounts on LinkedIn, over 100 million “active
users” on Twitter, and Facebook recently broke 800 million users. Meanwhile, YouTube
serves up over 3 billion videos every day and blog posts dominate task specific searches
on Google, such as “how do I secure my network?”
In other words, we live in a social media world.
Social media provides new channels for IT professionals
to establish their expertise, increase their online visibility,
drive more qualified traffic to their website, and generate
more leads and business.
Even when your audience doesn’t use social media
at work—perhaps because of corporate policies or a
“Facebook-is-for-kids” attitude—tools like blogging,
video, and B2B (business to business) social networking
sites like LinkedIn can provide opportunities for growth.
Using Social Media to Build Your Business
These days, both individuals and businesses seek answers
online in one of two ways: they either “Google” it or ask
their social networks. A solid social media strategy can
help your company “get found” for either opportunity.
Having a social media strategy often starts with having
a content strategy. This content strategy includes three
essential ingredients:
1. Content Type: What content will engage your ideal
customer? What is his or her biggest problem that you
can help them solve? (Too often we rush into social
media with our own agenda, starting discussions
around what we offer, and not what our clients need.)
2. Content Delivery: What channels will you use to
engage your ideal customer? Are they on LinkedIn or
Facebook? Do they prefer to read how-to articles or
watch instructional videos? Or maybe they want to
catch up on the latest trends in HIPAA requirements or
cloud computing while listening to their MP3 player at
the gym or during their daily commute.
3. Content Measurement: How and what can you measure
to determine if your social media strategy is working?
Inbound traffic? Increased leads? More sales and
referrals?
Let’s take a deeper look at each of these ingredients.
Growing your business
with Twitter
When David Jacquet of InfoSec Group wanted to build his
business in the healthcare arena, he turned to Twitter. He
searched for people using health related keywords like
“HIPAA” in their tweets. Often, these were consultants
targeting or talking to his audience. He’d then reach out to the
people who didn’t compete with his offerings and together
they co-marketed each other’s services for improved results.
He also uses Twitter to accelerate his own learning curve and
to stay current. Twitter helps him stay on top of new tools,
many of which he’s integrated into his own suite of products.

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CompTIA Quick Start Guide to Social Media for Marketing
What type of content should you be creating?
If you’ve been in business long enough, you probably have
a good sense of what your ideal customer struggles with.
Questions from customers—whether they come in via phone,
email, or some other method—become fodder for your
content strategy.
Instead of simply replying to an emailed question, turn it into
a “Dear Abby” style blog post or video. If this person turned
to you for help, it’s likely there are many others out there who
will ask the same question at their favorite search engine in the
months and even years to come.
Use these replies as a foundation for building your company
blog. A company blog acts as the hub of your social media
marketing, with all of your other activity as connected spokes.
While social networking platforms come and go, your blog is
forever. (As long as you keep paying your hosting fees!)
In addition, your blog provides excellent SEO (search engine
optimization) opportunities. Each blog post becomes
an additional web page, and each web page is another
opportunity to rank well for a specific search term or question
your ideal customer is putting to Google right now. If you want
to rank well for a specific search term, start blogging about it.
A good companion to a blog is online video. YouTube, owned
by Google, is the world’s 2nd most popular search engine.
People go directly to YouTube to find out how to secure
a network, whether cloud computing will help their small
business, or how to add tablets to a VPN. Videos also show
up in traditional search engines, giving you the opportunity to
leapfrog the competition by creating videos that answer your
prospect’s questions.
Don’t worry about giving away too much free information:
although some people may take your content and do it
themselves, many more will realize that hiring you is a better
investment in their time and resources.
Where should you be sharing (delivering) your content?
The short answer is everywhere your prospects hang out
online. Although Facebook has the biggest user base, IT
firms that focus on business clients may find better results on
LinkedIn or Twitter.
Although LinkedIn has been rolling out more tools for companies,
right now the power of LinkedIn is in personal connections. All
employees, from customer service reps right up to the CEO,
can—and should--have comprehensive Linkedin profiles.
Your staff should be encouraged to also participate in
“Groups,” one of LinkedIn’s most powerful networking
opportunities. Groups can focus on an industry, a geographic
area, a job title, or just about any other subject. Local
(geographic) groups offer opportunities for networking, while
industry groups provide a forum for sharing best practices.
Groups made up of prospects and customers help you and
your staff establish credibility and provide a resource for some
free market research.
Similarly, Twitter can help IT firms find ideal customers in a
number of ways. People often turn to Twitter to ask questions
or vent, so using the Advanced Search on Twitter for industry
specific keywords such as “HIPAA,” “Zimbra,” or “MX records”
may uncover opportunities.
Further, Twitter is often a good place to share links to blog
posts or videos your firm has created, or outside resources
that you recommend.
Go where the fish are biting
Mark Stone, president and founder of Reliable Networks, has found
that engaging his audience on Zimbra forums is much more effective
than using Twitter or Facebook. His moderator status helps establish
his expertise in front of a potential audience of 70 million paid
mailboxes globally.
He cites a number of projects coming directly from this “social
marketing,” including:
• Final design, build out and upgrade maintenance for the multi-
server farm of another Zimbra Hosting Provider architected for
10,000+ mailboxes.
• Zimbra migration assistance for MIT’s Whitehead School of
Biomedical Research.
• Zimbra server move, upgrade and virtual server farm build out for a
southeast healthcare provider with ~2,000 employees.
• Zimbra server migration for large Hong Kong-based consulting
company.
Although they have a corporate Twitter account as well as individual
accounts, “Twitter is useless for us; our target clients are C-level
executives and they do not use Twitter to be aware of technology
services.”
Remember, your goal isn’t to sell prospects on using a particular
social network, but to win their business.

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What should you be measuring?
If the reason you’re using social media is to grow your
business, then you need to determine what are the
measurable steps to landing a new client. Using a tool like
Google Analytics will allow you to track where your site
traffic came from, and whether a specific visitor took a
step down the sales funnel.
These steps might include signing up for a free email
newsletter, downloading some white paper or online tool,
or completing a contact form.
Making the Commitment
While social media is relatively free in terms of cash outlay,
you will need to commit time and resources to make it
a success. Many businesses get frustrated when they
discover that one blog post, one video, or one status
update didn’t result in an uptick in sales. Social media
requires a consistent level of commitment by your staff or
outside resources such as a copywriter or agency.
While there is no “magic formula,” you should expect to
write two or three blog posts each week for six months
before you really start to see significant results. Each post
should be a minimum of 300 words.
1. Start with a keyword analysis: This is a critical step that too many IT
firms skip. You need to make sure that the content you create matches
up with the language your audience uses. If you’re writing great blog
posts about “securing your infrastructure” but your customers are
searching for “how to keep hackers out of my network,” you’re not
doing anyone any good.
To combat this, you’ll want to run a keyword analysis. Although
an outside SEO firm will use multiple analytic tools, you can start
simply and without cost by using Google’s Adword Keyword Tool.
This online tool will take your list of targeted keywords, recommend
related phrases, and then provide you data on how popular the
term is (how many people have searched for it in the last month) as
well as how much competition you have for that term (how many
other sites may be using it.)
2. Add a blog to your site: Once you know the best words to use, start
creating blog posts that target your keyword phrases. There are
plenty of choices for blogging platforms, but WordPress is an open-
source solution that scales well, has thousands of free plugins, and
sports an active developer community. It’s an excellent and popular
choice for IT firms worldwide.
3. Establish profiles on the social networks that your audience
already uses: Most likely this will be on LinkedIn, Facebook and
Twitter. However, there may also be vertical platforms or forums
that provide better return on your investment.
It’s much more difficult to get people to join you on a network they
aren’t using compared to engaging them where they already hang
out. To determine where your ideal customers hang out online,
survey your current customers.
Complete each social media profile as completely as possible.
Depending on the platform that may mean uploading your photo
or your company logo, a descriptive bio or CV, your geographic
location, photos, videos and more.
Because these platforms are so popular you’ll need to differentiate
yourself from all the other profiles out there, so the more you
customize your profile, the more you’ll stand out.
4. Establish a YouTube channel: Once you’ve uploaded your first video
you have officially created your channel. Since you’ll be identified
on YouTube through your channel’s name, choose it wisely.
“PowerBoy17412” doesn’t carry the same credibility as “ITexpert” or
“NYCSecureNetworks.”
You should further customize your channel by uploading a
background image that complements the rest of your branding.
5. Create an editorial calendar: There’s no two ways about it: creating
and executing a social media strategy is a lot of work, and can
often feel overwhelming. An editorial calendar can help alleviate
this feeling and help you accomplish your social media goals more
easily.
In a simple spreadsheet you can plan out which blog posts will be
written this month, and assign them to different team members.
You can determine when a video will be recorded, edited, uploaded
and then embedded back into your blog.
You can also create “conversation starters” for your Facebook
business page and assign different team members to administer
your page on different days.
6. Measure results: Put a plan in place to regularly measure your
results. Besides Google Analytics, both Facebook and YouTube
provide rich reports that give you feedback on whether people are
responding to your content.
Six Tips to Social Media Success

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Before you feel completely overwhelmed, keep in mind that
by setting up Google Alerts on specific keywords, you can get
daily updates of news items and blog posts that you can use as
springboards for your own content. In addition, how-to and the
“Dear Abby” style posts mentioned earlier can come together
quickly. Also, consider having multiple staff members contribute
to your blog.
Try and commit to one video a week as well. Keep in mind that
you can post your videos to a video sharing site like YouTube
then embed it back into your blog. Reiterate what you say in
the video into a blog post and you’ve got one more blog post
completed.
Social networks also give back what you put into them. Doing
nothing more than setting up a LinkedIn profile and accepting
networking requests won’t bring you any additional business.
Instead, join several appropriate LinkedIn groups and sign up
for the daily email digest. In five or ten minutes you’ll be able
to scan these digests to see if there are any conversations
you can contribute to. Answering questions and providing
resources establishes your credibility, increases your visibility,
and is perhaps more efficient than any real world networking.
Moving Forward
Social media—including blogs and online video—is not going
away. It will continue to grow and become a more legitimate
channel for lead generation. Finding your audience and
engaging them with content they’re interested in will help
increase your online visibility, drive more qualified traffic to
your site, and help you build your business.
Tools Resources
Here’s a list of tools resources that will help you
increase your understanding of social media and how it
can help you grow your business:
Websites Blogs:
Social Media Examiner: Great social media marketing content
delivered daily. http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com
flyte blog: Web marketing social media blog written for
SMBs. Tons of how-to’s and regularly updated. http://www.
flyteblog.com
Mashable: The CNN of social media, providing 24/7 coverage
of the social media landscape. http://www.mashable.com
Tools:
Google Alerts: Get daily updates on your industry or targeted
keywords…perfect fodder for your blog or online video
content. http://www.google.com/alerts/
TweetDeck or Hootsuite: Both of these tools allow you to
manage multiple accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other
popular social media platforms. http://www.tweetdeck.com
and http://www.hootsuite.com
ScreenFlow or Camtasia: These screen capture tools make it
easy to create how-to videos for managing a network or using
a piece of software. http://www.telestream.net/screen-flow/
and http://www.camtasiasoftware.com
Google Analytics: Track which social media platform is sending
you traffic, and which blog posts are generating interest from
prospective clients. http://www.google.com/analytics/

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