This morning at the Western Farm Show I conducted a session on social media. The focus was on the “how-to” of social media for communications and marketing purposes. Yesterday my session with Kansas Farmer Darin Grimm, focused more on using social media to agvocate. Thanks to ZimmComm intern John Brown, Columbia College, Columbia, MO for taking the photo for me.
Some of the points that I tried to present using live examples included:
1. If just getting started, pick just one social networking application and use it, get comfortable with it and then expand. Ex. start with Twitter, then add Facebook and then YouTube, etc.
2. Go ahead and register your name or company name for social networking accounts even if you don’t use them right away. It’s a protection thing.
3. When you’re ready to start your blog or Twitter account make sure you post something at some level of frequency and then pay attention to your followers and people who leave comments. Engage them, don’t ignore them.
4. Think of social media as an electronic form of personal discussion. Kind of like participating in a discussion with some people at a cocktail party for example.
5. There are lots of metrics. Start looking at them right away and keep a record of them. They provide a benchmark for comparison over time. And you will need time to let your social networking begin to pay dividends!
We went over a lot more with some great Q&A. Thanks to everyone who attended! I hope to get to do it again soon.