HOWTO: Social Media Marketing, and our Joomla websites

Lots of places are clamoring to get into the "Social Media Revolution" and start monetizing the frenzy.  This is creating a lot of fun social media content, and a lot of creative thinking.  This really reminds me of the dotcom bubble in 1999.  We had new websites popping up every day that seemed to give away crazy things for free, or serve some crazy function that was not even possible to monetize.

Now this is happening with Social Media.  Everyone and their dog has a facebook/twitter account and are trying to get you to buy things from them.  Lets go over the very basics of what should be on the social networks, how to automate the act of getting it there, and make yourself look connected all at the same time.

And even more fun, new widgets and applications and apps and sites pop up every day that take advantage of the interconnections in new cool ways.  For example, you can now register on our site using your google account, facebook account, hotmail, or other - and this was a free plugin we stuck on the site using RBXnow.  Fun Times!

What to do:

1. Get accounts at least at facebook/twitter - the two can link together for automation so you don't have to update EITHER if you don't want to..

2. Get your plan mapped out for what type of information you want to share, what is acceptable information leakage, what isn't.  Want to share your favorite club? Favorite beverage? Pictures of your dog? Pictures of your Mom? Draw the line somewhere logical for you and your market.

3. Get your website updated to something current that can take advantage of automation and one-click installers.  Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, DotNetNuke, probably many others - all let you install modules/plugins from the community with one click you have a new set of features to exploit for more website fun.

4. Install tools to your site and let them run wild.  We are using Joomla core components for our blog section, the core RSS generator, and then some plugins.  Install RBX if you need user registration, install Community Builder and facebook connect if you need user profiles, install AutoTweet NG if you are posting new articles to your site that you want to get out, they will hit your twitter/facebook respectively and atomically.  Use youtube.com if you can possibly make any of your content in video format.  Some people sit in front of a webcam and do a video email, I happen to think you can find a more natural leap to video if you think about it a while..

5. Get automation going in your email communication.  You can make automatic email look and feel like you typed it yourself.  You can also make newsletters automatic to pull site content if you use Joomla.  More automation means more dynamic content feeding people the precious information they desire, in an electronic and disposable medium, for free.

6. Call us for free advice, we're always here to talk, and MOST of this stuff gets done for free by having that conversation when we build your site, and sometimes even after the fact with our monthly freebies. 

Enjoy!

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