Will Marlow - Filed under 'Social media manager'

Why Social Media Managers Are Like Janitors

The social media landscape is a pretty messy place. Your job, as a social media manager or digital PR pro (or whatever you call yourself) is to organize things, and clean them up. How do you do that? You make lists, lists, lists, and more lists.

Lists are something that come naturally to PR pros, and they need to start coming naturally to social media marketers. Think of it like this: if there are 50 million people who post 5 million photos every day on Flickr, only 250,000 of them leave comments, write testimonials, or Fave the photos that they like. And, of those 250,000, there are probably just a few thousand that care about the same things that you care about. Just by realizing that, you have cleaned up the Flickr universe tremendously, reducing it from 50 million people to 250,000, to a few thousand, or preferably a number small enough to fit on your list.

Your job is to edit, edit, edit, until your lists are small, manageable, CLEAN, and powerful. Before you can accomplish anything as a social media manager, you need to clean things up first.

Will Marlow is a PR specialist, blogger, and photographer who lives in Northern Virginia. The photograph of the Golden Retriever above will be featured as the lead photograph on the July 18th edition of the A-Town Dog Blog. You should follow Will Marlow on Twitter.

Filed under // Digital PR Digital Public Relations PR PR Pro PR Pros Public Relations Social Media Optimization Social media manager social media pro social media pros

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Baby steps toward success with social media

"Baby steps, baby steps, baby steps through the office, baby steps out the door -- it works!" - Bill Murray, What About Bob?

Today I read a great blog post by Darren Rowse over at Problogger, which was in turn about a great post by Chris Brogan, both of which focused on the importance of little victories in being successful in the authors' fields. Embracing little victories on your way to success with social media is one of the biggest topics I talk to clients about. Say, for example, your goal is to transition from a 100% paper-based direct mail marketing system to a more balanced (and less costly) operation that relies 25% on direct mail, and 75% on electronic channels like email, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. After you plot out the best route to migrate your valuable direct mail contacts over to the more efficient e-channels, you should be prepared for a long-flight with constant course correction. The good news? If you pick your goals right, and plan your tactics well, you should be very confident that the payoff will be big with social media, whether in reduced costs, increased revenues, or both. But it won't come all at once, so just repeat the 'baby steps' mantra. :)

Will Marlow co-founded AlumniFidelity to help his clients reposition their fundraising to benefit from Web 2.0 technology and marketing techniques. He’s working with clients such as UVA, the College of William & Mary, the University of Oklahoma, Bowling Green State University, Randolph Macon College, and he loves nothing better than a thorny marketing challenge. Email him at will@alumnifidelity.com.

Filed under // Social Media Social media manager online community manager