A Changing Perspective

And really, why would they? The radio has always been the Twitter to television’s blog. You’d listen to the radio, and little bits of news or current events would be fed to you between songs. It was constant and you got spoon fed important bits as you listened.

However, in today’s onlinecentric world, we can get everything the radio offers with none of the interruption of commercials. Pandora, Last.fm, and other digital music services offer custom radio stations based on your interests. And if you want the news, flip over to Twitter, and you can see what’s happening without even interrupting your listening.

So how does the traditional radio station keep you interested? By creating an engaging social media campaign. NPR has recently brought on Gary Knell, who was responsible for turning Sesame Street from a simple children’s show into an online powerhouse of interactive fun. NPR is hoping he can do the same for them.

Robert Siegel's been looking a little green..

However, NPR is not the best example. They already deliver something unique as a nationally syndicated talk radio station. They have numerous interviews and guest speakers that you won’t find elsewhere. While a strong social media campaign will bring them new listeners, they weren’t looking at closing their doors anytime soon.

No, the people who NEED the strong social strategy are the traditional radio shows. Sure, most of them have a morning talk show and personable DJs, but their content is still primarily focused on delivering music. Music I can get from Pandora.

Even in the car, you can plug your smartphone into the radio and listen to Pandora as long as you get 3G, which is pretty much everywhere at this point. If I’m taking a long road trip, why would I struggle to keep finding stations I like when my phone delivers the same station everywhere I go?

Tune In

So how can social media keep listeners tuned in? It’s all about content and interaction. You need to deliver the content people want and interact with your fan base. Nearly every radio station is online already, but that’s not really enough. Radio needs to have a campaign strategy that encourages listeners to actually listen.

• Encourage DJs and talk show hosts to interact via Twitter and Facebook live. This encourages people to interact and gives you some great feedback.
• Run contests both online and off. Most radio stations are constantly giving stuff away on air. Make sure you fill your online fans in, but require them to listen in order to win. Name that song type of contests are great for that.
• Pull the videos for songs you’re playing off YouTube and put it up on Twitter or Facebook.  Better, pull fan made videos and post them. YouTube is full of homemade videos for nearly any song. Video is a strong sell online.
• Encourage listeners to go interact with the social media campaign. I this day and age, people can listen to your radio station from anywhere they have a computer. If you live in a tourist industry based area, connect with listeners who will be listening to you when they come within radio distance. Expand your audience by expanding your area of influence.

But What About the Future?

Those are just a few ways social media can help a radio station. But realistically, even with these measures, it may just be delaying the death of radio. With digital content becoming more and more easy to access from anywhere, fewer people are looking at traditional methods of content distribution. The only sound coming from print is a death rattle, and Hulu, Netflix and Amazon On Demand prove that the TV can already see the end drawing nigh.

How much longer can it be until music radio has its final broadcast?

Related posts:

1. Can Social Media Work For Chiropractic Too? Hello Guerilleros! So much for the consistency I promised last...
2. Social Media Marketing in the Movie Industry With the increase of new and unique projects we’ve been...
3. Social Media Marketing Strategy: Cornhole The Competition Good Morning Guerilleros! I swear, spring has come early in...

Horror Movie Goodness

As you know, we’re no strangers to working on social media campaigns for movies. One of the most recent projects we’ve been working on is a new movie, The Theatre Bizarre. It’s an indie horror movie that the Chefe has dubbed “gore-porn” and that’s a pretty accurate description. We started their social media campaign pretty much from scratch, and really relied on Twitter to promote new stills and clips from the movies.

The Chefe used Follower Wonk to find influential people in the horror movie industry, and developed lists for outreach. We contacted them and worked in conjunction with their Twitter accounts to help spread the word around about TTB. In the weeks to come, we’ll be talking about Follower Wonk and it’s usefulness in other types of campaigns, not just movies.

More Movies, Plus Games

Another project we’ve been working on is a series of three sites, two based around movies and one on video games. When the Movie Gallery franchise went out of business, it sold its assets, including its web presence. The sites for Hollywood Video, Movie Gallery and Game Crazy were all bought buy the same company and it was our job to figure out how to turn a profit on them as well as market them.

The Chefe had the brilliant idea to turn them into collating sites. The Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery sites automatically post content the most popular posts from several major movie news sites, and the Game Crazy site does the same thing for video games. We also supplement the sites with unique, humorous content written by yours truly.

We’ve created Facebook, Twitter and Google+ business pages to reach out to new fans as well as connect with old fans of the sites. While the direction of the sites is entirely new, it still offers plenty of content that should appeal to older fans. We post unique content to each fan page as well as repost more popular posts from the sites.

More Posts Coming

With the increase of new and unique projects we’ve been doing, we have plenty of new content for Social Media Guerilla. So while we’ve been off the radar for a little while, we’ll be posting more frequently again so we can share our experiences with you. Sorry, we’ve not been around much, but as you’ll see, the wait has been worth it.

Related posts:

1. The Hesher Campaign – An Unusual Strategy for an Unusual Movie Good morning, Guerilleros! Summer is coming, and with summer comes...
2. Social Media Marketing for Sandwiches Good morning, Guerilleros! Lately, we’ve taken up a new client,...
3. The Impact of Google TV on Social Media Marketing Hey Guerilleros! I was browsing through my email, and I...

The Ultimate Local Promotion – Online!

Our goal for Quiznos is to increase local awareness through online resources. We always try to keep our costs down by using smart advertising, and even with our fees, it’s been a relatively inexpensive campaign for Quiznos.

Aside from the usual custom landing page on Facebook and a Twitter account, we also focused heavily on using Google Maps, Foursquare and Facebook Places.

Google Maps + Offer + Boost Ads

We started by getting Quiznos to actually appear on Google Maps. Google Boost was pretty helpful, offering a set it and forget it approach to ad generation and integration. You can also place a coupon in your Maps listing, which gives added incentive for people to choose your business. And as the business “owner”, we ensured that all the images were high quality.

Foursquare Venue Coupons

With Foursquare, we took full advantage of their coupon offer as well. They have a GREAT selection of potential offers dependent on various criteria you select based on the number of people checked in and their status.We also did a similar tactic for Facebook Places. Not everyone uses Foursquare.

A Great Social Media Campaign

With Quiznos, we had a lot of savings offered. Coupons were available from Google Maps, Liking them on Facebook, or signing in on Foursquare or Places. We have effectively used QR codes in the campaign as well. There are signs throughout the store with a QR code that links to the Fb page.

The social media campaign items are ranking well on Google as well, so there’s no reason any should miss any of the deals.

We’re pretty excited with the results, and the owner has seen a marked improvement in sales, so he’s pretty happy as well. And with the low price of the campaign, we were able to offer an affordable solution that worked. While this wouldn’t work for every business, it’s well suited to representing the local branch of a national chain, and it’s low maintenance while bringing in a sustained revenue stream. It’s win-win for everybody!

Related posts:

1. The Impact of Google TV on Social Media Marketing Hey Guerilleros! I was browsing through my email, and I...
2. Google Maps Moved! Hello Guerilleros! It’s another beautiful day for Social Media Guerilla,...
3. How To Use QR Codes in a Marketing Campaign Hello Guerilleros! It’s not as nice a day today as...

So this morning I put it on, and it looked really good on me, so I took a picture of myself wearing it. Naturally, I uploaded it to my personal Facebook.

From here, I wanted to show all the people involved how well it fit. We all know that tagging the photo itself puts the picture on the persons wall, but you can’t photo tag with a fan page and I wanted the clients fans to see the pic as well.

So I put a message with the photo and I used the @ to tag people. When you type @, followed by whoever you’re trying to tag, Facebook will pop up a little selection of your friends and pages you like. Just pick who you’re looking for, and you’re good to go. But to tag someone, you have to be friends with them, or Like them.

Clearly, this is incredibly useful. If you have a company that sells kitchen furnishings, why not talk about Vetrazzo counter tops and tag Vetrazzo in your update? Then your post will appear on both your site and the Vetrazzo site. And, generally, there are more followers on their page who will hopefully follow back to your page and become fans.

I would warn you though, don’t abuse it. It has been my experience that other pages will take offense if you start blowing them up with your posts.

So thats this weeks update. The Guerrilla Chefe is beckoning, so I best be wrapping this post up. And of course, don’t forget to search the rest of the site for more social media guerrilla warfare tactics.  See you next week, Guerilleros!

Related posts:

1. Attracting Fans on Facebook (How to Get People to Like Me!) Good morning Guerrillas! We know the importance of a blog,...
2. Custom Landing Pages on Facebook Good morning, Guerilleros! It’s about two in the morning local...
3. Social Guerilla BOOST – the Synnd Software & Content Syndication If you have been trying to make sense of Social...

I don’t plan to talk about what Google TV is, you can find that on your own. I want to talk about possibilities. Ways to take advantage of a new technology. Several different ideas come to mind pretty quickly.

PPC based on TV

This is a no brainer. If PPC ads can read your search query, it can read what you’re watching on TV. Instead of basing your ads on keywords, in the future you may need to think about the TV that your potential customers are watching. This could be very interesting.  If you have a bakery, and someone sets their Google TV to record Cake Boss every week, possibly they would like your product.

Oh look, it already exists.

Direct Fan Interaction During Television Shows

Imagine watching the newest episode of The Big Bang Theory, and Chuck Lorre pops up in a little live chat on the side of the  screen and talks about the episode your watching. And not only that, but since it’s a live chat, you can interact with him. Awesome right? So how is this marketing? Well, imagine if you offered a similar service. Nice, right?

Community Building

If you have a way to tie your product to a TV show, you are golden. Find a way. You have a chiropractor for a client? Hey, Alan on Two and a Half Men is a chiropractor. It’s a valid enough connection. Start basing your communities around TV shows, and the clients will come from the fan base. Most popular shows have viewers in the millions.

Pulling it all Together

Let’s say I Like House on Facebook. I find an ad asking me to join a specialized House fan page run by a doctor who is local to my area.  I do, and the next time I’m watching House, I have the opportunity to chat with other fans as the show is playing. I eventually become a regular member of the community, because I am interacting with fellow fans as the show is on. This is the key time to catch me being receptive to a House community. And of course, the next time I get sick, guess what doctor I’m going to see? The one running the fan community I belong to.

Yeah, that was a pretty contrived example, but you can see where it’s going. This opens a whole lot of ways to interact with your community, and we didn’t even talk about apps yet. Google Tv apps open even more doors.

Well Guerilleros, that’s about it for me today. I have a few fan communities of my own to go take care of. And remember, for more guerilla marketing how-to’s and such, keep coming back to Social Media Guerilla!

Related posts:

1. Social Guerilla Marketing Long Term Battle: Building a Community for offline people whose Facebook account is the ultimate experience...
2. Custom Landing Pages on Facebook Good morning, Guerilleros! It’s about two in the morning local...
3. Social Media Marketing for an Online Store? Guerilleros, today I ask for advice – my social guerilla...

I like to check out the blogs and sites I follow, as well as Facebook. You know, like Copyblogger, Mashable, and Techcrunch. They’re all kind of industry related. However, sparked by a Monster-fueled Halothon, I decided to pop in on the Xbox community over on Facebook.

I had never been to their FB page, and it was nice. They have 3  custom FBML pages. One for everyone, one for the hardcore gamers (like me!), and one for the new Kinect. Of course, even though it has a separate tab, the “All” page had the Kinect, as well. And that was also the landing page.

Just recently, I had to ask the Guerilla Chefe how to set my custom FBML page as the landing page for everyone. It’s so simple, I felt dumb for not knowing. So just to keep you from feeling dumb, here it is really quick.

Go to a page you admin. On a page you admin, click “Edit Page”

See? I even highlited what to click.

Click “Edit” under “Wall Settings”

Select which landing page you want from the drop-down.

That’s it in it’s entirety. I told you it was pretty easy, and for some reason I even included pictures. So hopefully you guys learned something, and now, I have a few more Covenant to kill before bed.

Related posts:

1. How To Create Customized Facebook Fan Pages With FBML Guerilleros, I’m sure by now you have a Facebook Fan...
2. Attracting Fans on Facebook (How to Get People to Like Me!) Good morning Guerrillas! We know the importance of a blog,...
3. How to Build a Blog Community in 6 Easy Steps! That’s right, Guerilleros! As I promised, today we are going...

Twitter stays at the front of user privacy protection

Hello Guerilleros! Recently, the Guerilla Chefe received an email from Twitter discussing two big changes they are implementing. These improvements will be unfolded over the next couple of months. More than likely, a few of you also received the same email, but perhaps, you were a bit confused. Well, lets clear that up.

Update #1- The Rise of OAuth!

The first update is for new authorization rules for applications. This change will begin implementing OAuth, an open standard that will not require you to hand out your password to programs anymore.

Much like a valet key, OAuth gives applications very limited access to your account, so unauthorized users can’t hijack your feed. And you can control exactly how much access this key permits.

And, applications are no longer allowed to store your password. That’s great. You no longer have to worry about someone stealing your phone and gaining access to your password. And lets face it, the majority of people use the same password for almost everything, so keeping it safe is pretty important.

Update #2 – See Where You’re Going!

We comon folk will start experiencing the t.co URL wrapping. This is a n order to provide better content.great feature too. No longer will you need to fret over following a link in a Tweet. Before it even gets to you, it is screened to make sure it’s not affiliated with any sort of malware.

Plus, with the URL wrapping, you’ll actually be able to see where the link is taking you. No more clicking a link to go to amazon, and ending up at 4chan.

Also, Twitter plans to collect data on the sites we click through to, to enhance user experience. I think that is just market speak for “So we can more effectively target you with ads”.

In light of all the problems Facebook seems to have over privacy, it is nice to see a social media site trying to stay ahead of the curve. These updates, while not exactly super cool, are important, and will help protect you and your clients in the long run.

Related posts:

1. Integrating Social Media – Blog RSS to Facebook to Twitter Automatically So yesterday I posted about a social marketing manual for...
2. Is The Dell Outlet Twitter Campaign Success Duplicable? Guerilleros, my sincere apologies for completely abandoning this community for...
3. Improve Your Chances To Go Viral On Twitter With Simple Snippet Guerilleros, this will be quick because my offline guerilla is...

First, your quickest fans are your blog readers. Make sure that it is EXTREMELY easy for your blog followers to follow you on Facebook as well. Put a big Facebook button on your page and tell people to use it. It can help you establish an early fan base.

Make sure you interact with your fans on Facebook. And people love to be heard, so ask questions asking about their thoughts and ideas. Ask them for advice. Just get them engaged. And when people comment, make sure you reply to it. Don’t just ask a question and wonder off; let your fans know you actually care about their answer.

You can also use a FB similar to a blog for short snippets of info, links to other blogs, or to share pictures and videos of things applicable to your page. You want them to be interested and entertained by your page. Then they tell their friends and the word spreads.

Once you have some interesting posts up, start inviting people over. My favorite way to do this is to become a fan of a page related to my business, then use the @ sign to put my post on their page. TO do this, simply type @ in the text box then the first few letters of the name of the page you want your post on, and a list of friends will pop up that match what you’re typing. It will put a hyperlink in, as well as reposting the post.

Now people on the other page will hopefully see your post and follow it back to your site, and be so enthralled with you’re content, they will become fans.

Related posts:

1. How to Get People to Read!(At Least a Little) Hello Guerilleros! Today I want to share a variety of...
2. How to Build a Blog Community in 6 Easy Steps! That’s right, Guerilleros! As I promised, today we are going...
3. How To Create Customized Facebook Fan Pages With FBML Guerilleros, I’m sure by now you have a Facebook Fan...

You should already be familiar with these sites!

That’s right, Guerilleros! As I promised, today we are going to look at how YOU can build a loyal fan base around your blog! I discussed the importance of a blog in the last post, and today I am going to give you 6 steps to follow for building a blog community that can attract real attention. Everything in it is easy, and with a little maintenance, you can have a killer blog following!

1) Provide Quality Content! (Duh!)

No one is going to read a blog with nothing on it, or worse, nothing good on it. So get a writer, or sharpen your pencil, because without some awesome content, written well, no one cares about your blog. Should this even be listed as a step?

The key is quality. An excellent test for this is to ask your self, Would I put this on my personal blog? If the answer is No, get back to writing. And it can’t be stressed enough: A Blog Is Not An Advertisement! You’re trying to give value to your readers, not sell them something.

2) Comment, Comment, and Comment Some More!

You can pack in as many keywords as you like, but that method is going to take some time to yeild results. Wouldn’t it be nice to find a large group of people who would be likely to be interested in your blog, all at once? You can! Unless you are blogging about something really obscure, someone else is already blogging about it. So go to their sites and leave comments.

But don’t just agree and leave a link. That’s not helping you. Leave insightful comments that show you know what’s up in your subject. Leave enough comments, and the readers will follow. Keep leaving comments, and you might get a link back! It takes time, but it will work!

3) Socialize Your Blog!

This is easy as pie. Put your posts up on Digg, StumbleUpon, all the major social bookmarking sites. This is a social media marketing page, and since you’re reading it, this too should be a given.

4) Keep Socializing!

Seriously, keep at it! Every word you write should go on all of these sites. And not just your writings either. you want to be very active on these sites, so people start to recognize your name, and trust you as a source for high caliber content.

5) Share the Page!

No one goes to just one person for advice, and that’s true for your blog, too! So instead of letting the reader go somewhere else for that second opinion, bring it to them. Ask other blog authors to write a piece for your site. They should be honored you asked, plus it’s free publicity for them, as well as a way to increase their followers with your followers. And your fans stay loyal, because you brought them a whole new place to learn from. Win-win for everyone!

6) Spread the Word Domestically!

Nothing is more aggrevating than asking an employee of your clients if they saw their picture on the blog, and they reply “What blog?” Really? Why are we even bothering, if your client’s employees don’t even know about it?

The largest fan base is initially  composed of an extended network made up of the friends of people directly connected to the blog. AKA, the employee’s friends and families are going to get the word out a lot faster than you. Use it!

That’s it folks! Building a blog community doesn’t get any easier than that. Yeah, it’s a little time consuming, but it’s worth it. Once you have a loyal fan base, you’re set. And speaking of loyal fan bases, make sure you join the revolution, and become a Social Media Guerilla!

Related posts:

1. The Importance of Building a Blog Community for Your Business Bet you thought the Guerilla Chefe was back when you...
2. Social Guerilla Marketing Long Term Battle: Building a Community for offline people whose Facebook account is the ultimate experience...

pinpoint your social media marketing to your local audience

It’s with an immense pleasure that I invite all of you guerilleros and guerilleras to join me in a great run-through of Social Media Marketing strategies geared for local businesses.

I’ll be at a BlogTalkRadio show on Thursday afternoon with Marnie Swedberg and you’re in for a real treat.

Here are the details:

When: Thursday 02/25
Time: 4:00pm
Call-in #: (646) 727-2510
Address:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/marniesfriends/2010/02/25/engage-your-local-audience-with-social-mediasm

As you’re very much aware, Social Media has no borders or boundaries, and despite its wonderful benefits, connecting with your neighbors online has always been somewhat of a challenge.

Mentor Marnie

Marnie Swedberg is a community leader, mom, brick & mortar and online entrepreneur that hosts a popular radio show on BlogTalkRadio. She’s the utmost definition of a successful Guerillera.

However, even a guerillera such as Marnie has her issues dealing with a local audience – she owns a restaurant and wants to reach her community via Social Media.

Based on that, here’s what you’ll be learning at the interview:

• How To Set Realistic Goals
• What Exactly Can You Blog About To Motivate Community Engagement
• The Difference Between Social Networking & Social Media Marketing (And why most business owners get it all wrong)
• The Most Suitable Platforms For Local Businesses (Hint: You’re probably already on it!)
• How To Integrate Blog, Facebook, Twitter To Minimize Your Efforts And Maximize Your Exposure
• A Tool That Lists Every Known Twitter account In Your Area
• And The Best (And Free) Way To Track Your Results

If I’m missing anything, let me know. Post a comment here with your question or shoot me a reply over @leosaraceni.

See you there!

Related posts:

1. Local Social Guerilla – Results From The Beach! Guerilleros, the battle has been taking the best of me...

Local Social Guerilla On The Beach - Is That a Drink?

Guerilleros, the battle has been taking the best of me – not because I’m losing, but because I’m fighting too many

But I’ve got some interesting stats to show, and if you’re trying to conquer ground in your local market, light up your best cigar and join me for the kill.

I’m going to briefly analyze the highlights of two completely different companies that we have DOMINATED their local market (the same market, by the way) through smart, interactive, social media guerilla.

First, the market: we’re talking of a highly-scattered, hugely diverse population of about 20k residents in the Outer Banks of North Carolina (Northeastern NC). If you’ve been to any beach towns outside of NJ, you know the deal: middle-class locals, broke surfers, and the rich retired make for a tough crowd to target.

But…. what brings people together better than TV these days?

If you said accidents on the highway, you’re probably right too, but I’m talking about Facebook!

So let’s get to the nitty gritty:

The Outer Banks Gym

Community Interaction Fuels Viral Exposure

Their campaign actually started with PPC, and that brought the good-ol’ ppc lead: mickey mouses, john does, jane eres.. Probably because the gym was already established on the beach, the “hit-em-over-the-head” PPC approach did not work very well. The market had been introduced to the product and made up their mind about. (It did work very well for Turists, but let’s save that for later)

When PPC started to get annoying & expensive, I felt it was my duty as social guerillero to set them up with a blog – and since I was there quite often, I took pictures and footage of what was going on in the gym from time to time.

Do you see any work of genious here? Me neither.

What do you, smart guerillero, think happened? Well, a series of things:

Internally, the gym members were all excited to have a place where they could see each other (anybody said online community yet?), and they were even more excited to see our posts going to Facebook – where their friends and family could see how much weight they lost, blah blah..

Externally is where the fun began – It was great having the gym’s profile on Facebook feeding video and news all over the place, but it wasnt until one of their students, completely impartial to their marketing efforts, started posting his own videos of the training, the races, etc… that things really kicked off.

See what happened here? A happy member, posting about his good time at the gym, on his own Facebook profile, started a massive viral reaction!

Suddenly, a great part of their own community also started posting their stuff – and the mess was made.

Now, we’ve got people asking on Facebook about the gym’s rates and how they can sign up. And people in other cities asking about our programs, to see if they can find something similar in their places. It’s creating more buzz than PPC ever did. And all it’s taken is a bit of time to take pictures and videos! Check out the gym’s youtube channel:

Now, for the second case:

The Outer Banks Wedding Catering Service

Videos Are Incredibly Powerful For Marketing - Surprise Your Customers!

Again, we also started with PPC – which brought some results, but infimal, and highly volatile – and since they didnt have an actual sales staff to work on those leads, it was up to me to make sure the leads were extra hot so they could close them easy.

This company also owns one of the best restaurants on the beach, and they already had a decent group page on Facebook before my guerilla services were summoned.

The problem here was that all of their prospects came through word-of-mouth (very effective on this tiny market), so they had ZERO marketing material or experience. Again, there I was with the social guerillero’s killer tool: my camera.

We started shooting their really awesome caterings – this one wedding in corolla was a big hit, and most recently, the owner guided us through the entire footage of this wedding in nags head.

Again, nothing even close to being work of genious, but check this out: footages like this one are still a hot novelty in the industry (specially here in the beach), and we sent the entire restaurant community to go check it out.

They loved it: the company got amazing feedback, and the community received a new influx of members at a very impressive rate. But that wasnt all.

The videos were breaking the seal on that market, but the wedding industry here, specially in the summer, has been dominated by large hotels and event planners. This catering company did not want to compete against a Hilton or a Ramada, but they wanted their piece of that pie.

And where can you compete as equals, without a budget? Exactly – ONLINE!

When we started their Party Catering Blog, the idea was to put all of their knowledge and experience out there, offer great advice to brides and dominate the market through SEO.

At this point, webmaster tools tells me that NONE of the blog’s pages were indexed yet – but thanks to the Facebook exposure, a ton of local websites (realtors, convention centers, towns) have already published our posts on their blogs and our videos are all over the net with “yum” comments.

Can you say Screw Google? Frank Kern would love that!

So there you have it – two small companies, beating old time market leaders because of smart social media guerilla marketing.

I will post more details of our campaigns here as often as I can. If you’re really interested, leave a comment with your question and I’ll answer it really fast. (promise)

If you’re not excited by going into battle alone, I’m available for mercenary work – my guerilla skills are yours, for the right price. That include video editing and distribution, social accounts management, blog set ups, etc…

LEAVE A COMMENT!

PS. Check out the new site for the best Outer Banks wedding photographers. New Island Photography.  The site is just getting on its feet but already has some great content.  If you have any questions about anything on their site, feel free to give us a shout!

Related posts:

1. Social Guerilla Marketing Long Term Battle: Building a Community for offline people whose Facebook account is the ultimate experience...

If your social media marketing is a silo, you're doomed to implode.

When I read this post over at Label:Indescript about social media silos, I immediately connected the subject to at least 4 business owners I’ve been in contact with.

Justin Boone, the author (and a darn good guerillero), talks about how companies start their social media strategies with a department (read blogger guy) that becomes completely alienated from the rest of the staff and from other departments.

I’d say that’s a better start than having NO SOCIAL MEDIA WHATSOEVER, but there are points to be taken from this when it comes to a powerful social guerilla.

The majority of businesses that decide to implement a blog or create dedicated social network accounts do so with only one objective: create more revenue.

Now that my guerilla is expanding into the fascinating world of “real” business (read offline companies), I’ve found that all these companies really know about social media marketing is that it’s “cheap” and can go “viral”.

Why They End Up With A Social Media Silo

The real benefits of creating an active community start when there’s a commitment throughout the entire company to share, engage, and participate in a public dialog.  A good guerilla is never won by one lonely guerillero, but by a tactiful team.

And I’ve experienced lots of lost battles when:

• Companies fail to communicate with the social media deparment

The poor “blogger guy” is left hunting for material to post, and is left out with the task of tracking customer feedback and analysing google and twitter alerts.

Or, what is worse:

• All of the social media material comes from the marketing department (the billboard approach)

That happens more often than necessary, but it seems to be that corporate mentality impregnated on offline people; old ads, product releases, listing of properties… The entire community is now a giant billboard!

Stimulate The Social Spirit

Turn projects in development over to the SM department, let them post updates. Collect feedback, and apply their comments into the design.

Integrate multiple areas of your company by asking them to report daily activities to the SM team. Motivate the staff to post their comments on the company blog and to interact with each other within the corporate Facebook page.

And one more thing:

QUIT THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT CRAP!

There are tons of ways to measure social media buzz, to ignite content syndication, and those are valid strategies to evaluate strategies. Hiring a web analytics expert is also a good idea.

But enough with the constant cry about time and effort wasted: if these companies havent noticed yet, online content doesnt “die”, and even though it may not be immediate, a solid online participation will pay huge dividends as online usage wont stop growing anytime soon.

No related posts.

It’s a matter of time until our Guerilla transforms telephones into antiques.

But for offline people whose Facebook account is the ultimate experience with social media, the idea of building a community online may be a bit too much to handle.

Recently, my offline Guerilla introduced me to an offline professional to whom the phone was a fundamental tool. He had learned of my services and invited me to talk about using the internet to generate leads so he could – guess – CALL THEM.

Of course, he’s built success around this strategy and now wants to join the online world (even if it is with a offline mentality), but as our conversation goes from attraction marketing to pay-per-click to blogs, he starts to grasp the softer, more maleable side of online marketing.

I introduced him to the idea of using his knowledge and expertise to attract people to him – the Social Media Guerilla strategy, right?

Okay, maybe I didn’t introduce that to him, but I showed him infinite ways he could make his knowledge available to others and how, given the right tools, it could not only go VIRAL, but receive feedback from thousands of people that he’d NEVER be able to reach over the phone.

As I went on about content syndication, and creating a real social network, he started to realize how his social guerilla efforts would eventually lead to him becoming a knowledge provider, and people seeking him for advice.

For a second there, I think I saw him look at the phone with a sad look

We settled on creating a blog, with the right tools to manage and keep a community active – autoresponder, feedburner, and active social networking profiles.

Now, he’s excited to take some time away from the phone to start producing high-quality content, and has already given me enough data to produce his first eBook.

We Could Plan For Social Media Marketing Domination, But…

He needed to understand that despite the amazing immediate benefits of taking an active role in social marketing (in his case, we’re going to blow his customers away by giving them all this content for free), building a community is a long term project.

Connie Bensen, author of the community strategist blog, writes about building a web 2.0 community – a community 2.0:

Community is a new channel for business. It offers new strategies for customer acquisition, customer satisfaction, retention, product development & the list goes on… but it takes a human touch!

Of course, as he churns out articles, reviews, and lots of data, his online market share expands. But in the long run, he’ll be solidifying his presence online and feeding a monstrous business engine, made of his own community.

I can’t wait until more offline people wake up and join the Guerilla!

Related posts:

1. Okay, Social Media & Guerilla Marketing? Yeah, Here’s How! First of all, a quick explanation on Guerilla Marketing, from...