Incentive Primer: Social Networking for Newbies
April 07, 2008
By Carolyn Burns Bass
This article was assigned without ever picking up a phone. Incentive magazine Editor-in-Chief Jennifer Juergens sent me a message through Facebook asking if I'd like to write a piece about social media and networking.
Let me back up a bit. When my teenage kids found out I'd set up a MySpace page, they thought I was having a mid-life crisis and was out to relive my lost youth. Within a month, I had as many people in my friends list as my 18-year-old son. Once I got MySpace mastered, I joined Facebook.
Facebook and MySpace aren't just for teens and college students anymore. Major corporations have established MySpace pages and have created user groups that feature membership contests and interactive blogs. Facebook, originally created for college students to meet and greet each other, is close on the heels of MySpace, with corporations and major brands creating company profiles and user/fan groups by the hundreds.
Social media and Web 2.0 are terms used to refer to Web forums, online networking sites, wikis, blogs and podcasts. The sites are hip, the graphics are bright, the interactivity factors are fun and challenging. Like many trends, is it really a surprise it first took hold with youths?
As an entrepreneur and writer, I saw the potential for social media and plugged myself in, despite the age-discrimination from my teenagers. MySpace and Facebook are free, as are the main blog-hosting sites. My only cost in spreading my name and company profile around the global village is my time.
One of the initial challenges early adopters found with the Web was driving people to their Web sites. After some companies hired expensive designers to make splashy pages, filled them with loads of text and blinking graphics, they expected people to flock to their sites. It didn't happen. Just because you build it doesn't mean people will come. The same is true with any social media platform if you don't know how to use it.
Social media is reciprocal. It's collaborative. It's an interactive conversation between you—an expert in your field—and your readers. You develop a readership first by letting your colleagues and friends know of your new media endeavor. Ask them to forward your blog or posts to others. In the course of building your blog or profile page, invite people into your circle, whether they are MySpace or Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, or RSS-feed subscribers. While you're working on building your social network, be sure to visit and read and comment on the posts of colleagues within your network.
Promote Your Business
Blogs and most social media platforms are indexed online, which means that a search engine can raise your blog comments. The more posts you have published with your name and URL, the higher your search ranking will be.
Before I created my blog in 2005, when I googled my professional name, it appeared on the third or fourth page. After about a month of publishing my blog, plus reading and commenting on other blogs, I discovered my name was bumped to the number-one position and now fills each spot for the next six pages and beyond.
Ben Martin, director of communications & new media for the Virginia Association of Realtors, writes a blog for association executives. In his December 22, 2007 post, "The Year Social Media Changed My Life," Martin provides a month-by-month breakdown of the stellar trajectory his career has taken since he took a determined path in social networking.
"After three years of blogging, it really paid off for my bottom line this year. Between the new job and some sideline projects, I've had a very good financial year. But it's not all about money. I have raised my profile in the association profession dramatically, and even hold down the number-one Google result for Ben Martin, he wrote."
He went on to describe how in the last year he has been asked to consult on side projects, give keynote presentations, write and present papers, has been interviewed and was featured on the cover of the top journal for association professionals. He calls himself an evangelist for such platforms as Facebook and Twitter.
Simone Champagnie, managing director of The SNC Group, a destination manage- ment consultancy, began a blog in 2005 (www.sncdestinations.wordpress.com). An active Facebook user, she began several networking groups on Facebook, and is the co-administrator of a group for Society of Incentive & Travel Executives (SITE) members.
"We launched our blog in May2005 after I read a BusinessWeek cover story on the business of blogging. I had no idea what I was doing or what I was in for. The launch was truly unplanned, as neither the company's business plan nor marketing plan had any mention of a blog. Little did I know that our blog would become instrumental to our sales and marketing strategy, or that it would eventually be featured in Successful Meetings alongside that of Starwood and Marriott in March 2007," says Champagnie.
Champagnie recently created a Facebook group to motivate a regional team for the SITE Run the World, a fitness challenge to members given at the recent International Conference in Monterey, Calif. She is anxious to see how team members accept the fitness challenge as well as how they interact within the group.
Dr. Lalia Rach, associate dean and HVS international chair at the Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism at New York University, recently spoke at the Meeting Professionals International Southern California Chapter (MPISCC) monthly meeting. During her presentation, "The State of the Industry," Dr. Rach said that social media is the future of the Internet. She gave a brief review of several popular social media sites and predicted more to come.
"Word of mouth rules," Dr. Rach said. "Social media is virtual WOM."
Another term social media pundits use for virtual word of mouth is viral marketing. In the past, companies spent millions of dollars to create pre-launch buzz in print media and on television for a new product or service. Now companies partner with MySpace, create user groups in Facebook and post blogs that are picked up in RSS feeds and delivered to e-mail addresses all over the world.
Choose Your Platform
The plethora of social media platforms available can be confusing. To blog or to podcast? To be LinkedIn or Facebooked? What's a newbie to do?
"My advice for a newbie would be to do the research," says Champagnie. "Not all vehicles for social networking are the same, and the decision to use one over another, or even a combination, will depend greatly on what his/her objectives are. In our case we sought to share more about our partners, destinations, the industry, etc., and therefore our blog and brief stint on MySpace were the ideal forums. LinkedIn, on the other hand, is more about professional relationships and connecting beyond your own network."
Following the MPISCC meeting I spoke with Lisa Meller of Meeting Perspectives, in Irvine, Calif., about the enormous potential that exists in social media for motivating teams, empowering employees or inspiring them toward incentive program goals. I showed her my Facebook profile and gave her a quick tour of my profile, my groups and my friends list.
Research begins here. If you're interested in linking in or blogging out, devote some time to visiting the sites mentioned and/or listed above left, poking around some of their member pages, and then determine which platform is for you and your business.
Carolyn Burns Bass is principal of Word*Art Solutions (www .wordartsolutions.com), a business communications consultancy specializing in travel marketing, and is the chapter administrator for SITE-SoCal (www.site-socal.com). She publishes a blog called Ovations (www.ovations.blogspot.com) and has more friends than her son on MySpace. E-mail her at carolyn@wordartsolutions.com.
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