Social Media Strategy at Philly Net Tuesday

Philly Net Tuesday meets the first Tuesday of every month, convened by Seth Horwitz, to promote Using the Social Web for Social Change. For February, there was a special event--the Social Media Sampler--that I attended to learn about Seth's work. This format was really fun--similar to a BarCamp feel--holding 18 sessions in 3 rounds of about 20 minutes each. There were too many topics of interest to sample them all--here are my notes.

In Round 1, Gloria Bell discussed "Making Social Media Part of your Regular Workday". Social media is so overwhelming I wanted to know how others deal with it.  Gloria emphasizes that we need to strategize--decide who we're going to listen to, and who we want to reach. Consider your identity as a brand: be clear on who you want to reach and what you want to say to them. Engage your listeners by encouraging them to act or to respond in some way (ask questions, send links, etc.). Listen and engage with thought leaders and your competition. Search Twitter, Facebook, Google+, YouTube, and use Google Alerts/Trackur/Sprout Social/Lithium/Radium 6.

In Round 2, Warren Allen shared his favorite "Desktop Tools to Manage the social web flood". He focused on hootsuite, and encourages us to set up various searches to be sure to catch other people's comments to us as well as to be able to trend the topics that are important to us. Each social media site reaches a different demographic--so you likely want to have a different message for each.

In Round 3, Rob Kall inspired us with "Web Media Strategies to Maximize Your Reach". Rob stresses that social media should direct readers to our primary content (a blog or web site), and recommends we make it easy for readers to share our information with links to tweet, digg, stumble, reddit, facebook, etc. Find out what the important hash tags are in your niche--and use them! Write about the people and organizations with high visibility.