1. BRAND - Decide on a brand and use it consistently on the web and in your social media spaces so it’s easy for you and your target audience to remember.
2. SOCIAL MEDIA EMAIL ADDRESS – so when you go on holidays manning the social media storefront can be delegated, and so you can filter it into a special email folder, so you can look only once per day. Perhaps a gmail account as you’ll need one to
3. BLOGS / RSS NEWS FEEDS — so social media spaces can automatically syndicate it.
4. SCHEDULE TIME IN YOUR SCHEDULE – get it done
5. PROFILE MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE – to watch your pages, those you manage and your competitors
6. COMMUNICATIONS PLAN — what do your customers want? what will they share?
7. RESOURCES – what do you have now, what is available for free on the net
8. ALLIANCES – who do you know, win/wins?
9. EDUCATE YOURSELF – fast track your success and avoid fatal errors.
10. GOOGLE ALERTS & ANALYTICS — on your website so you can identify what works and repeat it, as well as what does not, so you can eliminate it and focus on true success

We have a ton of information, photos and memories scattered around the web that we would be loathe to lose, and while it’s unlikely that the entire Internet is going to come crashing down in the next week or so, it still might be wise to put some of that stuff in an iron box for safe keeping.

Congrats to Christina Warren on her awesome post… HOW TO: Back Up Your Social Media Presence Before the Ball Drops.

One of the categories SMBs ask for the most help with is social media. You need to quickly and easily keep an eye on what people are saying about you; more importantly, you need to participate in the social media conversation yourself, without drowning hours upon endless hours bouncing around various websites.

There are three great tools we’d recommend for pushing out updates to a variety of sites at once. All three have free, web-based services, and they’re great for working with teams, too. Depending on your specific needs and tastes, you could try out Hootsuite, Seesmic and TweetDeck.

If you want to see what people are saying about your company, your product, your location or your vertical in real time, try searching for relevant terms on Collecta or SocialMention.

You also have options for network-specific monitoring tools. To see how your tweets are performing, tryCrowdBooster. And remember, Twitter’s official analytics product is coming soon, too. For Facebook, use that social network’s Insights dashboard for your business’s Facebook Page.

via 23 Free, Web-Based Tools SMBs Are Asking for Now.

Another great blog post by Chennai Social Media…

There are several different ways that you can keep your fan page optimized for search engines to find it. Fan pages are also a great way to drive direct traffic right to your website.

via Basic Facebook Fan Page Optimization For High Ranking Google SEO

Today is last day to register!

You’ll find out what social media is, who’s using it, and how to automate your communication to social media spaces such as like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr. You’ll learn:

• nine essential steps to social media success
• how to manage your social media profile efficiently
• pitfals to avoid
• tricks to make it as easy as sending an email

Seating is limited, so reserve your seat today and details you require to sit in on this webinar e.g. phone number to call and link to see presentation on your computer will be emailed to you…

As social media becomes more of a mainstream fixture, there’s not surprisingly growing discussion about success and how it can be measured.

via How Do You Define Social Media Success?.

Social media is here to stay and you know it, but how do you persuade those people in your organization that ‘don’t want to go there’? I usually start with one of the slides from my WHY SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENTATION…

then follow up with a few arm twisters e.g.

• Facebook Statistics
• LinkedIn Statistics
• Other Social Media Statistics

for the analytic type, or if the crowd can handle the ‘f’ word, I play the following presentation which has great one-liners you could play on…

Would you like help persuading the Social Media Naysayers in your life? Ask me about my WHY SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENTATION !

Let me teach you what social media is, who’s using it, and the nine essential steps to social media success. I’ll show you how to grow your business in 1/2 hour or less per day, my 9-step process, and the tricks you need to make social media as easy as sending an email.