Social Media Essentials: Setting up for success. Conduct social media planning:

• Define your goals • Allocate resources (time and budget) • Create a robust and descriptive profile • Organize your existing content about your company or business • Brainstorm ideas that would generate more positive attention as well as conversations about your

company, product or service Set up your accounts:

• Set up an RSS feed reader (I prefer Google Reader or Netvibes) (What is RSS? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS)

• If you want to check out some additional options, go to Top 10 Free RSS Readers (http://email.about.com/od/rssreaderswin/tp/windows_free.htm)

Get your username on most networks: (http://usernamecheck.com) I recommend when a new social network launches, companies go ahead and register their company username – even if they have no plans to actively use it. There are tons of companies that have had their brand hijacked or fall prey to cybersquatting. Use Firefox Browser: (http://www.mozilla.com — I recommend this because you can customize it to fit YOU!)

• Search for and Install these Add-ons (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/) a. Alexa Sparky b. Facebook Toolbar c. Delicious d. SearchStatus (displays Google and Alexa info) e. Web developer toolbar (if you want to learn more about how Web sites are constructed) f. Firebug (great to use with the Web developer toolbar)

Get your Google on:

• Set up a Gmail account so you can use: o Google docs (collaborate on documents – and store them for free) o Google Alerts (see what your competitors and clients are up to online) o Google Analytics Web site traffic monitoring (track your visitors, time on site, conversions and

more)

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Other measurement sites to explore and bookmark: • Alexa.com (the lower your score is the better) • Quantcast.com (download code and add to your Web site)

Create accounts on these sites:

Social Networks • Facebook.com • LinkedIn.com • Plaxo.com • MySpace.com

Aggregators • Friendfeed (aggregate your activities from several social sites) • Ping.fm (distribute info to many sites from one site)

Video Sites • YouTube.com • Viddler.com • Vimeo.com • Blip.tv

Micro Blogs • Twitter.com • Blip.fm (if you like music)

Blog Platforms (choose one) • Wordpress.org (I use this one) • Tumblr.com (very easy to start • Typad.com

Social Bookmarking (create accounts on at least the first 3) • Delicious.com • Stumbleupon.com • Digg.com • Reddit.com • Yahoobuzz.com

Photo Sharing • Flickr.com

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More on the “Big 3” (for now): Facebook

• Create your profile. Make sure to add your company info, your personal bio and things that would attract the kind of people you want to attract.

• Create a page for your company, service or personal brand • Post content from your blog, articles, news releases, related industry articles, photos and videos

from events you attend • Invite your friends, and search for old connections through schools or past employment • Start interacting, join and create groups, fan pages, post articles and leave comments • Create a page for your business, product or service

LinkedIn • Build your profile similar to Facebook. Add all of your work experience, skills and information that

would interest the kind of people you want to connect with. • Invite ALL your contacts. You never know whom you can help or who can help you. • Answer Q&A questions — to establish expertise. • Write recommendations for your contacts (after you have done this it is much easier to ask for one

and to get results) • Join groups and start interacting with connections.

Twitter 1. Choose your handle. If you’re building a personal brand, if your name is available that’s a great

place to begin. 2. If you choose a more fun name — choose something memorable and appropriate to your

industry 3. If you’re tweeting on behalf of a company and can get the company name that is also good.

Make sure to disclose who you are and what you do at the company. 4. Tweetdeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com) to create a search. This is the most popular

Dashboard application. A couple others that I like are Seesmic (http://desktop.seesmic.com), and Nambu (http://nambu.com Mac only)

5. Twitterbar (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4664) to post to twitter from your Firefox browser.

6. Twilert (http://www.twilert.com) to receive email notification of search results much like Google Alerts.

7. Twitterfeed (http://www.twitterfeed.com) is a service where any RSS feed can automatically appear as your own tweets. If you have an active blog — you can use Twitterfeed.com to auto post your blog posts

8. Tweetie or TwitterFon for iPhone users or Twitterberry for Blackberry users 9. Twitpic (http://www.twitpic.com) post photos to twitter from mobile phones and online 10. Hootsuite (http://www.hootsuite.com) use to tweet from multiple twitter accounts 11. Brightkite (http://www.brightkite.com) if you need to enable several people to tweet and to

schedule your tweets, and want to include your location

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Start a blog What is a Blog? A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. They can also be very narrow in subject matter that will only appeal to a small niche. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the Web site. Why should you Blog? Blogs can connect you with people who matter. Blogs give you a chance to connect with you clients, vendors and prospects in an informal and personal way. Share your individual passions, videos, photos and experiences. Use a blog to engage with your customers or to find new ones. The following resources will help you as you build your blog presence: Write Blog search engines

• http://technorati.com • http://www.feedster.com • http://blogsearch.google.com

Promote your RSS feeds • http://feedblitz.com • http://feedburner.google.com

Sites/Blogs I recommend: • http://sethgodin.com/sg/ • http://www.copyblogger.com/ • http://www.chrisbrogan.com • http://blog.guykawasaki.com/ • http://www.bloggingpro.com/ • http://mashable.com/ • http://www.techcrunch.com/ • http://www.sitepronews.com/ • http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/ • http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

If you leave today and have additional questions, please feel free to contact me at: Theresa Dreike Senior account manager Remarx Media Inc. 765 Baker St., Studio A, Costa Mesa, CA 92626 office: + 1 714-706-0433, ext. 102 BB: +1 714-450-0897 theresa@remarxmedia.com www.twitter.com/prdreamer