The goal is really to be active and rep your company at the same time. Here’s how:
- Check and respond to your alerts. You should have alerts set up via Google Alerts and Social Mention or similar. Make sure to take a good look at these and respond to people talking about your company or industry. Even responding to negative chatter can turn into great opportunities if you do it carefully.
- Tweet it up. Twitter is a great place to network. Don’t just push out company info, be helpful. Follow people who also have similar personal interests and make it a rule to interact with someone each time you check your feeds. You can also create search feeds in third party apps such as Seesmic based on certain relevant keywords for industry or company “listening” as well as news gathering or sharing. Most importantly, make sure your profile information includes a link to your website and brief info about your company, with your personal flair.
- Post as a page. Facebook is such a significant platform for businesses. Not only is it great to post content from your business page regularly, but occasionally posting as your business on other business pages opens a whole new world of potential fans. Basically, you can post on other business pages your business “likes.” I would not recommend posting on competitor pages, but rather complimentary industry pages with words of expert enthusiasm on their popular content.
- Be a blogger. You don’t necessarily have to blog your own content every day, but you should comment on other people’s content everyday. Visit your RSS feed daily and catch up on what’s going on in your industry while leaving your own footprint in the comment threads. A simple “great post!” is not going to cut it. In fact, that could make you look a little cheesy. Make sure you’re adding something relevant and useful to the conversation.
- Check in with your groups. On LinkedIn that is. See what the people in your groups are posting and stay in touch with them. If someone posted about getting a new job, congratulate them! If someone is looking for connections in your town, offer to buy them a cup of coffee and welcome them. Mostly, you’ll find people posting articles they wrote or found online so make sure you contribute with your comments here as well. You might have even found a great post to share with your groups as part of your RSS readings.
