Wakefly’s Social Media Blueprint
I spent the last couple of days putting together a Social Media Blueprint for Wakefly Inc. The Blueprint includes tips on leveraging Social Media to create awareness for your brand Online. I am pasting a copy of the Blueprint below:
- STEP 1 – Socialize! Social media is all about being Social. If you want to use Social Media to direct traffic to your site, you have to be extremely social and active in the Social Media sphere. The more you contribute to communities, answer questions, network etc. the better it is for your brand. The key is to provide great content (or links to it), talk to your followers about their interests and lead conversations. Be human that helps. Initially it’s more about giving than taking back. Once you have established good reputation, traffic would increase. Start by following leading conversations on the internet. All social media platforms have weekly and daily trends. Participate in these trends to take your brand forward.
- STEP 2 – Get started with a Facebook Account (www.facebook.com). Facebook is one of the most popular Social media networks out there. And now it specifically caters to businesses too. There are many ways that businesses can benefit from the various features of Facebook. One of the key ways is by creating a Facebook Fan page. A fan page is easy to set up and lets you group together your customers/colleagues/friends etc. under a common page. You can invite your friends, colleagues and customers to join this page. You should also add a link to your fan page on your site. You can use this page to facilitate discussions, introduce new products, give updates on your brand, talk about corporate life etc. The fan page is an attempt to give your company a face in the Social media sphere. You can also create Facebook Groups. Facebook fan pages are usually more popular than a Facebook Group. You can also customize the Facebook fan page URL (Uniform resource locator) and turn it into the name of your site. For e.g. www.facebook.com/wakefly
- STEP 3 – Get started on Linkedin (www.linkedin.com). Where Facebook is more diverse Linkedin focuses on businesses in particular and is more professional. Over the past couple of years Linkedin has gained tremendous popularity and is currently one of the largest professional networks out there. With Linkedin you can create a professional profile for yourself and add fellow colleagues, contacts, customers etc. You can also create a company page to advertise and link your company to the existing network. These two features help you gain prominence on Linkedin. A great way to show your expertise on Linkedin is by creating Linkedin groups on a specific industry topic that may interest other industry professionals. The group should not be your company’s name but should cater to common interests. Check out Wakefly’s Group: Online Marketing for Biotech http://bit.ly/9TZtil . A Group is a great way of facilitating discussion, posting news and job listings and answering industry specific questions. You can also show your expertise by Answering questions on Linkedin’s Answers forum. The more your network grows the better it is for your corporation and brand.
- STEP 4 – Get started on Twitter (www.twitter.com). Twitter is very different from both Facebook and Linkedin. It allows users to get their message across in 140 characters. The reason that Twitter is important is because it’s increasingly becoming popular with businesses and a majority of your customers are on twitter. You can use twitter to facilitate conversations, share links, comment on your followers questions and direct your followers to the latest news. Twitter helps build your traffic. Twitter is all about having open source conversations with anyone and everyone. It breaks down the boundaries of whom you can reach and target. You can pretty much follow anyone you like and share information with people globally. Like Facebook and Linkedin twitter lets you put up a bio and a link to your website. These links help people find your website.
- STEP 5 – Create a Blog. The best thing to do is to create a blog as a subdomain to your site. The blog should be www.yourcompany.com/blog or www.blog.yourcompanyname.com for e.g. http://blog.wakefly.com/ . If you don’t have resources in-house to create a blog, you can seek expert help or use a free blogging site to create a blog. Free sites include www.wordpress.com, www.blogspot.com, www.blogger.com etc. Having a blog is important as Social Media is very content driven. A blog can help you create fresh content daily or weekly. And it also allows you to connect with users who might require expert advice on a specific topic in your industry. Having a blog is the best way of offering advice, showing your expertise and forming connections within the industry. It allows users to see how you can market yourself successfully and also presents a professional image in the online world. A blog is about having on-going conversations with people. Once you have a blog, you can share its content on other Social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin. A Blog also helps you gain more visibility in the Search Engines and allows you to engage in professional dialogue with people online.
- STEP 6 – Create a StumbleUpon Account (www.stumbleupon.com). StumbleUpon is a site for bloggers. It collects the various blogs out there and groups them together in a single pool. It is also one of the most powerful and popular Social networks out there. You can specify the categories of your blog and add a link to it on StumbleUpon. Once you have set that, StumbleUpon will automatically make it available to searchers looking for specific categories. Remember to keep your blog content fresh and to visit StumbleUpon atleast once a week. Once in StumbleUpon users can like/dislike a blog, comment on it, write reviews and share it on Facebook and Twitter.
- STEP 7 – Create a Digg Account (www.digg.com). Digg is a news site, its functionality is very similar to StumbleUpon but it is far more popular. Digg lets users post fresh content to its site and the content can be categorized in the various categorizes provided by Digg. Users on Digg can share this content with each other. If your content is very well written and Digg editors feel it’s beneficial to their audience it will appear on the top of the search page on Digg. The whole purpose of Digg is to share news. Remember to Digg other people’s news and constantly comment on articles that you like. The more active you are the better chances of visibility your content has.
- STEP 8 – Create a Feedburner Account (http://feedburner.google.com). Google Feedburner is one of the easiest ways of sharing your blog content with people. Where other RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed burners can be expensive to install, this one is free and comes with analytics compatibility (it offers analytics for your blog within Feedburner, not for your entire site). RSS is a way of letting your customers, readers or people browsing the internet connect to your blog and get your blog content through their email. Every time you post a new entry your readers will receive an email. This is the simplest and easiest way of sharing content. All you need is a Google (Gmail) account and a link to your Blog. Google Feedburner will link the blog to feedburner and anyone wishing to subscribe to it via email can do so. Google will prompt users to enter their email addresses and sign up to get your blog in their email. You should also put up a Feedburner logo on your blog, allowing users to share your content. The more your content is shared the greater popularity you get.
- STEP 9 – Create a Google ‘Buzz’ Account (http://www.google.com/buzz). Google Buzz is the latest addition to the Social media family. It is fairly new as it was launched this month (Feburary 2010) but has gained immense popularity in a short span of time. Google Buzz combines your facebook, twitter, youtube, picassa, blog etc. accounts into one place and lets you manage all your social media work from one domain. It is connected to a Gmail account, so it will be best practice to create a Gmail account (www.gmail.com) for your company. It works like Twitter, where in short snippets you can get your message across. When using Google Buzz you can also search for users talking about a common interest/theme and follow them to increase your visibility. Google Buzz prompts discussions and allows better compatibility of various Social networks.
- STEP 10 – Comment on Other Blogs. Remember Social networking is all about being social. The more active you are the better for your brand. Once you are on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Linkedin, StumbleUpon and Buzz you will come across various blogs, links, news etc. Remember to comment on articles of your interest. The best thing to do is to only comment on articles where you can add value or give an expert opinion. Doing so shows that you are an authority in a given field. Do not add your link to the comments, as most commenting boxes allow you to add the link in an individual field before publishing the comment and once your comment is visible on the blog/site users will be able to see your company’s URL too.
- STEP 11 – Be a pro Vlogger (Video Blogger). Video blogging is as important as blogging. As we emphasized earlier, Social media is all about being Social. The best way to be Social is to have a face online, a presence, and a means through which people can relate to you. Put up a video, where you are talking about a particular topic in your industry. Doing this adds further value to your conversations. It helps people see how deeply engaged you are in a particular field and it gives them greater ability to relate to you. Plus, vlogs can be shared easily. It is a great way of advertising your business and promoting your area of expertise. Make sure to keep your videos short and to the point. It is good to make them lively, humorous and low key, rather than long and boring. A vlog should ideally be between 20 seconds to 2 minutes. People have short attention spans on the internet, so keep it brief and interesting. You can create a Video on almost any digital camera and upload it using sites like Youtube (www.youtube.com) and Vimeo (www.vimeo.com). Youtube also allows you to create your very own channel. You can have a channel for your business and invite customers to subscribe to it.
Where the world seems to be rejoicing at the launch of the 
FCC – Federal Communications Commission recently revealed plans of using broadband to ‘help with America’s national energy independence and energy efficiency goals.’ In an address to the public at the 
In his address he talked about making real-time energy information accessible to consumers and consumer-authorized third parties. Google.org states that, “This kind of information could have a huge financial and environmental impact. Studies show that access to real-time usage data results in energy savings of up to 15%.” Sinai also discussed ways in which this information when combined with other measures could help in the creation of new products and services that may enable consumers to save and manage energy.
He stated in his address that, “I think we can all agree real-time information and communication is the way people and systems work today. You can check your frequent flyer miles, get real-time traffic alerts, or check your bank balances, all from your iPhone…Real-time feedback is what lets people make better energy decisions. Perhaps more importantly, real-time feedback in standard digital formats will allow companies to innovate new products and services that will help customers “set it and forget it,” saving energy and money on electric bills with a minimum of fuss.”
This is the last part (part 3) of the interview series with 
We agree with Monika that the web is transforming. As new devices, gadgets and other technological innovations come into play the world of the web will keep on changing. We would like to thank Monika for taking out the time to answer our questions and for introducing us to Mass GTUG. Monika is also the owner and founder of Massachusetts based tech company 
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Speculations have started whether or not Bob Dylan is going to make an appearance at the event. Engadget has revealed that they are playing the electric version of ‘Baby Let Me Follow You Down’. Twit Pic lost their video for a few minutes but the live podcast is still on. Apparently, the WiFi at the Apple store has also gone down.
Design Melodrama 