Occasionally I take a break from producing marine management systems and marina software to talk about what we’ve learned over the past couple of years about social media, blogging, SEO and measuring the effectiveness of various web campaigns and initiatives. In this presentation I begin with the philosophy that got me thinking differently about marketing and social media from great thinkers like Seth Godin and Josh Bernoff. I then talk about the strategies and tactics we’ve adopted to become #1 on Google in our particular search category.

I gave an updated version of my talk “Leveraging Social Media to Build Lasting Customer Relationships” at the Marine Industries Association of South Florida in April and at a workshop hosted by the Florida Yacht Brokers Association in August. Each time I give this presentation I try to bring some new and relevant information to the table, as Social Media and the Web is changing so fast.

If you have already seen the presentation either online or in person, here are the highlights on what’s new:

1. The best book I’ve ever read about why Social Media has become such a driving force today, what the demographic indicators are and why YOU should care, is Groundswell by Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li. I listened to it on Audible.com and loved it. I am in the process of reading the latest book co-authored by Josh Bernoff: Empowered

2. I introduce the concept from Forrester Research called Social Technographic Profile, a tool that allows you to profile the online activities of your target market. It’s important to understand the five different types of online users: Creators, Critics, Collectors, Joiners and Spectators.

3. Want your videos to rank high on Google? Put keywords for your audience in the title. Here is an article about “Long-Tail” keywords in video titles.

4. If your site is new or you are not getting good “organic” search results you will need to pay for positioning on sites like Google using Adwords. There is a new crowdsourcing site out called Trada. They can cost effectively help you manage your Google Adwords, Bing or Yahoo advertising campaigns, a task that can be daunting, by leveraging virtual assistants and other web professional that “bid” on your job. Use the keyword: TWIST to get an extra advertising discount.

5. Outsource as much of the busy work as you can. I personally do NOT outsource writing my blog, but many people do so very effectively. One of the things I do outsource is graphic design, website development and most recently video production.

Remember: When faced with a task see if it can be eliminated, automated or delegated before you do it personally.

I have broken the video presentation up into four sections:
Part 1 – Social Media Concepts and Strategies
Part 2 – Our Social Media Objectives and Results
Part 3 – A Closer Look at Facebook
Part 4 – Questions and Answers