The 411 on using social media in the 757 for shameless self promotion

Here I am geeking out over a Mac with @captkevman at my very first Hampton Roads tweetup about two years ago.

While social media enables us to communicate with people all across the globe, it also strengthens communication within local communities. Here in Hampton Roads, Va., we are fortunate to have a vibrant online business community. As I prepare for the “Shameless Self Promotion” panel I’ll be participating on Thursday night for the Hampton Roads chapter of AIGA, I thought I’d share these tips for getting the most out of using social media in Hampton Roads.

• Start out by finding your favorite Hampton Roads media and places to hang out on Facebook and Twitter. Once you are friending/following your favorite local hotspots, connect with interesting people who also are friending/following them. That will get you connected with a good base of locals who you have something in common with.
• On Twitter, use the #hrva hashtag for anything related to Hampton Roads, Va. If you tweet about something that would be interesting to other locals (weather, traffic, local happenings), use the hashtag in your tweet. If you are looking for other locals online, search the #hrva hastag to see who else is using it and what they are talking about. You can also search other keywords on Twitter, such as “Norfolk” or “Virginia Beach” to find interesting locals to follow.
• Take advantage of Twitter lists. I admit, I’m not good at organization, and I rarely organize my own lists on Twitter and Facebook. (I want to, but I just never feel like cleaning house.) But, I do take advantage of other people’s lists. For example, @gypsealeah has this fantastic list of "Hampton Roads Friends" on Twitter.  You'll find other lists like this as you spend more time checking out the local Twitter scene.
• Time to get out from behind the computer and meet people face-to-face! It's been my experience that everyone is always as friendly and interesting in person as they are online.  There often are "tweetups" in the 757. I attended these regularly (before moving to Kill Devil Hills, N.C.) and met a lot of people I now consider friends in real life. The 757 Tweetups always offer a good, friendly crowd of new people to meet. If you aren’t obsessed with Twitter, use Meetup.com to find another Meetup group in the area. For example, I once belonged to a single girls Meetup group, and we would meet for cocktails and other fun activites like GoKarting.
• Start writing reviews. I personally prefer Yelp for learning about new hot spots. I should mention, I actually worked for Yelp as a Virginia Beach Scout earlier this year. I have a lot of reviews posted on my Yelp profile. Many people have visited my website or contacted me after finding my reviews on Yelp. I even attended a Hampton Roads Yelp Meetup to meet some fellow Yelpers. We had an awesome time at Still in Portsmouth.

Living in Hampton Roads, there is no shortage of ways to meet interesting people online and develop them into genuine relationships. I could mention so many people who I have met this way and stayed in touch with. Here are just a few examples of how my social media friendships started online and evolved offline.

@captkevman – I met Kevin at the very first Hampton Roads tweetup a couple of years ago. He worked as an Apple genius at the time, and we had a lot of Mac and social media geekiness in common. We stayed in touch through Twitter and Tumblr. He has always been my go-to for Apple-related concerns. He started up his own business consulting and fixing Apple computers and devices called Beach Mac (soon to be rebranded Beach Tec). Given my clumsiness with iPhones, I’m a regular customer of Kevin’s. I’ve also refered a number of friends to him.

@parnellK63 – Keith is a wicked smart social media marketer. We were both early adopters of Twitter, so we started following each other when there were very few locals tweeting. I enjoy reading his blog and learning from his posts and tweets. In 2009, he asked me to speak about social media and public relations at New Media Conventions in Virginia Beach. From there, I met so many more locals interested in social media.  Keith is someone I can reach out to when I have a social media question or just want to brainstorm.

@Keshia6 – Lakeshia is a writer for Inside Business Hampton Roads. I started following her on Twitter at the suggestion of my good friend, Amber Karnes. The three of us decided to meet offline for lunch since we all worked in downtown Norfolk. We enjoyed our lunch together, and I’ve been in touch with her ever since via Facebook and Twitter. She always is posting about books she’s reading, which is good because I’m always looking for reading suggestions. A couple of months ago, Lakeshia was looking for a social media PR person to interview for a story about corporate social media policies. Guess who she contacted?

So there you have it, social media for shameless self promotion in action--757 style! If you are getting started after reading this post, be sure to follow me on Twitter and send me a shout. I'll do my best to help you get connected.



10 basics of shameless online self promotion

This Thursday night, I’ll be presenting on a panel about “Shameless Self Promotion” for the Hampton Roads chapter of AIGA. I’ll be talking about using social media for self promotion. Fitting, since I initially met the current president of AIGA, Mara Lubell, because she found my blog and contacted me. When she moved to the area a few years ago, she was looking for professionals to connect with and stumbled across my blog about social media and public relations. She explained in an e-mail via my contact form on the blog that we had a lot in common professionally. We met for dinner to discuss work, and it’s turned into a rewarding professional relationship, as well as an awesome friendship. That’s how it works when you follow these guidelines for online self promotion.

1. Be genuine. Your goal for networking online should always be to create meaningful relationships. Social media is about building relationships through many-to-many communication. So if you are simply trying to talk about yourself and make a sales pitch, you won’t get very far. You should be interested in helping others as much, if not more, than helping yourself. That level of authenticity is rewarded through social media.
2. Have something to share. Think about what you know well and how you can make that information unique to an online audience. No matter the topic, it’s guaranteed that thousands of other people are online posting about the very same topic. It’s not enough to post about what you know, you have to make it personal. For example, when I first started blogging about social media and public relations, I took the approach of blogging about the research I was doing for my master’s degree. As I researched and learned more about online communications, I shared my findings with others. The key to creating unique content is to incorporate your personal experiences.
3. Start blogging and posting. I realize not everyone is a writer. But it’s true, the best way to be found online (via search engines) is to blog lots of written content. If you can find something you are passionate about and write about it easily, get motivated and start cranking out the posts. The more content you write, the more people will find you. At the same time, don’t force a blog. If you loathe writing and just don’t feel like you can write compelling blog posts, do not start a blog. if you are not interested, no one else will be either. You can always post content in other formats: tweets, photos, video, animation, audio, streaming.  
4. Target your messages. Limit all of your online posts to 2-3 topics you really want to specialize in and avoid posting about content that doesn’t fit the bill. You may find other topics interesting, but if your audience is reading your blog and twitter posts for graphic design tips and you get off tangent by frequently posting about family, tv or cooking, it will seem distracting. For example, on Twitter, I try to keep my tweets focused on the topics covered in my two blogs (one blog is about social media PR and the other is about social good). Therefore, I try to tweet proportionately: 45 percent of my tweets about social media PR, 45 percent social good and only 10 percent random (new music, movies, experiences). It’s okay to have some random posts (that’s what gives you personality online). Just don’t go overboard and stay focused on your main messages.
5. Find where your new friends are. Social media goes well beyond blogs, Facebook and Twitter. Think about who you want to reach and where you might find them. Are there online communities specifically for that group? Search online for blogs, online communities and discussion forums related to your topics of interest. Then, participate in the communities and start learning why your target audience is online. This will help you figure out where your new friends might be hanging out online as well as what you could post that they would find interesting. For example, I find that Planet Green offers a great online community for topics related to my social good blog.
6. Make friends and build solid relationships. It’s time to be outgoing, which is a lot easier to do online than in person. First, get to know your new friends online. Read their blog posts and Twitter feeds and find out what they are interested in. Make friends by offering advice and helpful information, sharing links and starting up conversations by leaving comments and sending them @ replies. Don’t expect to form a relationship with an online stranger overnight. It takes time to build genuine online friendships. Simply stay tuned in to what interesting people are saying online and start from there.
7. Interact. As much as you might want to promote yourself, a genuine relationship is two-way. Learn from your new friends online and start by listening to what they have to say. Then, interact with them rather than talk about yourself. Comment on their posts and send @replies to respond to their tweets and offer helpful links and tips. Chances are if you have something in common, you will enjoy networking with each other.  I recently learned from Scott Stratten’s Blogworld keynote that the majority (about 70 percent) of your tweets should be @replies. Of course, once you are interacting, it's okay to send a promotional tweet for your yourself every once in a while.
8. Help people. You’ve heard the saying that it’s better to give than to receive. It’s true in social media. Giving will come back around. So, share your best ideas, pass job postings on to your followers, and help your online friends spread their messages. Over time, they’ll help you spread your messages, too.
9. Promote others. This goes along with helping people. How do you promote others? Well, look at how I just promoted Scott Stratten in #7 or Mara Lubell in the introduction of this piece. Share links to other people’s interesting content and retweet or repost their content. What goes around does eventually come around and you’ll find they may return the favor.
10. Brand yourself. Make sure your blog and social media sites show up in the search engine results for your name and/or the name of your business. This may not be easy if you have a common name, but it’s important. There are many other “Michelle Rogerson’s” mentioned online, but the majority of results for my name are links to my own content. While you can’t control search engine results, the more content you post, the more you are likely to show up for the keywords that describe you. Be consistent on every social media site and use the same name or keywords to brand yourself. If possible, pick one username and use it across the board for all social media sites. Buy the URL for your name as well. If you don’t have a blog or website, you can always use the URL as a landing page for your online presence. Here is a great landing page example, from a colleague, Holly Hoffman, who I met via Twitter and eventually in person at Blogworld back in October.

Making friends and networking online can be extremely valuable and rewarding. I have received many job opportunities and referrals for prospective clients and been offered wonderful speaking opportunities because of the self promotion I have done using my blogs, Twitter, Tumblr, Yelp, Facebook, LinkedIn and other tools. However, these benefits were not my first intention for becoming involved in social media. My first intention when I started communicating online was helping people by sharing my unique perspective with others and helping myself by learning from and interacting with people with similar interests. Start with that intention, and you’ll reap many rewards, including the benefits of self promotion.



Why your organization needs a social media policy

Reina Communications was featured in this week's Inside Business! If you didn't catch the article, "Social media can get you fired," you can find it online. The article offers several suggestions from Reina Communications for creating employee social media policies. Some snippets from the interview:

"A company cannot control the conversation taking place through social media. It's a good idea to have a social media policy in place so that your employees as well as the company's reputation are protected."

"Never identify yourself or the company you work for in a way that could be construed that you are a spokesperson for the organization, unless you're designated as one."

"Employees who have personal blogs or profiles on social media sites that reflect personal opinions should not identify their employer or discuss their work. An employee should not update their personal Twitter account with a complaint about a new policy at work. That also underscores common sense and judgment."

"It's also helpful to have employees from across various departments represent the company online. It gives the company more online presence and offers transparency by allowing actual employees to be the face of the company, rather than controlling everything through the public relations department."

If you are considering an organizational social media policy, here are some additional tips:

• Find some sample policies from other companies willing to share and use that as a starting point.


• Form a committee to get input from different employees who are active online.


• Have a plan to communicate the social media policy to employees.


• Offer employees hypothetical scenarios so they can discuss the social media policies and practice making decisions.

If you need more help creating an employee social media policy, you know where to find us.

Planning New Media Conventions for April 2010

I'm excited to announce I have joined the New Media Conventions team and plans are in the works for another social media conference in Hampton Roads for April 2010. I was privileged to be a speaker on "The Role of Public Relations in Social Media" and attend their first event in September at the Cavalier Golf and Yacht Club in Virginia Beach. The next New Media Conventions is going to be even bigger, and I'm looking forward to planning the program with many talented, social media savvy professionals from throughout Hampton Roads.  We're going to put Virginia Beach on the social media map!  Be sure to follow @NewMediaConv on Twitter as well as the hashtag for the next event, #NMC10. Also, check out the New Media Conventions blog for more information as plans for the big day are announced.