I have been covering the basic social media marketing set up that I do for my clients. The setup is a little different for each client because each client’s business needs are different. You can read about the basic setup in Part 1, setting up the base or webpage and blog in Part 2, and setting up the three basic social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in Part 3. In this blog I’m going to cover YouTube and a few odds and ends.

YouTube

I of course think that video is an important mix for any social media marketing plan. For a lot of reasons it may be best to host videos on a more secure platform or to run them from your server. The advantage of YouTube is that it is one of the biggest social media platforms and search engines. It is important to at least have a YouTube Channel with your branding. As with other social media accounts get a name that is as close to your business as possible then personalize YouTube Channel as much as possible. Fill in the profile information and put in links to your web page. Upload a .jpg background that brands your company. Squidoo.com has some free templates and if you know a little Photoshop it is pretty straight forward to customize a background.

Then we work at getting some branded content that people can share. Once you put up a video it is very easy to add this video to your web site and your Facebook page.

E-mail Newsletter

It is never too early to start building a newsletter list and I would definitely get a newsletter sign up form on your web page as soon as possible. You want to make it very easy for people to sign up for your newsletter. Here is an example of our e-mail newsletter sign up. To do this you will need to set up an account with an e-mail service. I use MailChimp, it is easy to get started and you don’t have to pay until you get over a thousand people on your list. There are other services such as Constant Contact and Benchmark Email but I like MailChimp.

Odds and Ends

There are of course many small parts that tie a good social media campaign together. For example I usually set up individuals and the heads of a company up with ExpertClicks.com. This gives them a place to put press releases and another outlet for their profile where reporters can find experts. In addition to paying attention to the blogosphere and twitter by monitoring their Google Reader I also monitor press and reporter inquiry services such as Help a Reporter, PitchRate and Reporter Connection for possible stories that my clients can respond to.

If the business is location based, especially something like a restaurant or a tavern, I would set up accounts in Foursquare and Facebook Places.

In addition there are a number of tools and tactics that you can use to start building your social network such as Stumbleupon and Digg as well as tools to promote platforms such as Twitter. There are a lot of details and lots of little things you can do but this outline is the basic foundation for building a social media marketing platform. It will be important that each of these social media platforms is represented on your other platforms. For example the web site should have “Follow Me” icons for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as well as easy to find RSS buttons and e-mail sign up and contact forms. Your LinkedIn profile should have links to your website and twitter account. The basic goal is to get the foundation set up that will includes a web site, blog, email accounts, Google tools, Twitter; Facebook; LinkedIn, YouTube and other platforms as needed.

If you would like to find out more about setting up a social media marketing plan or if you are interested in a free evaluation please feel free to contact us.

(Photo credit: DoubleM2)