Social media 101: a 2-week crash course

If you’re new to social media, this post is for you.  The world of social media, complete with its own etiquette, culture, and lingo (how can any serious company be named “Twitter”?) can sometimes be too overwhelming to tackle. Where do you start?

I’d like to suggest a 2-week crash course. Just 15 minutes a day. In 14 days, you’ll be up to speed about social media and its potential implications for your organization.  Let’s get started.

Getting Oriented

1. Read my social media FAQs.  I explain social media in plain English.  Social media is nothing more than conversations (that just happen to happen online)
2. Read our list of case studies.  Most people think of social media as something a numbthumbing college student does at 2 in the morning.  Not the case – many organizations and businesses are effectively utilizing social media to enhance their business in some way – by serving their customers better or by bringing their customers into higher levels of engagement.  As you see how other organizations are using social media, you’ll start to see how you might be able to use it for yours.
3. Read how Twitter envisions businesses and organizations using its site as a tool for engagement, research, and customer service. Included are some good case studies of how real businesses have effectively utilized Twitter.
4. Read the blog by Paul Levy, CEO of a prominent hospital in Boston. You can learn a lot about how people comment/interact online by reading his posts, the comments he receives, and how he responds.  If a risk-adverse, protocol-overdriven, anti-transparent hospital industry can have a CEO blog like this, I bet your organization could, too.
5. Read the TIME Magazine article “How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live“.
6. There are some legitimate concerns about social media. Read this article from WIRED magazine on how to fight the fear of social media.
7. Read 12-Step Social Media Program for PR Pros by Lee Aase, the social media manager at Mayo.  Really, PR, social media, and marketing are becoming increasingly blurred by the hour.
8. Also read Lee Aase’s Social Media 102: Intro to RSS. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a big reason content is so easily shared.  In fact, “sharable content” could be another name for “social media.”
9. Reference this Facebook Business page that provides an introduction to how businesses use Facebook as well as a ton of useful related links.
10. How prevalent is social media anyway? Read this analysis from Forrester Research finding that 80% of Americans use social media monthly.
11. Learn the Twitter lingo with these easy definitions.

Interacting

12. Do a search on your organization using Twitter’s search function.  See if people aren’t already talking about you or about topics that you care about for your business.
13. Do a search on your organization on Facebook (this requires that you establish a Facebook account).  Do a search on similar organizations and see what they’re doing.  You’ll learn a lot about what you could do just by imitating them (as a start).
14. Do a keyword search term analysis with this Google Keyword tool. You can type in any keyword and the tool will tell you how many times in the last month someone searched that keyword. For example, “hospital” was searched 37 million types last month, but “hospitals” (plural) only 5 million times. I like this because it gives you a glimpse behind the curtains into people’s search patterns and behaviors.

Congrats! You made it through! What other questions do you have? Remember that at the end of the day, social media is simply people interacting with other people online.   And the best way for you to learn about it is to experience it yourself.  You can read all the articles ever written, but you really won’t understand it until you start to be a part of real conversations with real people.