I was reading a statement of work for a project I was joining and could tell immediately who had written it. At the time, our desks were across from each other, “Brad, you wrote this SOW didn’t you?” I asked. His initial response was “You make me so self-conscious about my writing.”

My past life as a high school English teacher occasionally makes my colleagues uneasy; he was prepared to hear me criticize his punctuation. To his relief, it wasn’t because of anything “bad” in his writing that allowed me to identify him as the author. I knew it was him because it sounded like him; I heard his voice as I read. There were words and phrases he uses frequently, and the sentences reflected the way he speaks conversationally. His personality, or voice, was present in the writing.

Hearing an author’s voice while reading isn’t limited to people you know. Voice reflects the personality of the person or organization speaking to you. An individual’s personality is often easily conveyed in face-to-face conversation, and the same is true online through their voice.

A clear voice is part of creating a unified brand identity across all content.

Organizations and individual brands need to have a clear, singular voice in their content in order to engage with their audiences. However, many organizations have either an inconsistent voice or one that is empty.

When a brand’s content is generated by a variety of people, the organization’s voice may be inconsistent. There may be too many people “talking.” When it comes to branding, your customers don’t get a clear sense of who you are if your voice is inconsistent.

When a brand lacks a voice, it lacks personality. The brand appears impersonal, and customers take notice. This may not directly hurt the bottom line, but it certainly won’t help. Have you experienced an automated phone system when calling customer service? No matter how human-like the voice, I have yet to encounter one that has a personality or makes me feel like the organization values my business. Your content shouldn’t feel automated either.

So what causes an organization to come off as unfeeling or devoid of personality? Think back to your experiences writing research papers in high school and college. You were probably taught to write in third person in order to appear unbiased, to avoid second person because it was too informal, and to avoid first person because it was immature and self-involved. (Yes, I’m about to blame your English teachers for this one.) Academia calls for being impersonal and detached.

In business, detachment turns off clients and prospects alike. Your organization’s content should read as a conversation with your audiences– a conversation where only one voice is heard and represents your brand’s personality and values.

Your brand’s voice should be included as part of your brand standards and should include key attributes that need to come across in your content and key phrases that are significant to your identity. Create a persona for your brand and write through the perspective of that persona. Before publishing content in the name of the brand, check it against the brand attributes your team has established. If it doesn’t sound like your brand’s persona, tweak it until it does.

Creating your unified voice comes through knowing your organization and your brand. It requires you to “become one” with your brand. When your audience connects with your brand’s persona, you know you have established your unified voice.

Are your visitors consuming what you offer on your website?

In that respect, visitors to websites are much like hummingbirds. Visitors come to the web in search of knowledge, entertainment, and goods to consume. They click into a website. If it isn’t what a visitor expected, they leave as quickly as they came and are on to another site until they find what they want to consume.

For businesses, visitors who fly off websites take with them opportunities for conversion.  Whether you think about conversion as time on site, ecommerce purchases, sign-ups, or completing a contact request form, if your visitors aren’t staying, it’s a problem.

This is where content strategy comes in. Evaluate your offerings by reexamining your content. You have to offer what your audience members are looking for before you can convert them. Think back to when you set up your site. How did you decide what information to include?  Were you focused on what you wanted to say or on what your audience would want to find?

It seems like content should begin with the essential messages you want to communicate about your business, but that isn’t the best place to start. Businesses that begin focused primarily on what they want to say often miss the mark. It is essential to analyze and strategize your content according to your target audiences if you want to see conversion.

Begin this analysis by identifying various audiences, their respective needs, interests, values, and priorities. It also entails anticipating what your audience knows and the language they speak. Developing this detailed knowledge of your audiences will help you greatly in developing content to convert them. If you have multiple audiences, you will need to cultivate content for each of them. If you can’t convince your audiences you know what their needs are, you cannot expect conversion.

I had an experience with this as an audience member a few months ago.  I was exploring the idea of buying my first home and decided to get pre-approved for a mortgage. I had contacted a lender referred to me by my realtor. The lender had sent me the application and all the paperwork,. When I reached the section of the forms where I was asked which loan I was applying for, I was at a loss. So I went to the bank website expecting to see a description of each loan, the benefits of each, and a comparison to differentiate the products from one another.

But that wasn’t what I found. There were descriptions with interest rates listed, so I could see differences. Each loan listed its term length, but the rest of the description was technical. Filled with acronyms I was unfamiliar with, it didn’t give any information that indicated which loan was right for me. So I abandoned the site and instead emailed the lender for an explanation of their loan products. He then directed me back to the bank website, but I already knew it had nothing to offer me.

Neither the bank nor the lender I spoke with took into account that a member of their audience would be unfamiliar with home loans and the lending process. Despite a word-of-mouth referral from a reliable source, this bank lost my attention and an opportunity for conversion because it failed to think about what I needed. Its content wasn’t relevant to me nor was it easy to understand. Had they used a chart to detail the differences and included explanations for technical, the result might have been very different for them.

Content extends beyond just the information you are trying to communicate. Content consists of:

• what you say (your message),
• what you say it with (its medium– a picture, video, music, a website),
• how you say it (style and tone),
• where you say it (in print, at a conference, a social media platform, a website, a billboard),
• when you say it.

There is a lot to consider when it comes to tailoring content to one audience, let alone to multiple audiences. If you want to convert them, you have to offer relevant content in forms that resonate with each group.

The bottom line is that if your content isn’t relevant and readily available, audiences may fly away from your site. On the other hand, if you create relevant content, you’ll be in a good position to retain audience attention, garner their interest, and increase your conversions.

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s, oodles of articles about what 2010 has been, and what 2011 will be, will litter magazines, twitter streams, and television programs across the nation.  In 2010 experts weighed in on a variety of fascinating possibilities which included: Expanding location based services, user-interface advancements, a world of screens, and my personal favorite, Gink. Spend 2 minutes looking, and you’ll find no shortage of people asking and answering the question, “What’s Next?”.

It makes perfect sense that it’s a common topic of conversation.

Emerging technologies and applications have changed world of marketing, PR and communications for organizations dramatically in the past 5 years, and the next 5 will bring more of the same.   So it is natural and responsible for organizational leaders to strive for understanding of the technologies and trends that will be affecting their world, right?  I propose that there is a better way.

To ask “What’s Next” can be a helpful exercise, but only to a point.

The problem with this question is that even with unlimited research and wealth, the answers are varied, vague, skewed by trends, and are fundamentally reactive in nature.”What’s Next” is tied to the future of the broader marketplace, not to the future of your organization.

Even in perfect execution the answer to this question yields you nothing more than a first mover advantage, which is a good start, but needs competent execution to be tied back to revenue.  There are only a handful of organizations positioned to benefit much by taking this high risk, limited reward approach.

Want better return on your time and energy? Try framing the convergence of technology and your business by asking the following 3 questions:

1. What problem or objective haven’t I been able to solve or achieve?
2. What technologies/communication media (old or new) could I employ in a fresh way that could help me?
3. How can I implement this technology/communication strategy in a way that:

• fits my budget
• works in concert with current efforts
• leverages momentum to amplify results
• can be tested against established objectives

True innovators are those who take a fresh approach and pioneer a unique prescription to fulfill their organizations’ goals.  They set the industry standard instead of following it.  Their initiatives are custom built around their objectives and challenges, and always have clear ties to revenue.

It’s a subtle distinction but can make a big difference.  Will you spend next quarter scouring the business journals and social media looking for articles about the next big thing, or will you enjoy being touted as the subject of that article?

Questions/Comments? Please feel free to email me at brad.bierwagen@mediasauce.com or follow Brad at @bradbierwagen

At Indy Social Media Breakfast’s Social Media Workshop tomorrow morning, Facebook for the Beginning to Intermediate Marketer, I’ll be discussing how to find out if your target audience is on Facebook, and if they are…how to engage them.

Engaging people on Facebook goes beyond just pushing coupons and running contests. We’ll spend some time discussing the Facebook Page. Pages allow businesses to share their brands with Facebook users in unique ways. Attendees will learn how to set up a page, how to effectively use your page’s content to engage your audience, and ways to expand upon the basic page to drive increased fan interaction.

Marketing in the social space doesn’t just apply on social networks themselves, so we’ll discuss how to use social plugins and other techniques to drive users to a page. Finally, because marketing and branding efforts on Facebook shouldn’t stand apart, we’ll talk about ways to integrate offline and online brand experiences.

The workshop is TOMORROW, Saturday, June 12, 2010 from 9:30 AM – 12:30 at 8th Floor Theatre. RSVP online at the event page below.
Thank you to Indy Social Media Breakfast for inviting me to speak and Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association for supporting the workshop!

More information:
Event Page: indysmw01.eventbrite.com/
Facebook Page: facebook.com/indysmb
Event Hashtag: #indysmb
Host Tweets: @indysmb

Disagree?…stay with me anyway – relevance to your organization can be found shortly below…

I credit my parents with my personal affinity for the fresh and green.  With my older sister, my parents took the “You can’t leave the table till you’ve eaten all of your peas” route. It turns out Kristin is almost as stubborn as my father, so by the time the vegetables were choked down and everyone had been fighting for a few hours, it left a literal and metaphorical bad taste in her mouth. She’s picky about vegetables to this day.

Mom and Dad tried a different method with me. I never had to stay at the table till my veggies were eaten – but they did ask that once every six months I give the vegetables I thought I didn’t like an honest try. I couldn’t just make a predetermined decision, stick them in my mouth and spit them out quickly. I had to take a few good bites and really give them a chance.  If I did, I was off the hook.

Little by little I came to like the idea of trying new things, and enjoyed the vegetables more and more.  I believe this same technique holds true for new media and organizational leadership.   It’s our job to guide and inform, not to force ourselves into what everyone else is doing.

As a business developer for MediaSauce, I meet with and speak to a variety of groups, in varying industries every week. Between and within vertical markets, there is a wide spectrum of understanding and adoption of online tools. Rapid Change, Industry Regulations, Technology Infrastructure, Liability Issues, Privacy Problems, Leadership that sees little revenue potential in new tools, and budget constraints are all cited as reasons for avoiding commitment to online as a communications strategy.

If your organization or industry requires that you be more cautious, or you are a later adopter, that’s ok! Organizations in every phase of innovation adoption have good reasons for being there, and there are advantages and disadvantages to each phase. However, much like vegetables, a great online presence is a vital part of a balanced communications strategy and is essential to organizational growth. It is good for you to be connected, and it is something any organization can learn to leverage.

Champions of new media sometimes hurt their cause by forcing the issue within the group, especially in organizations that are slower to embrace new technologies. Their reaction is to list others’ success stories, and when challenged with organizational bottlenecks the value prop doesn’t directly translate.  The trick (like with food) is in the context and presentation.

I encourage you to facilitate a high level conversation around the growth of online communication and how it will continue to affect your organization. Every six months (or more often if possible) bring your leaders together with the objective of simply having an open-minded discussion about the implications of an interconnected, online world.

The goal is to honestly consider costs and risks of pursuing something new, AND weigh them against the opportunities for success and potential for revenue growth. Think about some of the ways that you can use new tools to create relevance and value in everything you do. Consider the costs of maintaining status-quo. These are the conversations that connect and resonate with executives, board members, and organizational leaders.

What will be the outcome of these conversations? I can’t say. The reality is some of the available tools still will not taste right to your organization and that is ok. But, if you are approaching the conversation around costs and benefits, and making an effort to do so regularly, great steps forward will be a natural outcome.

Be careful though, or you may find yourself pleasantly surprised as a new fan of asparagus, organizational transparency, or Foursquare.

Questions/Comments? Please feel free to email me at brad.bierwagen@mediasauce.com or follow Brad at @bbierwag

Proposing no Saturday deliveries and raising stamp prices merely strikes at the branches and does not deal with the root issue of whether our beloved USPS is still relevant.

The truth is – Saturday deliveries or not – this downward spiral will continue to occur.  When the USPS has to keep increasing fees to continue covering losses, it drives more and more communication on-line.  With such a high fixed cost structure, the Post Office will be forced to continue drive prices higher and send their customer base scrambling to consider more economical modes of communication.

The heart of the issue here is our Postal Service is no longer relevant.

A few years ago I was asked to keynote a national panel of CD and DVD duplicators/replicators about the future of their industry.  Guess what, it didn’t go over too well…

As a tool to measure relevancy, I presented a concept of the “recovery time.” I simply asked the audience to consider the ramifications of eliminating their products and services from the marketplace.   The “recovery time” is the degree of pain the market would endure before the product’s replacement leaves us no longer wanting what we once had.

In addition to its application for the CD/DVD industry, I asked the audience to consider the “recovery time” of the newspaper industry, the corner video store, and the Postal Service.  Think of the long-term disruption if each of these were yanked away never to return.

Think about your own business and more specifically, how relevant are you to your clients and prospects?  If you’re feeling the world would have a short recovery time in your absence, it’s critically important start defining your real value by asking a few questions:

1. What would your 10 best customers say they value most about you, beyond your product and service?
2. What root issue, pain, or gap does your organization’s product or service solve/fill?  (Think transportation not wagon wheels, think editorial content not a physical newspaper)
3. What are your organizations unique talents?
4. What are there things you ask your customers and clients to pay a premium for, because you do them better than anyone else?

By asking yourself these sometimes uncomfortable questions and framing your discussions around them, you are addressing your business challenges at the root, and you may just find the additional relevancy and margin you’ve been seeking.

As customers’ interactions with companies (brands) are increasingly online, shouldn’t we shift our focus? Why do we still believe traditional marketers should control branding? Why are we afraid to put branding power in the hands of the digitally-driven folks? After all, for many current and future customers, your website is your brand. It’s the hub, the driving force behind all of the experiences customers have with your company. People are spending as much or more time online as they are watching TV these days – and that’s not just the teens and 20-somethings. Digital is already driving brands, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

Online-only businesses are obvious examples, but increasingly, traditional brick and mortar and B-to-B businesses are reaping benefits – and raking in sales – by creating digitally-driven brands.

Let’s review a familiar example: Best Buy. They’re still an electronics store with lots of semi-annoying helpers in blue. The face-to-face experience will never go away. It’s just enhanced by a bevy of online communication tools.

For example, customers can reserve products online (on a phone or a computer) and pick them up in stores.

Once they take products home, they can talk in real-time to Best Buy’s customer service folks through Twelpforce, a group of 2,200 Best Buy employees who answer customers’ questions and solve issues via Twitter.

If customers come up with grand ideas that would make their experiences better (a key component of branding), they can share them at Best Buy’s IdeaX.

Best Buy has tackled everything from creating a streamlined mobile site to customer and employee forums, blogs, and Facebook applications on their fan page. They’re all over digital branding. In other words, they create positive customer experiences through the tools, accessibility and information they provide online.

Now, I know you’re thinking: well of course she believes in digital branding…she works at a digital agency! And that’s fair. As an early adopter and digital marketing geek, it’s easy to see why I’d be a proponent. But there are plenty of people backing me up these days. And there is plenty of new research that supports the theory. An example? How about this Razorfish report about digital experiences driving brands. I think you might like it.

Slide 8 is my favorite:

• 65% of consumers have had a digital experience change their opinion about a brand.
• 97% of consumers say their digital experience influenced whether or not they eventually purchased a product or service from that brand.
  

So tell me: how do your customers experience your brand in this Digital Age?

Miranda McCage is an Associate Digital Strategist at MediaSauce. She’d like to hear about how you’re developing a brand with digital. Contact Miranda at 317-284-5683, on Twitter @mirandamccage or email her at miranda.mccage@mediasauce.com.

The problem is, the number of unique visitors, page views, or time on site is only an indicator of a site’s success. The real measurement is the number of actual conversions that happen on the site.

In this context, we define a conversion as “a prospective customer taking a marketer’s intended action.” These conversions are tracked through form submissions, data tracking and other methods that reveal to you insights about your visitor, their behavior and ultimately that they conduct some form of transaction with you.

Let’s explore a few different conversion concepts:

1. The form. The most simple and direct form of conversion on a web site is the use of a form. Often asking for a direct inquiry of the customer to your business, the form provides a direct method of a site visitor to reveal who they are and what they want. Strategy tip: Don’t rely on a single ‘catch-all’ form for your site. Utilize custom, targeted forms that fit the context of the page it appears on. For example if you’re a C.P.A/tax advising firm, offer a form on your site’s page about “auditing advisory services” that specifically address if the site visitor is currently being audited or has been audited in the past. If they are visiting the “John Doe, C.P.A. profile” then they should have a form to ask “John” a tax question.
   
2. The special offer. Offers and promotions create a very specific promotional driver to capture details from a site visitor. Often tied into a marketing campaign or promotion, special offers help prompt specific responses to a specific issue/need/topic that can help you generate business. The key factor here is that there really must be a deliverable/return for this conversion. People expect something unique and timely. Strategy Tip: Special offers need to have a valuable reward; otherwise they’re just another form. If the visitor is on the “tax tips for 2009 filing” page, create a form that specifically lets them complete a check list of things they qualify for as part of their submission to get more info from you and give you their email address for future communication.
   
3. The sale. An obvious ‘in your face’ conversion is the purchase of a good or service. This is ultimately what many businesses are seeking from their website…a return on investment. Consumers are turning to the Internet more and more to make a buying decision. As a marketer, it is your responsibility to observe the paths a consumer takes while navigating through your website. Strategy Tip: If you are using a shopping cart as part of conducting this transaction – a big tracking factor is the abandonment rate of items in a shopping cart that do not result in a final sale. It’s not just the number of sales you’re making, it’s what is happening to stop a sale.
   
4. The interactive questionnaire. A very engaging method for developing strong conversions is to give site visitors an opportunity to participate in a series of questions that result in an outcome of value.  These quizzes, tests, self-assessments and other questionnaires not only keep your site visitors engaged on the site, each answer provides you more insight into their needs and helps you push them further down the conversion funnel. Strategy tip:  Utilize results-specific topics to implement interactive questionnaires. Keep these conversion tools simple and straightforward to drive responses that have actionable results. For example, if a company builds and sells valves to manufacturing facilities, they might use the interactive questionnaire to learn about what applications of valve the customer uses, the average replacement time line, volume of use and current preferred brand . Once complete, the valve company provides a price quote and comparison sheet on the competitor’s valve versus their own.

While it is important to watch metrics such as the percent of site traffic coming from search engines and a site’s bounce rate to make sure your site is optimized and prepped for conversions, it is imperative to set up conversion goals and monitor them regularly to ensure a true return on investment. Don’t get lost in the glitz of percentages and click through rates. Make sure you stay focused on the conversion.

You may be wondering…what do I do with all his information? Here are your action steps:

1. Make sure you have analytics installed on your website. (Google analytics is offered free of charge.)
2. Set up conversion goals within your analytics. (What do you want your audience to do?)
3. Include conversion points on your website to gather data and understand your audience. (Pick at least one of the four examples above and get started.)
4. Optimize, test, optimize… (The beauty of the Internet)

Sheila Smiley is a Senior Media Strategist at MediaSauce. She’d like to hear from you about how you measure conversion. Comment below, or you can reach her via email at sheila.smiley@mediasauce.com or call at 317-218-2500.

If you continue to do business as usual, running your career and business day by day, then you will find that you might not be needed. Consider these red flags:

1. You don’t have a mobile strategy, yet you spend all your time relying on your mobile device to connect and communicate.
2. You have no defined online strategy, you just guess and explore, yet like eighty percent of all c-level executives, you  spend up to 4 hours a day on the Internet.
3. You think Facebook is something for your teenage kids, yet over 90 percent of your customers believe a company should have a social media presence and over 40 percent want to do business with a company that uses social media platforms to solve their problems or solicit their feedback.
4. You think “interconnected” is a puzzle or online porn, yet you are always available via a mobile device and the majority of your customers are demanding new ways to interact with your brand.
5. You think transparency means controlling information, yet younger buyers are spending their time buying from companies they can authentically connect with.
6. You don’t update your online presence, yet you have your physical office cleaned regularly and they take out the trash every day.
7. You spend countless hours working on office efficiencies, yet you have an online office that is widely inefficient.
8. You, like most people, want to read more but you never make the time, yet your online destination is stacked tall with text waiting for all those non-readers to dig in.
9. You think the Internet is just another platform, yet the average professional will spend more time online than they do talking to their spouse or watching broadcast media.
10. You say you want more, yet you do the same things expecting different results.

The challenge for you today is to look at these ten paths and decide if you’re willing to change direction, or if you’ll continue down the road you are headed. Leadership isn’t just about guiding the troops to a destination, but in also being willing to change course when a new route identifies itself.

Times are rapidly changing . If one of these flags sound familiar, now is the time to adjust or be left wondering where the world went while your company proceeds down familiar, but irrelevant paths.

David Cain is President and CFO of MediaSauce. He’d like to hear about how you’re tackling transformation in this Digital Age. Contact David at 317-218-0500  email him at david.cain@mediasauce.com.

As a strategist at MediaSauce, I’m often charged with helping clients launch their social media initiatives. I’ve found that the most challenging thing for most marketers isn’t learning how to use new tools. It’s knowing how to get digitally organized.

Time management, baby.

Now, I should clarify. These tips are for businesses. If you want to spend 5 hours checking out your old high school friends’ family photos, by all means, feel free. Your time, your dime!

For marketers performing social media for business, getting digitally organized includes:

• Figuring out how to manage time and organize information (and there’s a lot of information out there).
• Discovering ways to stay away from that oh-so-entertaining – and unrelated – Twitter discussion about Tiger Woods.
• Trying to focus on what’s relevant for your business – and what will have the most impact in the least amount of time.

If you only have a few minutes a day to dedicate to social media, what’s most important?

Even with the most solid, bullet-proof social media strategy, a lack of organization will completely derail your hard work. Social media ADD is a real affliction, folks. Let’s talk about ways to get some digital Ritalin (without the side effects).

If you only have 15 minutes a day to dedicate to social media, what should you do?

Respond to EVERYONE. Before we dive into any of the tactics listed below, I want to hammer this point home. If you commit to participating in social media communication, you’ve committed to responding to everyone that connects with your business through social media…no matter how little time you have. The whole point of social media is connecting and engaging on a one-to-one basis. If you can’t commit to responding to everyone and anyone, you may want pause and consider whether social media is the right step for you right now.

Google Alerts. These babies can pack a serious punch…if you set ‘em up properly. If you’re tracking more than one word (a phrase), don’t forget quotation marks. If you do, you’ll suffer the consequences by receiving everything under the sun about anything having to do with any of the words – not phrases – you entered. For example, instead of seeing articles related to “ugly holiday sweaters,” you’re going to see every article with the word “ugly,” the word “holiday,” and the word “sweaters.” Think about that.

Hot Tip: Send your Google alerts to a feed reader. Trust me, you will thank me when your inbox is clean and you can organize your alerts in folders by category. Which Reader should you use? Personally, my favorite reader is Google Reader, just because it’s easy. And if you already have your alerts going to your email, you can switch them to a feed reader.

Twitter Search. Even if you’re rolling your eyes at its goofy name, Twitter affects your business. Why? Because the things people say on Twitter are indexed by search engines. And search engines are kind of a big deal. So hop on Twitter search to see if the search terms for which you’ve already set up Google Alerts are being discussed right now online.

If you only have 30 minutes a day to dedicate to social media, what should you do?

Continue doing everything listed above. Just add:

RSS Feeds. These are feeds from your favorite blog and news websites. Just like the Google Alerts, set these up in a reader, like Google Reader or FeedDemon to save yourself time. Instead of going to 15 different websites, you’ll go to one inbox, where you can organize your feeds by category and scan posts quickly to see whether they’re worth reading, sharing and commenting.

Hootsuite. The biggest benefit to Hootsuite: you can pre-schedule your tweets. It’s what keeps me coming back, even though TweetDeck is my fav. For those of you who just don’t have time (yet) to do much more than use Twitter as a news release/blog promotion tool, this is a great service. If you know that new blog post won’t launch until tomorrow morning, and you have a meeting from 8 a.m. to noon, you can just pre-schedule your tweet and rest easy knowing it’ll go out on time.

Hot Tip: Don’t forget that you still need to monitor your Twitter accounts for responses.

If you have 1 hour a day to dedicate to social media, what should you do?

Just because you have more time doesn’t mean you can ignore the tools we just discussed. Keep at ‘em! Now start adding:

TweetDeck. Some people prefer Seesmic, I play favorites…and TweetDeck wins. TweetDeck is a desktop application that you can easily download and customize until it becomes your own personal crack. Oh wait, did I say crack? I meant personal Twitter organization tool.

In TweetDeck, columns are your friend. Groups are your BFF. Search columns are your BFF-forever-and-ever-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die. You can set up columns and groups to organize your Twitter streams, so that you can always see what people are saying about “Ugly Sweaters.” You can monitor a single Twitterer’s account. You can create groups of similar people, like trade publications, in a column. You can also set up search columns – just like Google Alerts – where you can constantly monitor what people are saying about any given topic. Personally, my TweetDeck is so heavily categorized that you can scroll through my columns for an absurdly long time.

Manage Your Facebook Presence. If you have an hour a day to spend in social media, you should absolutely have a Facebook page for your business. Once you’ve set up your page, what should you do? First and foremost: respond to everyone. If you’ve got that covered, start sharing. Links (of your own stuff and others’ content that you recommend), photos and videos are some of the most popular – and effective – things to share. Got news? Share it with a status update. Just keep your Facebook presence up-to-date.

Manage Your LinkedIn Presence. Your business should have a company profile on LinkedIn. Do you? If not, create one. If you do, be sure it’s accurate. Ask your employees to join LinkedIn. Create groups for your business or affiliations. And again: whenever someone connects with you via LinkedIn about your biz, respond!

If you have 2 hours a day to dedicate to social media, what should you do?

Blog. If you have two hours, you can maintain a blog. Yup. Even you, ye of little faith in your writing abilities. Think like Water Boy…you can DO it! If you have a hard time finding things to write about, start with a plan. Hook up with a coworker or friend and brainstorm all the things you could ever possibly write about on your blog. Write the ideas down. Prioritize them. Scrap the ones that don’t make sense. Start writing the ones that excite you most.

Comment on Other Peoples’ Blogs. Remember those feeds you set up for blogs and news sites that contain relevant content? Oh yeah, those. Well, instead of just reading the posts, start commenting on them when appropriate. Social media is a good will, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours kind of community. The more you connect with – and respond to – other bloggers and social media folks, the better your chances are of seeing success with your own social media efforts.

If you have more than 3 hours a day to dedicate to social media, what should you do?

First, thank your boss, because (s)he’s totally with it. If you have a solid 3 hours or more every day to dedicate to social media, you’ve most likely graduated from playing in the Social Media Pop Warner league, and you’re ready to play Varsity.

Take Pictures. Upload them to Flickr and Facebook. Pictures of what, you ask? Well, whatever it is that you’re writing about in social media. Have a tradeshow coming up? Do you have pictures from last year’s event that you can share online pre-event? People like pictures. And they really like seeing themselves in pictures, so if you take pics of your customers, try to connect with them and Facebook tag them if possible.

Create Video. Upload it to YouTube and/or Vimeo. This doesn’t have to be complicated. I do it with my day-to-day digital camera. At this point, most people can even do it with their phones. Just capture some customer reactions, behind-the-scenes footage, event participation – anything entertaining, really. Video makes everything more interesting and engaging.

Start Something Unique. Here’s where social media gets really fun. Do your homework. Find out about all of the cool social applications and campaigns companies have created using social media. Brainstorm some of your own. Make a plan. Get started. BUT…don’t even think about spending big bucks on an application or campaign unless you have a plan and you’ve already committed to all of the tactics listed above.

Now go forth and prosper, my social media padres! Please do your best to ignore the siren call of that Facebook friend request from your high school’s prom queen – focus on your business goals and manage your time wisely and you’ll see guaranteed results.

Next time, let’s talk about those goals…

Miranda McCage is an Associate Digital Strategist at MediaSauce. She’d like to hear about how you’re managing your time in social media. Contact Miranda at 317-284-5683, on Twitter @mirandamccage or email her at miranda.mccage@mediasauce.com.