Bring it back to the message! Bring it back to the message!
This is what I keep hearing myself repeat during my Plain Language Workshop. Now, stop! Let’s think about this for a second!
What is the message? The message is YOU and YOUR BUSINESS! Your website is an extension of your business. Whether it is your personal blog or corporate website, the website explains who you are and what you do. Your website is what tells the world what makes you great: through your products or services, blog or testimonials from your customers. This is you!
What’s Twitter? I want that!
They’re on Facebook! I want a Facebook page too!
Often, you’ll read from pundits about the advantages and disadvantages of Social Media. In the same breath, they also want you to think about what you are doing first and make sure that you are using the right tool for the job. But this creates more confusion and frustration on your part!
So what should you do? Like I mentioned earlier, your website is an extension of YOU. To put it into perspective, your website should be the originator of your content and start by treating the social tools as an extension of your website. To properly illustrate, try this:
YOU –> YOUR WEBSITE –> SOCIAL TOOLS –> YOUR AUDIENCE, NOT USING YOUR WEBSITE
This is an oversimplification, of course, but there are reasons why it helps to think of the process this way:
- Third-party services may not last longer than your business
- Third-party services may change their pricing model from Free to Pay for Premium
- You own your content and can take it with you
- You get to manage your own traffic
Use the tools to disseminate information from your website and don’t rely on them alone. There are three methods I commonly use to spread a website’s content:
- Bookmarklets and social bookmarking plug-ins like AddThis.com for visitors spreading your content and analyzing traffic
- RSS Feeds for subscriptions and attached to Google Feedburner for analyzing traffic
- Ping.fm for blast posting your content to your own social network and bookmarking sites
The commonality amongst these methods is that all your content originated from your own website. You are now utilizing the tools to spread the YOU online.
So what is the purpose of the social tools in relation to my own website? With your content on various platforms, you can now focus on building a community and enhance your online brand presence. Engage your audience and further discuss what you’ve written. Always remember to monitor the chatter!
Social tools are great for informing the masses but always try and bring them back to your message: your website! Keep it simple and don’t lose sight of your goal. By keeping this in mind when starting out, you’ll avoid confusion, gain a better understanding of the tools and utilize them to your advantage. To quote the social media experts out there, “create the signal, not the noise”.
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