3 Social Media Steps to take for the New Year

Social media is no longer a shiny object for most marketers online, but don’t let your social media efforts go stale. Don’t get complacent. For 2010, social media should become part of the way you do business online, integrated into your total online marketing plan. The New Year is a great time to rethink, refresh, and revitalize your social media marketing efforts. These 3 steps are at the top of my to-do-list for the New Year:

Rethink

Objective: Work smarter, not harder. Take a look at your successes and failures, let go of the latter and leverage the opportunities that exist within your current activities.

Actions:

Take inventory of your current social media properties that are referring the best traffic for your business. Notice I did not say the most. 2010 is the year of quality over quantity, it’s about focus and efficiency. Once you’ve identified your best referral sources, best relationship hubs — think creatively about leveraging new opportunities. Once you’ve identified activities that are not baring fruit — figure out first if the opportunity is not being seized properly. If not, dump it. There is always an opportunity cost to an activity, if its not producing a return you need to think seriously about what’s wrong and whether there are other opportunities that deserve your attention. Stop wasting time simply because someone has told you do something. The proof is in the pudding

Refresh

Objective: Take a step back and make it your New Year’s resolution to solidify your branding, online presence and your relationships. Once you’ve purged and optimize after rethinking above, make it all cohesive. Actions:

Update your profile pictures.
Make sure your personal and/or business information is cohesive and updated.
Commit to participating and being active in a meaningful way, daily.
Reach out to people who’ve been helpful to you, with a hello for the New Year.
Create a valuable freebie to give away to kick start your authority in the New Year.
Commit 15 minutes a day to reading other’s blogs and adding value to the discussion with your comments.
Commit to 15 minutes of “listening” activities, actively reaching out to be a resource to the audience you are marketing to.
Update your FB Fan Pages and Groups with a simple thank you for being connected to you.
Send an email to your lists, simply thanking them for trusting you.

The list could go on and on. The point is to take action that will breath fresh air into your marketing, by jazzying things up and not marketing

Revitalize

Objective: New Year cleaning to help you focus your efforts and drop any baggage in your daily activities that could be slowing you down and diluting your efforts. Actions:

Clean up your Twitter stream and lists, create one new list of new people you really want to get to know and build a relationship with. Keep it to 10, to focus.
Create an editorial calendar to help you focus your content marketing efforts.
Create a weekly action guide, 3 things you must to at all costs to grow relationships (blog commenting, sharing stuff, and offering assistance/advice are mine).
Commit to a system of content publishing that recycles your best content. Turn a blog post into a video, podcast, and slideshow each week, then publish.
Check out (or for some, simply setup) Google Webmaster Tools — fix all broken links and make sure your sitemap is being updated regularly.

What else? What are you doing to kick start your marketing for 2010?

About the Author...

Maria Reyes-McDavis is a colossal geek brainiac, certified genius IQ with university degrees in Finance, Economics, Business Management and an MBA. Maria has served over 300 pro-level, digital marketing clients as founder of online marketing firm Digital Peas & Carrots. Maria is Founder and Editor of Hyphenated Americans, a conservative politics blog and Proverbs 31 Project an online women's ministry. Most importantly, Maria is a wife to her king, mother of 3, lover of basketball (Go Lakers & Clippers!), classic cars and is currently training for professional women's roller derby!