GenXmanager: Leadership for the Generation X Manager

This is the second video in the social media strategy series. In it I walk through the first step in the social media strategy process which is to determine prupose. I stress the importance of looking at the overall organizational strategy, goals, and objectives. From there, you select a few goals that will lend themselves to a social media solution.

This step in the process is not about social media but about strategic thinking.

Tweeting great content is essential to gain followers on Twitter and engaging your audience. The question is, how do you find great content to tweet? Look no further. Here are a few ways to find great content.

1. Business Exchange by Business Week

Though not a robust social media platform, I’ve found wonderful, tweetable, content on Business Exchange. The home page presents you with a cadre of topic areas including the Banking Industry, Business Innovations, Social Media Marketing, and even MBA Admissions. Click on a topic and there is a list of articles submitted by Business Exchange users. I’ve found the content quite good.

2. Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, and Reddit

I use Digg more than any of these other social bookmark sharing sites because the content is well organized. I’m interested in tweeting content about business, the economy, social media, and innovation. Digg let’s me go right to those categories and browse what’s available. StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, and others are okay at listing what’s trending and hot at the moment but I find their categories unorganized.

3. Subscribe to great RSS feeds

Subscribe to your favorite blogs and news sites via RSS. You can download an RSS news reader or simply use Google’s newsreader. You’re newsreader will give you the latest content from every feed you subscribe to. If you see something interesting, tweet it out!

4. Google News

Google news serves up-to-the-minute content from major media outlets. I like the way the content is organized and enjoy the newsworthiness of all the articles.

5. Facebook and LinkedIn

You can’t rely on Facebook or LinkedIn for consistent Twitter content but I’ve had friends post articles on their wall that I’ve tweeted on multiple occasions. So, pay attention to what your friends and contacts are posting. You might find a great nugget of wisdom to share on Twitter.

6. YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo

Most of the folks I follow on Twitter don’t tweet video content. I’m not sure why. I love video and enjoy watching great quality, relevant video to my area of interest or job responsibilities. You can subscribe to users on YouTube, Viddler, and Vimeo who produce video you like. If they publish a great video, tweet it. You can also search these sites for video content.

7. Newsletters in your email

Pay attention to those newsletters you get in your email. Most companies, educational institutions, research foundations, and bloggers produce weekly, monthly or quarterly newsletters. Subscribe to them and read them! Oftentimes the content in these newsletters is not found easily on their respective websites or blogs. So, if you see something interesting in the newsletter, click the link to read more and then tweet that article.

 There are many more ways to find tweetworthy articles but these are some of the ones I use. Share yours in the comments below.

I’ve always wanted a button on this blog that would allow readers to share articles on Facebook, Twitter, or any of a dozen or more other social media sites. The problem was I wanted one WordPress plugin that would allow me to select which networks I wanted use. I use WordPress and was hoping for a simple plugin. Though I feel comfy playing around with code, I didn’t want the headaches.

After scouring Google and experimenting with some abysmal plugins, I came across Richard X. Tripp’s Tweet This WordPress plugin. This plugin does more than just tweet your blog entries. You can setup the plugin to share your blog content on Plurk, Buzz, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Myspace, Ping, Reddit, StumbledUpon and of course, Twitter. The installation and setup were radically simple.

Installation:

1. Download the Tweet This .zip file.
2. Run the .zip file and install it in the plugins directory (push it to your server).
3. Login to WordPress and click the ‘Plugins’ link on the left side.
4. Find the ‘Tweet This’ plugin and click ‘Activate’.
5. Scroll down and click ‘Settings’ on the left side of the page.
6. The ‘Settings’ will expand and you’ll see ‘Tweet This’ listed. Click ‘Tweet This’.

At this point you’ll be presented with a page to customize the Tweet This plugin. At first all you see are options for Twitter. Click on ‘Extended Services’ and you’ll see a plethora of other social networks you can add to your blog. This page is pretty self explainatory but for detailed instructions reference the Richard X. Tripp’s Tweet This page.

Tweet This screenshot. Click for full image:

Unfortunately it looks like Mr. Tripp will not be updating this any longer. His page states, “Sorry guys, I’m not planning any more updates to Tweet This. I don’t feel like coding anymore… I’ve gotten lazy.” At least he left us a great plugin and I hope he resurfaces to continue to maintain and improve this awesome plugin.

 You can see the buttons right here below.

I was reading a Wall Street Journal online article titled, For Companies, a Tweet in Time Can Avert PR Mess. It is a great article about how organizations can avert or at least smooth over PR related issues using social media. In the article, I saw a quote I want to bring to your attention.

“Some companies are training staffers to broaden their social-media efforts. At Ford, Mr. Monty plans to soon begin teaching employees how to use sites like Twitter to represent the company and interact with consumers.

Coca-Cola Co. is preparing a similar effort, which initially will be limited to marketing, public affairs and legal staffers. Participants will be authorized to post to social media on Coke’s behalf without checking with the company’s PR staff, says Adam Brown, named Coke’s first head of social media in March.”
from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124925830240300343.html

In my last post, Social Media in the Organization: Embrace it. Don’t Block it!, I mention this specifically. Organization must embrace social media and show employees how to use it to do their jobs more effectively. Ford and Coke “get it”!

And take a look at this article. It appears that Employees using Facebook and Twitter at work are 9% more productive.