Here are a few highlights from the Social Media 101 Primer this morning:

Of those who have “fan”ed you on facebook, they’re 50% more likely to buy. Don’t focus on shiny objects, start with the “Big 3”: Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. What are other options? Blog, forums local directory sites, MySpace, Yelp, Q&A sites, Yelp, foursquare, Gowalla and other. Constant Contact spends their time educating their clients on social media marketing and how to best use it. Keys to succeeding: Understand your audiences (primary research), Build towards making your audience successful, and don’t be afraid to educate your audience.

How do you get people to come back from the site? Look at engagement. In health and wellness companies, we build tabs and communities and wait for people to join your communities. How can we create engagement in our online communities? What is engagement? It’s not having millions of fans on Facebook. It’s about working with your community members and ensuring that they will continue to engage with you over time.
Path to engagement:

1. 1) Right social media
2. 2) Right apps
3. 3) Right content

The right healthcare for social media is a place to have a closed and specific conversation an d place for your peers and experts. For health communities, they need to be based in a secure area, but spread awareness of the community through other platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. When dealing with social media strategies, the right once can increase success and participation 10x.


When a company puts in the right amount of work to social media, it’s not just a single click, it’s someone opting in to your products and services. Creating a deep connection with your consumers isn’t cheap, it takes a major investment of time. A traditional social media program shouldn’t be based on a campaign. You nurture and grow in your relationship with your customer. Commit to your content and community. Starbucks Facebook pages tells a story, they look at the narrative of the brand and how people identify with it. Coupons are bribes to get individuals to get more followers, but how can you entice them to follow you on a more long-term basis?

How do you keep your brands engaged when they’re not live? On Twitter – they do not have an individual twitter for each show. During the offseason, they revisit the well of content on the webpage. They use the “news aspect” to keep engagement with their fans. They’re also looking to their writers to create content specifically for this season.