Chris Brogan’s Tips for Social Media Success (video)

By Michael Stelzner
Published November 20, 2009

In this video I interview Chris Brogan, author of the book Trust Agents (you can also check out his blog: chrisbrogan.com). Chris shares his advice to businesses starting with social media. The first 2 steps are listening and establishing a presence.

The pace is fast and this video is full of useful information. Be sure to read the list of takeaways below.



Here are some key takeaways from this video?

  1. Listening is so important. The unstructured data you get from listening gives you more than surveys. Be sure to check out his tutorial: Grow Bigger Ears.
  2. Establish your presence: Create passports to establish a presence.  Go where the people’s voice is rather than drive traffic to your site.
  3. Monitor sales marketing and content marketing that drives leads instead of monitoring ROI.
  4. Integrate social media into your customer support, sales and marketing.
  5. Chris’ Twitter strategy:  12 to 1 ratio: promote 12 times more stuff from other people, and it pays to mix business with pleasure on Twitter
  6. Chris is working one new books called Social Media 101 and and How Human Business Works and why this is important in today’s business world

What about you? What do you think about this video interview? How does listening on social media help your business? Please share your comments below.

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About the Author, Michael Stelzner

Michael Stelzner is the executive editor of Social Media Examiner, author of the Social Media Marketing Industry Report, and author of the book, Writing White Papers. Other posts by Michael Stelzner »

 
 
  • Business today will fare better if they just get their feet wet with social media and remember the golden rule. Its also a good idea to have a company wide social media policy and have it policed. Check out IBM's policy to help create your own. http://www.ibm.com/blogs/zz/en/guidelines.html Oh! This is my first post to socialmediaexaminer and I love the site, Thanks for your hard work, its much appreciated it.
  • Hey Rich - Thanks so much for your feedback!
  • Jim
    Chris has an excellent point in that the first steps are to listen, talk, share and build relationships. Many businesses/individuals new to social media are overwhelmed when they are advised to blog, twitter, etc.-- and rightly so.

    These first steps can both build an online presence and act as a learning process. As the presence grows and they start to understand social media and what works best for them, they can build and direct their social media strategy in a way that benefits all involved (ie. clients/customers, employees, and the business itself).
  • Listening helps my business in so many ways. Gives me ideas for blog posts, ideas for improving marketing, services, etc., and it makes my job fun. I agree that its important to mix business and pleasure on Twitter. If we don't enjoy what we do, what's the point of any of this?
  • shannonevans
    As usual, Chris has hit a home run! Just like in building connections in real life, the biggest part of building rapport in social media is also listening. Don't you just hate being around someone who talks and talks about me, me, me? These types of relationships are one-sided and the talker is nothing but a fun sucker. You dread each and every encounter and run when you see them coming. Social media has people in the midst like that too. Filter those people out and a few others and you have a great field for creating and delivering a good content as well as listening to other's content. Go out and find people/businesses that you like, feel, and trust and start building and fostering that relationship...it really does work!
  • I thought this interview with Chris was Great! Really great questions that pulled some nice answers out of him. The interview gave me great insights that I will surely use.

    I like the point of the video where Chris explains that PR and marketing companies should not do everything for their clients. They should be a builder and strategist to lay the ground work for the business itself to run their social media projects. The PR and marketing company can also act as a producer so to speak in the creation of content, but faces and voices within the company MUST be present in the social media front.

    I also wanted to thank Rich for pointing out IBM's guidlines.

    - Kelsi
  • "Listen" That is the perfect answer when my clients say, "I don't know how to enter the conversation. What should I say" They will learn by listening and soon they will want to interact. It is so simple yet so important to listen first talk second.
  • Ramona C
    Great post. Thanks for sharing the interview. Chris did an excellent job and provided great tips and suggestions. Listening is DEFINITELY the first step. It helps to lead the strategy and determine courses of action.
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