Finding the Right Social Media Consultant in New York City

1. Search for Social Media Consultants in New York City

Searching for social media consultants in NYC is easy. You’ll find dozens of consultants working in social media, but how do you know they are the right ones to work with? Each social media consulting firm works in a specific area and have a focus on a specific social media practice. Once you’ve assembled a list of social media consulting firms, review the public work they display. Some will have client testimonials on their site. Review the social media consulting they’ve performed.

2. Ask for Example Clients They Work With

Some clients won’t be listed on the New York City Social Media consulting firm’s site, so you will need to ask for specific references and review the social media work for those clients. Make sure you understand the specific social media skills they performed for the client. Some clients have their own social media staff, so don’t assume the social networking consulting covered everything.

3. Determine What Other Consulting Services They Offer

Find out what other consulting services the social media firm offers in New York City. You may find that social media is a small practice for a particular company and you’re better off with a firm which performs social media consulting only. You may need services beyond social media and want to consolidate to a single firm to handle multiple consulting services for your New York City operations.

4. Review Your Social Media Requirements With Them

Once you’ve identified a social media firm in New York City, review your requirements with them to figure out if they can meet your needs at a price you can afford. You can also gather some idea of what the social media consultancy can do for you and you will understand a little more about their strategies and tactics.

Finding a social media firm in NYC is not difficult, but something you should focus time and energy on to find the right consultant.

There are many ways to build a great social media strategy. These are three steps we’ve found helpful.

1. Start With the End in Mind

Though there is no end for social media, you need to start thinking about your social media strategy and what you want to accomplish. We believe that a social media strategy isn’t a business strategy unless you want to win with your social media strategy. For example, building a bunch of social networking profiles and filling them with content is not a winning strategy. We explored how Old Spice was able to effectively use social media to win. You should desire to crush your competition and win with your social media strategy.

So what does winning look like for your firm? 10% market share? 25%? 50%? Define what winning is and then create a strategy that helps you win. Start your social media strategy with the end in mind.

2. Get Stakeholder Feedback

An important part of developing a social media strategy is to get stakeholder feedback. Stakeholders and people who have a direct role or who are impacted by the social media strategy. This could include managers, directors, marketing, sales, IT, customer service. Find the people who are impacted by social media and involve them in the process.

3. Build a Social Media Strategy You Can Execute

The best social media strategy in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t execute it. Build out your strategy, but first, focus on the amount of resources you have available (staff, money, etc.) and keep these in mind when developing your social media strategy. Executing a great social media plan with the right resources can mean great results for your company.

5 Tips to Find Success on Twitter

A vast majority of businesses on Twitter don’t understand the core principles that will make them successful with their Twitter social media strategy. We’re going to explore 5 tips that will make you a success on Twitter.

1. Network with People on Twitter

Twitter is about networking and communicating with other people. You shouldn’t expect people to follow you if you don’t interact with them, talk with them, retweet their messages, and showing them you care about what they’re saying. Send people replies, talk about their business, and retweet their messages to show them you care.

2. Updating Your Twitter Account with Meaningful Messages

A lot of people made fun of Twitter early on because they didn’t want to know what other people had for breakfast that day. The inane chatter still exists in some quarters on Twitter, but you can really use Twitter for meaningful conversation.

Whenever we run into a problem, we turn to Twitter first, do a search, and if it’s not found, send out a Tweet. We will often find a crowd of people who will respond to our tweet. Update your Twitter account with meaningful messages about your industry, users, product, or niche.

3. Use Twitter Tools

There are a number of great Twitter tools out there you can use to help automate your Twitter account and maximize your time and resources in social media. These tools help you schedule Tweets, respond to people, manage multiple accounts, and more. We recommend and use Hootsuite.

4. Verify What You Say – and Say It Nicely

The quickest way to lose people on Twitter is to be inaccurate, wrong, or mean. Before you post that tweet, make sure it’s accurate, doesn’t have any typos, and really represents you. There are countless examples of people screwing up on their company Twitter account – don’t let it happen to you!

5. Expand Your Audience

You can expand your Twitter audience a number of ways – ask employees to tweet about you, meet others in the industry and talk to them on Twitter, engage your customers in conversations on Twitter. Expanding your audience will help you discover new markets and new people interested in your company, products, and services.

Twitter is a great addition to any social media strategy and one which is required in today’s social media environment.

They created a commercial and web campaign featuring the man you would want to be:

By sharpening up the product packaging and producing socially relevant media and advertising, Old Spice was able to tap into a market it had lost and create new demand for their line of products.

What is Happening With Your Brand?

One of the great opportunities for your company in social media is to make your brand relevant to a whole new generation or a whole new demographic. By tapping into different social media sites and networks, you are able to find new ways to promote your brand.

What is happening with your brand right now? Is the demographic you’re targeting disappearing? Are you targeting the wrong generation right now? Is there an untapped market for your product or service?

Once you’ve learned what’s going on with your brand, you can use social media to help market to a different crowd.

Social Media: The Great Equalizer

You can argue that social media is the great equalizer. It gives any brand, any company an opportunity to build a presence and market their products. The trick is to be real and honest in your social media interactions. you can use social media, as Old Spice did, to become relevant to a different demographic or niche market.

Building a social media strategy around this area is a difficult thing: how do you create something viral? The first step is to study your target market and tap into what interests them. you may not create the next viral Old Spice YouTube video, but you can create an effective social media strategy and then execute your social media plan to achieve these results.

A social media expert is not your neighbor’s kid, or someone you see on Facebook a lot, it is a social media consultant that understands how to put together a social media strategy and then execute it.

First, Our Recommendation

First, we’d like to make a recommendation for you to find a social media expert, our friends at Media Connect Partners. We’ve referred a number of businesses to Brian Boyd because he understands social media better than anyone we have met in the business. Brian has worked with some of the top brands with their social media consulting efforts, from higher education to non-profit to entertainment brands to publishing companies, Brian has the breadth of experience necessary to make social media work for you. If you’re serious about social media, Brian’s team can make it happen for you.

Finding a Social Media Expert

We recommend Media Connect Partners because we’ve seen their work and know they bring results to social media. If you want success in social media, we recommend them and what we see in them is what we expect from a social media expert.

1. A Social Media Expert Has Been in the Business

If you ask your potential social media expert how long he has been in the business and he responds “6 months” or “1 year,” run away! By now, someone who is an expert in social media should have been working in the industry for several years.

2. A Social Media Expert Understands What a Social Media Strategy Is

Ask your social media expert what a social media strategy is. Brian Boyd wrote an excellent blog posts about what a social media strategy is and what a social media strategy isn’t. Check it out and see if your social media expert’s response meshes with Brian’s expertise.

3. A Social Media Expert Can Bring Resources to the Table

You may only need a social media expert for some social media consulting, but it’s important to know they have the resources and backing if you need social media execution. Your social media consultant should have a team she relies on to get the job done.

4. A Social Media Expert Should Know How to Build an Audience

Part of being a social media expert is understanding the technology behind it, a lot of being a social media expert is understanding marketing. if your social media expert can’t build an audience, you have the wrong social media expert. What good is it to build a live social media event if no one shows up?

5. A Social Media Expert Should Understand How to Measure ROI

We have spoken to a number of social media experts who don’t understand return on investment, how to measure it in social media, and why its important. Why would we be doing social media for our business if it didn’t have an ROI? Ask your social media expert how she measures social media ROI.

Sometimes you need to bring in a social media expert to get the job done. A social media expert can help you with expertise and experience you don’t have. Finding the right social media expert can sometimes be difficult, but in the end, the right social media expert will result in a success for your social media efforts.