Creating your own social media program online can be a daunting experience when you first start out. Fortunately the internet is a vast resource that is the perfect information tool to give you all the information you need to get the job done right. There are 1000’s of pages online where you can get all the details. While some of these sites may not necessarily be that accurate, we have put together a few links of some of the best reads for your research when building your program.
When you first start out you will need to decide on the effectiveness and possible return on investment from managing a social networking program. Essentially you have to figure out whether or not it will be worth your efforts. The Brandbuilder blog will give you a solid understanding of the how and why’s when you are looking at the ROI for social networks.
Getting as much information as possible is a must if you want to find your feet in the social networking environment. This social media program will outline all the details for you in plain English.
Getting into the swing of things might leave you in a bit of a spin. If you do get stuck, then you can always read up on how some of the other players have done it. This site will give you valuable insight as to how Rogue resources started off with their social media program. If you are still not convinced by an unfamiliar company, you can take a look at how NASA implemented their own program in order to substantiate how it got done by a well known company.
Social Media University is a useful site that will give you a lot of detail on social media. They are primarily focused on educated people, creating links to a variety of dedicated articles and videos that will show you exactly what to do. This particular resource gives you a quick rundown in 12 easy steps.
Wikipedia has been disputed as a reliable source of information, the basic principle still allows for useful and in most cases highly accurate information on any given subject. They have a really detailed page on how social media works and you can view it here.
Karen Snyder has put together a nice slideshow for those that don’t really feel like doing a lot of reading. She has posted an actual social media program presentation on slideshare.net .
This particular option is definitely something for the more advanced social media managers. Instead of utilizing the existing infrastructure of facebook and twitter, you have the option to create your very own social networking site. You can download and customize your own site from jcow.net. Boonex.com, socialgo.com and socialengine.net all do the same thing, they just offer different variations with a number of useful choices. You can read up on a couple reviews of these sites and get a detailed view on what they have to offer from e-commercewebdesigners.net. If you are not really interested in creating everything from scratch, you can always integrate social media functions into your existing website – kickapps.com has a number of widgets, apps and templates to create the social user experience you need for your own site.
Once you have made your decision about the medium for your social networking plan, you then have to set out a plan to implement it. Making use of existing infrastructure simply requires a presence online and then you have to begin the process of increasing your contact list. Building your own network requires a complete strategy on every detail so you may want to look at possible strategies for your implementation. If you need additional information on this you can visit socialmediaexaminer.com for a more ideas on how you can get started.
As you can see, there a wide variety of options available to you when you start out with your social network program. You can work with the existing sites that already have all the infrastructure in place and you simply build your contact network, or you can build up the actual network infrastructure itself and create an entirely new niche group that can access your networking.
The options available are very versatile and can offer you the right solution depending on your needs. Help us bring more resources and education our reader by letting us know your experience, strategy or feedback. If you have already put a social media program in place was it biult on a strategy of using a current social network platform or did you build your own social network site?
