I presented at the York Science Park Business Support Seminars on Tuesday 26th October.  Please download the ppt from this seminar.

I talked about the techniques for starting a social media campaign.  People always seem to dive straight into setting up the profiles and sites for their campaign, without giving much thought to listening to the existing conversations.

This researching and evaluating phase is fundamental to any campaign.  How can you know what the topics of conversation are, who the main influencers are or which sites or forums are the main conversations on?

It is incredibly arrogant to start broadcasting your views and commentary, without listening and participating in the existing conversations.  It is the difference between getting your target audience to participate or not.

Those first few blog posts or tweets will establish the tone of your campaign, so if you get these wrong, your campaign could be in for a torrid time.

Once you have an map of the conversations you can then plan your strategy, design and content.  Only then should you consider how you engage and start participating in the online conversations.

How did you monitor your conversations, what tools do you use? I’d be interested to hear!