The Three Phases of Marketing Yourself With Social Media
Social Media can be broken down into three phases:
- Building
- This phase is the one in which you are setting up accounts, filling out profiles, customizing them, researching which social networking and bookmarking sites will work best for you and generally building up your presence online.
- Branding
- Branding is the phase where you start taking the accounts you’ve set up and promoting them across the various social networking platforms of which you’re a part. This include starting conversations with people, figuring out how you want to present yourself, your company or your client in more depth and generally start branding yourself.
- Engaging
- This ties into the second phase but takes it a step further; in this phase you have everything built, you’ve begun to brand and expose yourself or your client, and now you’re really engaging. You’re Twittering, FriendFeeding, or Plurking every day, you’re writing to bloggers and building relationships, you’re answering customers’ (and potential customers’) questions and engaging them in a more personal way.
