Soci@lByte

George G. Smith Jr. is a social media strategist for a nationally recognized brand, as well as a good friend of mine. George has spoken at Blog World, IZEAFest, Chicks Who Click and SXSW about social media outreach strategies. As more and more companies are recognizing the value in having a social media director, I thought he’d make a great interview for Soci@lByte. You can find him on Twitter here and read his blog here.

1) What three things would you recommend to a social media strategist for a brand?

The three pieces of advice I would give to a social media strategist for a brand are: be curious, be patient, and be persistent.  Curiosity comes in because, to be successful, you need to want to learn everything you can about your brand.  You want to learn how things work, the strategy, the past, the present – all of it to be able to communicate with people in a passionate way.  On the flip side, you should also want to be curious about the community that you work with – get to know them as individuals and build authentic relationships from what originally are business relationships.   Patience is necessary because you can not control the nature of communications.  There will be times when the things you want to say don’t get spread as quickly as you want them.  There will be times when things spin drastically out of control.  Remembering to be patient and trusting in your ability to connect with your brand and with your audience is essential to success.  Persistence is just having the energy and passion to do it every day – social media communities and relationships are build over time and you have to be persistent to get your voice heard.  People will ultimately be attracted to this persistence and want to hear what you’re saying….

2) You did a blog post several months ago stating that you don’t pitch bloggers with your products. Is that still true? What have been the pros and cons of this strategy?

“I don’t pitch bloggers” was a mantra that I came up with because I don’t blindly contact bloggers and social media influencers with a product pitch.  For me, the most effective way to utilize social media is through building relationships with your key fans.  Working at a well-known brand, I was able to effectively find our key spokespeople on the web and build a community from there.  From there, I was able to use those relationships to open doors to other people and other opportunities to introduce the brand to new people.  The pro’s of this strategy are that the relationships are authentic, they are trusted, and usually yield strong results and grows a strong network of people willing to work with the brand.  The Cons are that it is time intensive – building a real community means having real relationships.  It takes time and isn’t all encompassing.  I think, ultimately, the right mixture of pitching and relationship building is the right way to do things but it is dependent on the strength of your pre-existing community.

3) You planned a successful sold-out event during BlogHer? What was your strategy in selecting bloggers? What would be your recommendation to other companies when selecting bloggers?

The best strategy for selecting bloggers is to find out who is already talking about you.  Those are the easiest relationships to build – these are your brand advocates that are out there already.  If you’re a young company and the conversations aren’t there, find people who are talking about competitors but are open to discovering new companies.  This all stems back to step one in social media which is to listen – listening to what the crowd is saying will help develop any strategy.

Once you have a list of people that you feel you can approach – read their blogs.  Find out who these people are.  Ultimately, the relationships you build with bloggers will turn them into spokespeople – so make sure that they stay true to how you want your brand to be perceived.  Bloggers are all unique and have different voices – some of those voices may conflict with how a brand wants to be perceived.  Taking the time to “get to know them” by reading their blog will set you up for great success.

And finally – for a good event – let the crowd decide.  We sent out invites to the people we worked with and encouraged them to spread the word and invite people on their own.  Successful bloggers are natural networkers and they will discover new people that have a passion for your brand that you may not have been able to find yourself.  It creates a larger network and makes for a happier community.