Here is an excerpt from my latest podcast and interview with Gwen Peake, Digital Communications Manager at Ford Motor Company.  I learned a lot about Ford Motor Company’s social media strategy and what has led to their success in the social media space. 

To hear the full podcast visit Social Media Voices Project Podcast.

Connect with Gwen Peake on Twitter

Visit Gwen’s Blog

Enjoy and share!

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  I confess. I don’t think social media folks have done a decent job with educating people about RSS.  RSS is a very powerful tool and you should know how it works.  Stop faking it!  Take a few minutes to watch this video.  I promise you'll get it.  And if you want to play around with a feed aggregator ( you'll know what that is after watching the video),  I’ve been using  Snarfer lately.  I like it!

I love Follow Fridays on Twitter and the mentions are priceless!  Here’s a tip to make it even better:  Instead of stuffing as many Twitter handles as you can in your tweet, show your #followfriday recipients some love.  Take the extra minute to include information about why people should follow them.  Do they create great content?  Did they do something nice for you?  Will they buy us all free lunch?  It really helps to know!  This might mean multiple tweets, but hey, aren’t those worthy of referring worth that much?

More good stuff on social media marketing

So you’ve included links to your social profiles in your e-newsletter?  Just the links alone may not be enough to drive people to those sites.  Give your readers a reason to “fan” or follow you!  Include a screenshot of your Twitter feed. Display the number of fans you currently have on Facebook.  Post sample pictures from your photo galleries on Flickr.  Give them a reason to be part of your following, and in return, reward them with some really good content.

More cool stuff on social media marketing

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An example of how I handle invitations to connect on Facebook when I really don’t know you.  What do you think?