newmediaMike

One of the worst parts of being in the SEO industry is when clients come to you after they’ve built their website.  The idea seems to be that after you’ve conceived a project, funded it, built, tested and deployed the site, the SEO guy can come in and “add some optimization”, which is a bit like asking an architect to come in and improve a house after it has been built.

Those companies deserve to get soaked with high consulting fees.

As social media becomes more important, the same philosophy seems to be becoming prevalent.  Companies either look for a peripheral social media project ( a waste of money), or they look to add a social media component to an existing campaign.

To paraphrase the ING Direct guy. “Stop wasting your money.”  If you want to get involved in social media, (and you should if you communicate with your customers) the time to do so is months before you launch your message.  Building a reputation in a community and laying the groundwork for search engine optimization and traffic should be occurring months before you write the first piece of code or buy your first ad.  The reasoning is simple.

1) Social media gives you a real-time monitoring advantage which can impact decision making.
2) If you are launching a dedicated micro-site you have to be aware of the “sandbox” effect on Google. The longer a website is up, the more impact it has in Google.  By writing content on a site before you launch it can boost your SEO and give you a highly-ranked site prior to the official launch.
3) Take the time to learn a community before you spend money on it. This is nothing more than  common sense.  They know more than you do about what they want.
4) Build trust in the community prior to launch. This gives you evangelists who help spread the word of your launch.
5) If your idea is the worst thing since new Coke, Social Media campaigns will give you plenty of warning before you sink big bucks into a project.

Simply signing up for a Facebook account and adding friends on Twitter won’t give you these results.  Seriously - those don’t even qualify as campaigns.  It would be like posting a flyer in your neighborhood laundromat and calling it an ad campaign.

So where does that leave you?  If you plan to implement a social media campaign for a product, service, or website, the time to do so is at least two months before you commit to a final budget, and preferably six months before site launch.