OHL has been participating in social communications since we began blogging in 2005.
Today, while we still blog, our possibilities for engagement have expanded to include
microblogging with Twitter, sharing of photos via Flickr, group networking via Linkedin
and fan engagement via Facebook. Most recently, we launched a YouTube channel for
videos. Our intent is to open the doorways of communication, grow trust, increase
transparency, facilitate new connections and engage our audience wherever they are most
comfortable. Our audience includes you! Have you considered delving into the social
media/social networking realm but didn\u2019t know where to begin? We\u2019re happy to help and
look forward to becoming part of your network.

Interact with your prospects while in the discovery phase. Increasingly, your audience is
going online to conduct research, read reviews and express their opinions about your
brand, products and services prior to making a purchase. Great insight and engagement
opportunities can be had through participation in social media/ social networking.

Meet expectations. More people are adopting social media and as the adoption rate
continues to grow with year over year increases in traffic of 85% for Linkedin, 202% for
Facebook and a whopping 866% for Twitter*. As the adoption rate grows, so does the
impression that businesses should have a presence. Charlene Li, author of Groundswell,
said at a recent conference that social will be like air. Indeed, Mashable.com reports:

"Recently, we highlighted a study that showed two-thirds of marketers now use social media in some capacity. Today, more data confirming this trend, but also pointing to what looks poised to be nearly total saturation within a year."

Create spokes for your Hub. As a search engine optimization practitioner, one quickly begins to see the value in making social part of a healthy search strategy. Think of your website as the hub of useful information and all the social media aspects as the spokes that can connect your audience back to your site. Some examples:

Use YouTube to host your video content and gain an additional spot in the search engine results. YouTube has a paid service for advertising but creating your own YouTube channel is free and with a well constructed profile, you can send traffic back to the company site.

Create a fan page on Facebook. Engage your fans on Facebook with wall
postings, links to other social properties, inside news, coupons, special offers and
continue to drive traffic back to your site.

Use Twitter and Bit.ly (or any other url shortening service of your preference) to communicate new product offerings, do product research, link to polls, announce special offers, secret coupons and latest news.

Add \u201cadd this\u201d button to news that can be shared to encourage social
bookmarking, tweets on twitter, wall postings, etc. This social sharing activity
will increase the number of links back to your information.

Consider QR Codes for video and offline ads. You may have heard of QR codes
before but in case not, the QR stands for \u201cQuick Response\u201d and these strange
looking squares that are encoded with useful information such as web address,
phone number, email information and more. Many of today\u2019s smart phones can
now read the information using QR code reader software and the camera.
Generate your QR code here:http://qr code.kayw a.co m/.

Manage your brand reputation. Imagine you work for a large brand name and you are
merrily going about your way, selling your product and oblivious to what is being said on
social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. You later discover that someone has
started a Facebook group about your peanut butter, for example, and how terrible it
tastes. While there are ways to deal with this after the fact, marketers can learn to be
more savvy and take proactive steps to manage (but not control) the brand and engage
unhappy customers from the start. End the end, you will gain more fans and advocates by
being transparent and demonstrating that you are a company that cares and is attentive.

Calculating ROI will all depend on what you perceive to be of value. There are some
success stories to be told where sales are concerned. Take Dell, for example, in June of
2009, Dell made an announcement stating they had surpassed $3 million in sales from
links on one of its Twitter accounts \u2013 seeReadWrite Web.

You might look at social velocity \u2013 rate of growth of your followers, fans, comments,
links, etc. as a way to calculate your ROI. Social velocity is a good way to gauge brand
awareness.ReadWrite Web in the same article as previously mentioned, provided other
compelling reasons for engaging in social media:

Many of the social tools provide valuable insight to marketers such as number of
interactions, views, demographic information, etc. All this information can help you
customize a message that will be most beneficial to your audience and while much can be