One of the things we mentioned that sets the influential student bodies apart from the non-influential ones is whether or not the student body as a whole goes beyond just organizing AlMaghrib seminars.

I believe the future social growth and community integration of AlMaghrib student bodies will depend on how well they’ll command the local social media, which I believe is a reflection of how involved they’re with the community they’re in.

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APPROACH

AlMaghrib student bodies need not be just involved with their community, but they need to use the social media tools available to them to bring local coverage of what is happening in their community with the mentioning of local names.

When names are mentioned, people pay attention. This is one of the reasons why Facebook is the #1 photo sharing service online.

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FACEBOOK PAGE STRATEGY

I think the most neglected aspect of local AlMaghrib student body social marketing are their Facebook pages.

A few things are in order:

• Immediately grow fan base to about 100 so a link can be shorten to something like facebook.com/qdurbah – this can be done by an admin of the page via http://facebook.com/username

• Formula for student interaction and growth for Facebook pages is: consistent quality content + specific set period of time + team based social engagement = brand growth & exposure

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TAKE PLENTY OF PHOTOS

By “quality content” I mean, something worth sharing with people that they’ll pass on to their friends. People love names and faces. Like I said before, it’s one of the reasons Facebook is #1 widely used photo sharing system.

Have two or three people designated to take photos – not just at the seminars – but at events all throughout.

So for example:  In New Jersey where “Qabeelat Durbah” students are involved. It’s known that AlMaghrib is about bringing the knowledge out to the community. 80% of the photo’s on Durbah’s Facebook page albums should be from non-seminar activities. Community events, get togethers, social service projects, etc.

By photos, I don’t mean upload a 100 photos of each event – unless of course it’s 100 quality photos. I mean, each event should have an album of 30-40 – more if needed – quality photos that cover all the people in the event.

This way they tag them selves or others tag them. Keep in mind, you’ll need to allow others to tag people from Durbah’s Facebook gallary. Ideally you want to get someone good in photography. Preferably someone with access to a DSLR camera. If you don’t have that, then work with what you have.

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MAKE VIDEOS TOO

Another great option is to have regular video content.

Easiest and quickest form of videos to produce to put up online as a start are testimonial focused GemReels like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

GemReels don’t have to be fancy. Simply a talking head video with some Broll with an individual sharing something they learned or worth thinking about. Something as simple as this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Testimonials can be a bit tricky, but if done right they can be SUPER powerful. The key to getting a powerful testimonial on camera is a matter of getting the subject to answer the right questions. More about this here: GemReel Breakdown With Social Marketing Perspective

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Set a goal to get a well cut GemReel or 5 – 7 simple single testimonial videos each seminar, uploaded to YouTube and then posted to the Facebook page individually while tagging the individual in the video within the status message (ie @Belal brings up “Belal Khan”). Their friends will see it and so on.

Also, all 5 – 7 videos can be posted on a single post within GemReel.com and it’ll automatically be syndicated out to @almaghribhq twitter showcasing Qabeelah’s prowess to the rest of the AlMaghrib community.

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TIME BASED GOALS

By “set period of time” I mean set a goal for a specific number of community events and activities that the Qabeelah Facebook page will cover. For example, for Durbah, the New Jersey AlMaghrib student body, there’s a LOT going on in NJ.

It’ll be very difficult to cover everything. It’s best to start with setting a goal for the next eight months to bring local coverage with local names of:

• all AlMaghrib seminars in NJ
• Community events in promotion of AlMaghrib seminars – ie; Road Trips, Lectures, etc
• One event at a major Masjid that Durbah students are a part of – ie; MCMC, ISJC, Darul Islah, ICPC

I’m assuming in the next 8 months, any given Qabeelah will have:

• Three seminars
• Three separate promo lectures for each seminar which makes a total of nine promo events
• Four major community events that Durbah students are a part of.

That’s 3 + 9 + 4 = 16.

Sixteen new albums of photos on the page with hundreds of different people tagged which leads to exposure to an exponential amount of people.

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TEAM BASED SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

What I mean by “team based social engagement” is have at least two or three people managing the page where they’re responding to and interacting with people’s comments on the page.

Assuming you’re an admin on the Durbah Facebook page, I know when you post something it always posts as if “Durbah” is responding. For that reason, each time a page admin responds to someone or makes a new wall post or note, they should sign it response with their initials or name.

For example, if I were an admin it would look something like this:

“Thanks for the kind words. It’s was certainly a pleasure seeing you there as well ^BK (or) ^BelalK”

This way actual faces and names are attached to the Durbah fanpage. There can also be a tab with a description of all those who are managing the Durbah Facebook page and how to get in touch with them individually.

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GET STARTED

I believe the above is a great place to start for FOR ANY AlMaghrib student body. Get going!

Click here to view the embedded video.

There are no more excuses to not learn basic film-making any more. The excuse used to be, I don’t have a adequate machine to edit video. Or, I don’t have a very good camera. With technology like this readily available I don’t see how one can not use this to tell their stories to effectively get their messages across.

Turns out the Droid X – Verizon’s answer to the iPhone 4 will also have 720p editing and HD video editing capabilities as well. Droid X comes out this month. I can’t wait to grab my Droid X in the coming few months and get this baby cooking on the go!

Open up yourself to new ideas and experiences regularly without any real agenda or goals, except that you want to open your mind. Some ways you can do that:

• Take a road trip – or a trip in your area that you’re not familiar with.
• Go some where that is different from your own environment. If your a mall rat, spend time at a farm. If you’re a suburbanite that drives everywhere, go to the city and take the bus, taxi or subway.
• Be around people who speak a different language than you.
• Just go out and wander your neighborhood on foot for an hour.

Get out of that which is familiar to you. Afterward you’ll feel a jolt of creativity running through you.

I’ve worked actively in professional and community organizations since 1999. A common thread I find throughout is that people don’t understand the importance of PR, much less what it involves. It’s one of the necessary legs of any marketing strategy. Ask someone what a PR professional does and see what sort of responses you get.

I figured I’d lay out briefly what’s involved in PR:

• Message Refinement
• Community Involvement
• Crisis Management
• Editorial
• Spokesperson Training / Media Training
• News
• Blogs
• Sponsorships
• Web Relations
• Industry Trends
• Media Relations
• Events / Conferences / Think Tanks
• Executive Speaking Engagements
• Investor Relations

Just to name a few.

The major difference is, back in 2000 the website was usually outsourced or assigned to one or two people and was – in the best case scenario – used as an informational outlet.

Today, social media isn’t an informational tool. It’s a human-to-human engagement tool.

Most organizations don’t seem to get it.

Who Is Responsible For Social Media Engagement?

Jim Collins in his book “Good to Great” talks about not only having the right people on the bus, but also having them in the right seats.

Just like how you wouldn’t want a lawyer diagnosing your cough or your doctor representing you in court, you shouldn’t have sales people engaging people on technical issues nor should you have technical people engaging people on product.

A Simple Example – Religious Center

A religious center is composed on several committees:

• Youth Committee
• Board of Trustees
• Executive Committee
• Onsight Logistics
• Community Outreach
• Events
• Hospitality..

just to name a few.

There should be at least one person from each of those groups that is actively engaging people. You don’t want the social media rep for the youth committee to be addressing parking issues (ie: double parked car in front of entrance). At the same time it makes sense to have someone from community outreach that has an outgoing personality to be managing the center’s Facebook page.

If the religious center has a blog, someone from each committee should be blogging about their respective areas of activity and expertise. You’ll be surprised as to the level of involvement you’ll get from your social media team.

Keep in mind, with responsibility comes accountability. That which you inspect, people on your team will respect.

Bottom Line

If you want to successfully engage the target community using the tool of social media, understand that it’s not a one or two man job. Your team should be made up of a number of people from different departments/divisions who each have a forte that the community will appreciate and benefit from.

If one person is doing the work, it can take massive amount to time away from that individual. However, if you have a team of people being involved then all it takes is a commitment of a couple hours a week at most.

Real marketing is in the conversations that take place between people. It’s no wonder that word of mouth is the most trusted and influential method of communicating a message. Social media is all about enabling that conversation about you, your company and your brand.

However, once the conversation has started, you can’t control what people say. All you can do is influence them by being open and part of the conversation.

People use social media for four primary reasons:

1. Communication
2. Collaboration
3. Education
4. Entertainment

It only makes sense that you gear your social media activity around these four activities.

Communication

What are you saying about yourself and your company or brand? What are others saying about you? Is what they’re saying in alignment with what you want them to say? Are you conversing with them?

You need a solid brand image and message when communicating with the world.

Collaboration

How are you engaging your community or tribe? What sort of participation are you eliciting from them? What benefits are they getting out of engaging with you? What avenues are you using to engage your target?

Some effective tools for collaboration are organizational wikis as well as online forums.

Education

How are you leveraging your expertise or the expertise of those in your company or organization? He who gives most first, gets most first.

Blogs are the most influential social media tool in existence today. How regularly are you taking the time to educate your audience?

Entertainment

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world because people love to be entertained. They want to hear good stories, they want to laugh. They want to be amazed by what they see.

Videos that truly entertain get passed on and become part of the conversation. How regularly are you producing video content to communicate your message?

Videos are the most memorable communication tool available in your marketing arsenal today. However, if you aren’t familiar with the processes to produce video content quickly and efficiently then you will consume a lot of your time.

For this I recommend you check out Secrets of Video Production – shameless plug

I’ve worked in sales since high school. It takes 4-5 attempts to have the opportunity to communicate with the prospect and another 7-12 sequential communications to make a sale.

Whether you’re working on a specific project or for a company, figure out all the different touch points and avenues in which you can communicate with your target audience and of those touch points, which ones carry the most impact.

Focus on the ones that have the most effect. Some examples of touch points are:

• Advertising - posters, fliers, newspapers ads, billboards, etc
  
• Sales Promotions - “buy two, get one free”, “early registration discount for next seminar”, product giveaway (have a 70% higher retention rate than any other sort of advertising).
  
• Events and Experiences - Special one-night guest speaker, entertainment night, etc
  
• PR and Publicity - getting community newsletters to write about you and/or getting local newspapers to cover the story, bloggers to blog, tweeters to tweet, youtubers to make vids, producing your own newsletter
  
• Direct & Interactive Marketing - social media, snail-mail campaigns, email campaigns
• Word of Mouth - gossip circles, eat outs, social networks
  
• Personal selling - very important at every level, at events, where people gather
  

Figure out who already has the highest influence, reach, impact and goodwill in the audience you want to reach. You want to start there.

Get those persons of influence to extol the benefits of what you’re offering or the organization itself. At the same time, you need to be able to measure-quantify, compare-contrast specific dynamics, either as the alternative means of addressing a problem the community or it’s people have. Get someone of stature and respect to endorse it

The implementation of this specific strategy has been key having AlMaghrib Institute expand from city to city.

Keep in mind, there’s a fine line between harassment and sequential communication. In the work that you do, the key is to understand that it’s only a matter of time that people will hear your message. Patience and pig headed discipline is super important.

Continously think and seek to understand what the community want and need. One way to do this is to interview key influential individuals that could be your key to getting the information about the seminars out to your community.

To download this thesis, simply enter your name and email address on the right. If you’re already an email subscriber, then you should have already received a link to the thesis.

Enjoy!

• Give the Message Mastery website a more professional look.
• A better design user interface that would allow for more control as to how traffic is directed once the visitor arrives here.
• The advent of full-width page design to allow for landing page  setups for use with Google Adwords and online sales.

This design upgrade is a work in progress.

I need some help designing a new logo that represents Message Mastery more appropriately. This website is an instructional portal with courses for paying members and content for non-members in the form of a blog that’s centered around:

• marketing and business strategy
• social media
• public relations (course in production)
• video production

If you can help design a new logo and I end up using it, as a token of appreciation I’ll give you a full hour of marketing consultation and coaching with what ever project or business you’re working on.

Respond with a comment below with your design concept.

Click the image below for the full article.