[tweetmeme]There’s a growing segment of online population who are consuming content via social publishing sites, and you need to consider if social publishing fits your social media strategy.
Social publishing is a type of social media marketing that allows you to publish and share long-form written content. Content that can be shared on social publishing site includes PowerPoint presentations, Word files, spreadsheets, PDF files, among others.
Your business can use social publishing sites to help increase your traffic, and you’re your content viral. Once your materials are published through their platform, readers can download your content, embed them on their own blogs or sites, and share them with their contacts in other social sharing sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It is also an ideal venue for establishing your expertise and reputation as a thought leader in your space.
Some of the social publishing sites are Scribd.com, Slideshare.net, Issuu.com, Docstoc.com, Authorstream.com, Slideboom.com, MyPlick.com and others.
So how do big businesses typically use social publishing?
The leading social publishing site, Scribd.com, recently released several case studies involving successful strategies their clients have implemented using the social publishing tools provided on the site.
Below you’ll find some of the specific strategies that were used and why they were successful so you can use similar techniques in the future:
- Congressman Mark Warner
- New York Times DealBook
- Random House Inc.
Congressman Mark Warner
Congressman Mark Warner (D-VA) http://www.scribd.com/MarkWarner started using Scribd in April 2009 and now has 75,798 followers. He has uploaded 128 documents, from his presentations to personal documents, which has been read 116,581 times.
His social marketing campaign’s goal is to ensure transparency. During his campaign, he felt that the ability for his constituents to openly view documents would be the key to his success. His Scribd strategy was simple:
- Upload documents explaining healthcare reform in simple terms
- Organize documents thematically
Congressman Warner’s strategies worked because:
- Documents were brief and to the point
- Specifically targeted to certain audiences (Health Reform for veterans, seniors, women, and even geographical)
- Personal documents often containing hand-typed or hand-written letters from the Congressman