Finding target audience members to follow your brands on social media networks can take time, but there are people within your grasp who can help. As another tool in your digital marketing toolbox for your social marketing efforts, you can recruit these people to become members of your social media army to help your brand extend it’s reach on social media networks.

Last fall, I attended a presentation by Jason Miller, Senior Manager, Content Marketing & Social, LinkedIn. During the presentation, Jason made a reference to using a social media army to promote your brand on social media networks.

With the help of Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing,  I’ve taken Jason’s idea and put together a rough outline how you can recruit members and build your own a social media army to extend your brand’s reach.

Purpose of a Social Media Army:

Share your posts and retweet your messages in social media networks to reach army members’ connections and attract additional potential customers to experience your brand.

Think about what you want your army members to share and engage their social media connections to seek you out.

NEXT, start recruiting your own social media army.

Potential Social Media Army Members:

• Internal Stakeholders
• Employee Advocates of Social Media
• Internal Thought Leaders
• Top Industry Influencers
• Brand Evangelists
• Long-Time Customers

What’s in it for them to become a Social Media Army Members?

• Personal Branding
• Building personal social media marketing skills
• Building relationships with your target audience
• For Internal Members, building customer relationships
• Increasing your company’s reputation as a thought leader

Train your Social Media Army Members:

• Provide background/history on the different social media networks
• Explain the types of content that gets posted to each social media network
• Outline the social media participation rules
• Provide content tips
• Instruct them how to post images, video
• Provide formatting parameters for posts
• Tell them how to optimize messages for SEO
• Teach them how to create army strong stories to entice their connections to find your website
• Tell them how their connections can give you their email addresses
• Create a series of blog posts for your social media army members for communication and training

Think about the following quote from Pete Cashmore, CEO & Founder of mashable.com, “We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value.”

A social media army can get your messages inserted into as many channels and increase your value.

You can’t do it all. HOWEVER, with a social media army, you can participate in more social media networks and your messages can reach more potential customers than if you tried to build a target audience on social media networks all on your own.

SO, recruit some help and start building your social media army today.

Sources: Marketo’s Definitive Guide to Social Marketing

To learn more about Building a Social Media Army, look at Jeff Bullas’s How to Get Others to Do Your Social Media Marketing for Free article.

Updates and Tools for Social Media Networks

• Facebook Checklist [Infographic] (Andrea Vahl)
• Facebook’s News Reader App, Paper, Launches on iOS in the US (Search Engine Journal)
• How to Drive More Facebook Traffic to Your Website in 5 Easy Steps  (Social Media Examiner)
• Facebook Updates News Feed for Pages: This Week in Social Media (Social Media Examiner)
• Facebook Marketing Checklist for this Year and Beyond (Smedio)

• Twitter Search Gets Better, More Useful, With New Search Filters (Search Engine Journal)
• Twitter Checklist [Infographic] (Andrea Vahl)
• 8 Reasons You’re Not Getting More Followers on Twitter (Post Planner)
• Twitter teams up with Thomson Reuters to give Eikon users tweets and analysis for listed firms (The Next Web)
• Twitter partners with 300 Entertainment to give ‘full access’ of its user data to the music industry (The Next Web)

• LinkedIn Checklist [Infographic] (Andrea Vahl)
• The Sophisticated Marketer’s Guide to LinkedIn [eBook] – from Jason Miller, Senior Manager, Content Marketing & Social, LinkedIn

• 3 Google+ Tools That Take Your Marketing to a New Level (Social Media Examiner)
• 64 Google+ Branding Strategies [Infographic] (Copyblogger)
• SMToolbox: Be More Effective on Google+ with CircleCount (Social Media Today)

• Instagram Platform Ripe for Marketers Shows New Research (Social Media Examiner)
• The Instagram Rule of 11 (ClickZ)

• 26 Ways to Make Pinterest Work for Your Business (Social Media Examiner)
• 30 Reasons – Pinterest Will Rule In 2014 [Infographic] (SocialBlog)

Next Weeks Social Media Update Topic: Getting your Social Media Followers to Share your Brand’s Messages

Learn More about Digital Marketing Manager, Cindy Plough