A step-by-step guide to help journalists (and others) increase their readership, exposure and recognition online.

When I learned my neighbor and Number 1 Shimbun editor Fred Varcoe didn’t even have his own Web site, I was more than a bit surprised.

After all, I knew from our frequent conversations that as a freelance journalist, he was always on the lookout for new assignments and ways to increase demand and fees for his writing. From my own experience making my living online, I also knew the Internet could help him with these goals.

With this in mind, I offered to set up a simple yet effective starter system for Fred to tap into this social-media audience and increase his readership, exposure and recognition online.

My main concerns when creating this system for Fred were to ensure it was easy for him to use, it would not involve a large investment of time or money to set up and that it would be effective.

Since even Fred can manage his system now with just a few minutes of extra effort, the cost for setting it up was less than ¥1,000 and we were able to introduce new readers to Fred’s writing within minutes of our first trial run, I believe these concerns were adequately addressed.

Although designed with journalists in mind, this straightforward social media marketing system can readily be adapted by others, including writers, photographers, consultants, diplomats, business owners or anyone else who can derive value from introducing large numbers of interested people to themselves, their organization, products or services.

Fred suggested that since many readers of Number 1 Shimbun fall within these categories, many of you might be interested in how we set up this system so you could replicate it yourself. With this in mind, next I’ll walk you step-by-step through the creation and implementation of this system.

OVERVIEW
Many of Fred’s stories and articles, while having first appeared in print, are now available online as the magazines and newspapers he’s been published by are creating online archives of their past print content. This presents an incredible opportunity for increasing Fred’s exposure quickly, as this content is now available for anyone with Internet access to read. Fred just needs to introduce it to them.

By creating and integrating a personal Web site and free accounts on two of the Web’s largest social networking sites – places where literally tens of millions of people are waiting to discover and share something new and interesting to read – we not only create a new platform for Fred to introduce people to his content, but tap into an instant, massive and interested audience as well.

Step 1: Create a personal Web site
A personal Web site is at the heart of this online system. In Fred’s case, we are branding him and his skills as a writer, so he is the main topic of his site. Because of this, we registered the domain fredvarcoe.com to use as his website’s address.

Another benefit to using his own name as his website’s domain name is the “SEO” or search engine optimization benefits it provides. In fact, if you Google “Fred Varcoe,” you’ll see the site we built for him is already in top position in Google’s search results.

What this means is, whenever people search for Fred online, they will find his site first, not a page on another site that has published one of his articles. This gives Fred even more control and leverage over his personal brand.

The cost for registering the domain was less than $10 for the year. Hosting the site only costs a few dollars per month. I already rent server space for my own online businesses, so we hosted Fred’s site there.

To create the actual site, we installed the popular open-source (and free) blogging platform Wordpress. We then spent a few minutes customizing the site with Fred’s picture, an introduction, a contact form and outgoing links to some of his previously published articles.

Fred now has his own personal online presence that he is in total control of. Whenever he wants to share any of his new stories, articles or thoughts with the world, he can just log into his website where he is greeted with a simple online text editor. After typing, he clicks one button and his content is instantly published to his site.

Step 2: Create an account at Twitter
Now that Fred had a place to post his own thoughts and links to his published articles, he had to find a way to quickly let other interested people know about what he’s posted. To do this we set up free accounts on two of the most popular social networking sites. The first of these is Twitter.com.

Twitter allows people who create accounts there to post short text messages on their site – up to 140 characters each. These messages are then instantly posted to everyone in your Twitter network and are also searchable by the entire Twitter membership base.

According to website statistic database Alexa.com, Twitter is currently among the top 20 most-visited websites on the entire Internet. This equals literally millions of live users – many who will find and read the posts you make there and follow any links you include.

Fred started building his Twitter network by inviting me to be one his Twitter friends, as I already have a Twitter account and large network of followers. As Fred quickly discovered, just one well-connected contact on Twitter can be a very good start.

As time goes on though, Fred’s network of interested followers will continue to grow, rapidly snowballing his reach
and the number of people who discover his writing.

Step three: Create a Facebook account
Facebook is another of the top social networking sites where users share content and links with each other in real time. According to their own website, www.facebook.com has over 350 million users.

By creating a free account at Facebook, anybody can instantly access another massive, real-time audience interested in discovering you and what you have to say.

Fred was already one step ahead of the game here. He had previously set up a Facebook account and was using it occasionally to network with friends, family and colleagues.

Step 4: Run the system
With his own personal Web site where
he can publish his own content, along with free accounts on two of the largest social networking sites, Fred was now ready to launch his starter online marketing system and introduce new people to his writing.

For our trial run, we selected one of his previously published articles as a first topic. I recalled Fred speaking fondly of his interview with Richard Branson and the resulting article that was published by
The Japan Times. As that article is now archived online, I thought it would be a good one to start with. Although originally published in 2000, the content is still relevant and interesting and makes a great introduction to Fred’s authority and skills as a journalist.

First, we made a new post to Fred’s Web site talking about the interview and the resulting article. At the end of the post, we included a link to the full article as archived on The Japan Times website.

Next, we announced this new post to the social-media audience by logging into his Twitter account and making a short “tweet” about this new content, along with a link back to his site.

Although Fred only has one contact in his network – me – I immediately see Fred’s new “tweet,” and I repost it to my network on Twitter.

This is known as “re-tweeting,” and the more you interact with your community on Twitter, the more often this happens and the more word spreads about your content. Within moments, those in my network who are online at the time are alerted to this new article at Fred’s site.

Many of them will see this “re-tweet” and click the link to visit his site. In fact, when we checked Fred’s Web site statistics just a few minutes later, we discovered that 17 people had already clicked and visited Fred’s site.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though. As Twitter posts are searchable and are indexed by Google and other major search engines, this single post will continue to bring new readers to Fred’s site for a long time to come too.

I also encouraged Fred to announce this new post to his Facebook network to further increase attention and traffic.

Step 5: Repeat
Now, any time Fred wants to introduce more readers to his content, he only needs to repeat the process outlined above. He’ll soon find that more and more people are joining his Twitter and Facebook networks and visiting his site to read his posts and articles.

Step 6: Advanced strategies
Besides regularly posting new content to his site and then announcing it on his social networking accounts, Fred can further build his following by engaging with his readers. This is where the real power of social media resides.

On his own Web site, he can actively monitor and reply to any comments readers leave. Also, a few extra minutes each day managing and engaging with his Twitter and Facebook networks has the potential to exponentially increase his readership, exposure and recognition. The contact form on his Web site allows potential clients and publishers to request information about his availability and rates for writing assignments.

An added benefit to keeping up with this process is that Google and other major search engines will begin listing each new post that Fred makes in their search engines, creating more streams of new, targeted and interested readers to his site – without any extra effort on his part.

The system outlined above is allowing Fred to get his feet wet with social media, introducing new readers to his writing and branding his name among a fresh and growing audience he would otherwise not have had access too.

He now has a foundation he can easily build upon to massively increase exposure to his writing by introducing it to the millions of Internet users seeking content on the topics he writes about.

With a few extra hours and this blueprint as a guide, you can now set up a similar social-media marketing system for yourself and enjoy the same benefits. ❶