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If you haven’t checked out Radian6 yet, you should. Radian6 (@Radian6) was founded  in 2006 with the idea that companies need to actively engage on social media. This means that they need to listen to what is being said about their brand, industry and competitors, and measure, analyse and report on their social media efforts. Their platform is so robust, and the company does such a good job at social media monitoring, that they got acquired by Salesforce.com in 2011 for $326 million. That’s simply amazing! They’re also recognized as a leader in social media listening platforms in “The Forrester Wave: Listening Platforms, Q3 2010” report. If that’s not enough, more than HALF of Fortune 100 companies choose Radian6 as their top platform, and Mashable named Radian6’s Co-founder Chris Ramsey one of five masterminds redefining social media. Are you convinced that they are an awesome company yet? I am!

Now, you’re probably wondering what makes me, a fourth year Commerce student at Mount Allison University, qualified to work for Radian6. I’ll tell you why. I understand what the company does. Not only that, but I also understand the importance of what they do, and how this will change the social media industry forever. But why do I know this? Because I do it for myself.

Some of my peers probably think I’m crazy spending hours on end, every single day, listening and analyzing to what is being said within my social media community. I say I would be crazy not doing so! Why? Because what I am doing is an extremely valuable learning experience that cannot be taught in books or university lectures, but only by doing it for yourself.

Now you’re probably wondering: “What the heck is he talking about, he understands the company because he does the same thing as they do for himself?” See, when you look at a social media profile, you can only see the face value of it. You can see how many Twitter followers a person has, or how many LinkedIn connections, but you can’t see the work that goes into making a social media strategy happen. You see the end result, which is only a minor part of social media!

Here are some of the things that I do, on my spare time, for fun, that help me with my online community:

#1 I listen to relevant keywords in my industry, and engage with followers accordingly

It’s important to know what’s going on in your industry. I choose to follow social media and branding keywords, as that’s what I find relevant to what I want to do. I listen to what conversations are happening, who’s discussing the topics, and I engage with the followers that I see fit my community best.

#2 I target followers that are relevant to what I want to do in the future, and engage with them

I use tools like SocialBro and Twellow to find followers that are relevant to social media and branding. I do keyword searches to find followers based on their conversations and what’s included in their profiles, and then follow and engage with influencers.

#3 I monitor what my influencers are saying, and engage accordingly

I have followers that are influential in my community, and I think it’s important to listen to what they have to say. I monitor their conversations, and make sure I engage with them and build relationships.

#4 I track my own keywords, to make sure I respond to conversations about me

Unless you are tracking your own keywords, there is no way to monitor on Twitter if someone shared your content if they don’t mention you or re-tweet you. So I make sure I monitor conversations around my name, and if someone shares my content without tagging me to it, I can still thank them and engage with them because of keyword following.

#5 I use tools to analyse my online community, to make sure I engage with them at optimal times

In order to engage with your followers, you need to know when your community is most active. So I did a full analysis of my Twitter account, using different tools, to figure out what were the optimal times for me to share content with my community. I compiled the data, analysed it, and came up with results for when to best share curated content, re-tweets, and my own blog content. 

And it has worked well for me so far! I always measure my results that I found from my analysis and make sure it is consistent with my findings.

I do all of that on my own spare time. I don’t sell a product or a service, I don’t get online revenues from ads and such. The only reason I do this is for the sole purpose of my own education (and for fun, of course!). I think it’s very important to invest in myself, and I believe that this learning experience has thought me extremely valuable skills that are in high demand in the social media and marketing industry nowadays.

As you can see from my points above, those are all things that I do that mostly revolve around Twitter. That’s just because I prefer Twitter as my channel of engaging with my community. However, I am present and active on many other social media platforms as well. Here’s a list of all my social media profiles:

Here are links to all the different tools to manage my social media presence:

One very important thing about social media is to make sure that you don’t seem like a robot. You need to show an essence of your personality in order to be successful. So here’s a little bit more about me…

I wouldn’t consider myself athletic (far from it actually), but I do enjoy physical activity. I go to the gym during the winter, and during the summer, I like to golf. I also love to cook! I am somewhat of an adventure seeker in the kitchen. I like to create new recipes from scratch, and hope for the best that they taste good! I’m also somewhat of a musician. I play piano and guitar, and I also sing. I can also play the bass and mandolin a bit as well.

As you can tell, I am passionate about social media and marketing. I think I would be a perfect candidate to work at Radian6. When I take on a project, I take it on with nothing but a commitment. And that includes my place of work. I always give it my all, and nothing less. I am eager to learn and to move up as high as I can within the company. I hope you enjoyed this post, and I’m looking forward to hearing more from you. You can contact me through any of my social media profiles, by commenting on this post, or by email at dhebert@mta.ca.