by Martha Spizziri
ASBPE Web Editor

Even some B2B editors who were initially skeptical about social media sites are finding, to their own surprise, that they can be useful even for niche publications like the ones we serve. The problem is, keeping up with all of them can eat up a lot of time.

Well, here’s a surprise: Social media can actually help you to be a more efficient editor. That’s the view of ASBPE Chicago board member Erin Erickson. Along along with social media expert Lorna Li, she’ll present a webinar for ASBPE May 29 on managing social networks.

As a senior web editor at Putman Media and founder of UBrandMedia.com, Erickson is intimately familiar with social sites. During the webinar, she’ll explain how those media have changed the editor’s daily to-do list. She says she uses social media tools in at least eight different ways — to:

• assess articles.
• contact freelancers.
• research articles.
• write articles.
• find images or video.
• find sources.
• stay relevant on industry topics.
• generate article ideas.

Anyone who’s dabbled in social media has discovered that it can be hard to know which sites and what kind of content are giving you the most benefit. With blogs, you can easily get traffic stats. But with social networks, you don’t always have hard data on how many viewers you’re drawing. (Sure, you may have 200 followers on Twitter, but how many of them are really reading your tweets regularly?)

Webinar speakers Erin Erickson and Lorna Li say how you use social media depends on your goals.

At the webinar, Lorna Li will have advice on deciding where to concentrate your efforts and how to use social media as efficiently as possible. She says there’s no cookie-cutter approach to social media marketing; your strategy will depend on your goals, your audience, and your resources. In this webinar, Lorna will discuss:

• defining your social media marketing strategy.
• mapping your social media universe.
• identifying relevant social networks.
• promoting content on the social web.
• metrics and social media monitoring.
• prioritizing social media engagement.

On her Green Marketing 2.0 blog, Li says: “The best way to look at social media is to view it as one of many Internet marketing channels, one that has the amazing power to go viral.” Li also points out that any site that allows for discussion is a social networking site, even if it’s an old-school discussion forum.

Lorna Li is an online marketer with expertise in social media, search engine marketing, and online reputation management. She is the social SEO manager at Salesforce.com and founder of the LinkedIn Network Search Marketing Salon.

Please join us next Friday at the webinar.

(Update May 26, 2009: Edited to add more details about Lorna Li’s presentation.)