Social Media Starter Guide

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Why Are You Here?

If you don’t have a web presence, why is that?
44% of Small Businesses Still Don’t Have a Web Site!

If most online users can’t google it, They won’t go. While 82% of consumers turn to the search engines when finding a local business – (Source: MarketingPilgrim.com)

Point:Â You have a web presence. The question is whether or not you’re in control of it!

Introduction to Social Media

(Social Media in Plain English & Common Craft Video)

Definition of Social Media Marketing: “Social media marketing, also known as social influence marketing, is the act of using social influencers, social media platforms, online communities for marketing, publication relations and customer service.” – (Source: Â Wikipedia)

How is Internet Social Media Used For Business

1. Build a brand
2. Customer service
3. Provide information
4. Promotions
5. Connect with current and prospective clients

Anecdotes

(Social Media Revolution by Socialnomics09)

Popular Social Media Platforms – Starter List

Blogging: A type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
FaceBook: ranked as the 11^th most popular website as a whole with over 250 million active users worldwide (as of August 25, 2009)
Twitter: ranked the fastest-growing website by Nielsen.com
LinkedIn: strictly a business-oriented social network
YouTube: (more than 100 million video views daily. Now the second largest Search Engine on the world.
Ning: (An online platform for people to create their own social networks. IE – SmallerIndiana and NWIReconnect)

(Social Media in Action by Rahsaan Taylor – thank you @EvelynBayCoffee and @myCMPS)

Crushing Pipe Dreams – Myths of Social Media

“Social media is cheap, if not free.” - Integrating these tools into a corporate marketing program requires skill, time, and money. Things to consider: AdWords, hiring people to create and maintain the social media, etc

“You can make a big splash in a short time.“ -Â Social media is great if you’re already a star, but that doesn’t happen overnight.

“If you do something great, people will find it.” -Â Until you can drive traffic to your social media effort, you’ve got a tree falling in the forest, heard only by those standing nearby.Â Some great ways to drive traffic include: Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter and Word of Mouth…

“Syndication Is Dead” – Syndication is alive and fulfilling its initial service, much like how articles and tv shows are syndicated. That’s why there’sÂ RSS Feed / FeedBurner,Â Ping.fm for autosyndication and many other tools that are out there…

“You can’t measure social media marketing results” – Try these tools:Â Â Google Trends, Twitter search, Google Analytics, BackType, Compete.com, and even Alexa.com & Quantcast.com.

“But this Guy Can Get Me 400 Followers a Day on Twitter” -Â So can we, but you won’t know them and they won’t listen to you. Quality, not quantity. Social Media is about being…(h’mm, what’s the term…), oh yeah, S O C I A L!

Challenges Social Media Will Bring to Businesses

1. Will you be a Closed or Open Company?Â Do you want to have a corporate culture where you “bare it all?” Or are there some things you’d rather not have on public display. This is for you to decide and to weigh the pros and cons of each option.

DID YOU KNOW? 8% of employees were fired due to social media use.

Proofpoint Survey
Sample Business Twitter Policy
Business Twitter Guidelines

2. Integrate Social Media Into Your Company -Â Becoming a “social business” (meaning true participation as opposed to leveraging social media as a new form of marketing) can impact nearly every function of a business. Marketing, PR, communications–even supply chain and any function that deals with employees. So where does it live? Is it a department?

3. Will You Be Policing What Is Said About Your Company? -Â Many organizations now understand that anything that can and will be said about them on the internet will be. The good, the bad, the ugly. How will you deal with a complaint? How will you deal with an employee that has said something sensitive?

4. The Evolution of Human Resources -Â You are going to have to upgrade your HR protocols, as well as legal, and implement guidelines if your employees will have access to social media. Training may be needed if customer service is involved

Blogging & Your Business

Different techniques:

1 – business blogging
2 – customer service
3- review
4 – microblog
5 – anything else you can think of

Types of blogs -

1 – Thought Leader - Work to become a leader of idea and innovation within your perspective industries. Not only through PR, press releases, and articles writings, but on your own blog. Work to have your blog become the place people turn to wit their industry questions.
Examples: chrisbrogan.com,Â sethgodin.typepad.com,Â mattcutts.com/blog,Â marketingtechblog.com
2 – Promotion / Review Blogs
blog.asseenontvnetwork.com
3 – Show Your Worth
blog.hubspot.com
4 – Tell Your Story
blog.livemercial.com

Effective ways to blog-Content Is King

1)Â Â Â Â Â Research
2)Â Â Â Â Â Find Your Niche
3)Â Â Â Â Â Establish Credibility
4)Â Â Â Â Â Establish Measurable Goals
5)Â Â Â Â Â Network
6)Â Â Â Â Â Craft Engaging Content
7)Â Â Â Â Â Introduce Yourself
8)Â Â Â Â Â Be Consistent
9)Â Â Â Â Â Write For Your Readers, Not Yourself
10) Â Â Build Community
11) Â Â Maintenance

Enhance Your Blog w/ Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Popular blogging platforms

wordpress.org
blogger.com
tumblr.com
joomla.com
drupal.com

Major Social Media Platforms

Facebook: Personal and/or Business Social Network – can be free or paid (for more features). Run Ads too.
-Â Check out some of the FaceBook apps
Twitter: Microblogging with great reach.Â Businesses and causes use Twitter effectively for customer service, promotions and company transparency.
LinkedIn -Â Over 40 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities.Â Stay informed about your contacts and industry. Find the people & knowledge you need to achieve your goals. Control your professional identity online
Flickr – A social place to share and view photos.
Ning – Ning is a place where you can start your own social network community. Make one off a ning subdomain for free or pay a little to put one on your own domain.
MySpace – The platform FaceBook once aspired to be. Now, MySpace is trying to catch FaceBook. Many millions of users.
Meetup – A social network group that helps social communities and groups take their meetings offline.
twibs.com:- Business directory of Twitter Users.

Examples of Local Social Media Platforms (Using Ning) in Action
ValpoLife – Social Media community for all things Valparaiso, IN
SmallerIndiana – “Making People and Ideas Findable” (good ole Indiana gramm’er)
Examples of Twitter Profiles
NatFinn
IamFiction
Saan1911
GrammarPanda
livemercial
lmseo
EvelynBayCoffee
Comcast
BantaFeeds Charities
NWI Times of Northwest Indiana
BestBuy

Know Your Demographics

lÂ DID YOU KNOW? Teens don’t tweet. The people who tweet most are between the ages of 35-54.

2009 Social Media Platform Demographics from Ignite Social Media

Business Example of Social Media in Action

A Fan of EA Sport’s XBox 360 Video Game, Tiger Woods 2008, makes fun of a glitch they found in the game and recorded it. They uploaded it to YouTube under the name Levinator25 and the video quickly became famous:

EA Sports, instead of getting mad, got Social Media…

And the rest is Social Media History.

Bringing It All Together

How to Integrate Social Media Platforms

1) Add blog to site. Examples: blog.livemercial, BoeingBlogs
- tips:Â place the blog on either 1) a sub page on your site:Â url.com/blog or 2) a subdomain:Â blog.url.com
2) Add badges / links to your site with CTAs to our social presence.
- “follow us on Twitter”
3) Stay consistent. Keep consistently interacting in your accounts.
4) LISTEN! to your friends, customers, and clients.
- read their tweets, status updates, comments, emails
5) Check the trends
- hashtags.org. twitter trends, compete.com
6) Blog on the run – laptops / smart phone applications
- email posts
- iphone wordpress app (blog must be a wordpress blog to use)
- smartphone apps to update social network stats
7) Your Company in Realtime
- liveblog from events
- streaming video – ustream
8 ) Publish 5 Minutes Ago. Syndicate when possible.
- Social Community – sign up, share, and learn
- Digg
- Mixx
- Reddit
- Squidoo
- ProPeller
9) Prime the Pump
- CPC
- Google Adwords
- Yahoo Search Marketing
- bing
- PR
- Guest Blog
- White Papers
10) Social BookMarking – Remember Your Content and Provide Backlinks
- Delicious
- backflip
11) Social Networking
- FaceBook
- LinkedIn
- Twitter
-Â Jaiku
12) FeedBack
- twitter comments
- Tweetdeck, Seesmic search filters
- search.twitter.com
- subscribe to search twitter feeds with online reader such as Google Reader
- hashtags.org
- blog/vlog comments
- comments from other users
- other blogs
- online forums
- emails
13) Negative into positive
- negative feedback will happen. Usually it’s an opportunity to right a wrong, satisfy a customer, and create a long-term relationship.
14) Analysis without the paralysis
- log analyzers – talk with your web host
- javascript-based web analytics
- Google Analytics – free
- Yahoo Analytics – Free (if using service
- Omniture - not so free
15) “Second verse, same as the first” - (Henry the VIII, Herman’s Hermits)
- Do It All Again Tomorrow

Social Media Reminders

1) LISTEN
2) Keep Consistent
3) Don’t just broadcast. Listen and share. Otherwise, the communities will reject you.
3) Remember you are a part of the community, not the reason for the community.
4) There are many more applications, networks, and websites than what this guide shares. Keep searching, testing, and engaging different platforms.