How to get started in social media if you're a small business

1. (Social Media for Small Biz)

2. At its most basic sense, social media is a shift in how
people discover, read and share news, information
and content.
Businesses also refer to social media as user-generated
content (UGC) or consumer-generated media (CGM).
Source: Wikipedia
(What is Social Media?)

3. (The Conversation Prism)

4. (Social Media in Plain English)

5. • 77% read blogs • YouTube’s demographic is age 18-
• 39% subscribe to RSS feeds 55
– 51 percent of users visit YouTube weekly.
• 57% have joined a social network
– 52 percent share videos with friends &
• 55% have uploaded photos colleagues.
• 83% have watched online video clips • Twitter is the fastest growing
• Facebook has 200 million users community site with a 1382%
around the globe. increase in visits from 2/08 to 2/09
– 60 million in the United States – 42% of those users are 35-49
– 100 million+ use it every day
– Fastest growing demographic is those age
35 and older.
(Your audience is already there)

6. (The BIG players)

7. (How Google SERPs use it)

8. (How Google SERPs use it)

9. (How Google SERPs use it)

10. • 14% of people trust ads, while 78% trust
recommendations of fellow consumers.
(Why?)

11. Social media is bridging the gap between
marketing (brand expectation and promise)
and operations (deliver and outcome).
Purchase
Purchase Post-Purchase
Consideration Experience
Decision
(What it means for business…)

12. • Listen to what your customers are saying
• Engage them in conversations
• Provide direct customer service
• Gain valuable insight to fuel improvement
• Create and share interesting content
• Niche-related information
(Benefits of Social Media)

13. • Reveal a personality behind your brand
• Build your network
• Ultimately, direct traffic to your blog and website,
increase sales
• Create viral messages and campaigns
• Can become a trusted advisor
• ….Did I mention that it’s low cost?
(Benefits of Social Media)

14. DON’T DO
Scrap your business plan from one Listen to your audience
poor review
Fake it or be deceitful in your content Be honest and transparent
Try to delete every negative
comment. Attempts at censorship Loosen some control
are not tolerated.
Jump in without listening to the Assign a strategy and personnel
conversation or having a plan.
(Principles for Participation)

15. DON’T DO
Be a spammer. People will ignore Respect the individual
what’s irrelevant and intrusive
Let your accounts go stagnant. No Participate by posting original,
new material reads “I don’t care.” timely and interesting content
Obsess over negativism or out- Foster a positive culture. Happy
spoken critics that thrive on employees and satisfied
combative dialogue customers are your most
powerful brand advocates
(Principles for Participation)

16. Know your clients
– Who are they?
– Where are they?
– What do they want?
– How do they decide?
– Where do they get their information?
– Do they use social media?
(Like any other marketing)

17. How To Start

18. 1) Register your profiles with Social Media
sites. (They’re kind of like domains, get
them while you can!) http://knowem.com/
2) Listen to online conversations
1) Twitter Search
2) Google Alerts
3) LinkedIn and Yahoo! Answers
(Practical Tips to START)

19. 3) Create a strategy
- Assign goals, personnel, and plan for content
creation, management and delivery.
(Practical Tips to START)

20. 3) Build Business Pages and Content
- LinkedIn Company Page
- Facebook Fan Page
- Twitter Business Account (custom
background recommended)
- Setup a company blog
(www.domain.com/blog)
(Practical Tips to START)

21. 4) Measure Impact
- Web Analytics, Page visitors, views, custom
filters
- # of blog posts, tweets, videos, photos
- # of Facebook fans/friends, Twitter followers,
RSS Subscriptions
- # of times content is linked to, Digged,
bookmarked, reposted, retweeted.
(Practical Tips to START)

22. “For companies, resistance to social media is
futile, millions of people are creating content
for the social web. Your competitors are
already there. Your customers have been
there for a long time. If your business isn’t
putting itself out there, it ought to be.”
(B.L. Ochman – Business Week,
February 2009)

23. Local Business Examples
(Practical Tips to START)