An introduction to social media, including history, trends, statistics, and usage for business.

1. Social Media:
Business, Pleasure
and Everything in
Between
Jim Abbott
Sales & Marketing Manager
Ashton Technology Solutions

2. Coming Up
• About Ashton
• Social Media Primer
• Trends in Social Media
• Social Media for Business

3. There’s a Reason for This Photo

4. • Founded in 1994
• Managed Services Provider
• Comprehensive IT Solutions
– Network Design, Monitoring &
Maintenance
– Hardware as a Service
– Disaster Recovery
– Online Security
– Security Management &
Monitoring
– Offsite Backups
– Mobile Device Support
– Cloud Computing
• IT Consulting

6. About Ashton
We're in business for a single reason: to develop
proactive business strategies that will
guarantee the success of our clients. It's as
simple as that. By drawing on the specialized
knowledge and experience of our engineers and
technicians to strategically leverage the latest
and most effective technologies, we work with
clients to deliver highly customized business
solutions that build the kind of stronger, more
efficient business practices that help them grow.

7. Why Am I Here to Talk About
Social Media???
• Fifth week on the job with Ashton
• Three years with WRIS (founded in 1996)
• Web design
• Online Marketing
• Social Media
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Mobile
• Clients include;
• Schools/Communities
• Manufacturers
• Non-profits
• Professional Services
• E-commerce
• B2C and B2B

8. Lots of Tools in Our Kit
Ashton
Web Services
Provider
Software
Training
Marketing
Firm
Payment
Processing
Corp.
Ashton only offers IT solutions, but we
have a variety of partners with whom we
trade referrals and share leads. The more
we can help our clients, the happier we
are!

9. Social Media Primer

10. The Prelude to Social Media
• 1991; Worldwide Web goes public
• 1997; Hotmail email
• 1998; Google search engine
• 1999; Napster peer to peer file sharing
• 2001; Wikipedia, iPods
• 2002; Friendster
• 2003; Social networking sites

11. • Slideshare
• Yelp
• Flickr
• Goodreads
• MySpace
• StumbleUpon
• Pollmeleon
• Krush
• Hundreds of others,
internationally known and
regionally used
Social Media We Won’t Talk About

12. Social Media in Donuts

13. 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2009 2010 2011 2012 2014
Facebook
launched at
Harvard U.,
moved to high
school
students, and
then opened to
all. IPO in
2012.
Visual
discovery tool.
Recipes, travel,
DIY, home
décor. 70% of
users are
women
Professional
networking
tool. Became
profitable in
‘06, went
mobile in ‘08.
Video sharing
site. 3rd
most
visited site
(Google &
Facebook).
100 hours of
video uploaded
every minute.
400mm tweets
daily, 60%
from mobile
devices.
BRA/CHI most
tweeted event
ever, with
16.4mm
tweets. Katy
Perry has
54mm
followers
Microblogging
site now owned
by Yahoo.
Primarily visual
with minimal
text.
Mobile
photo/video
sharing app.
Now owned by
Facebook.
150mm users
are; 68%
female, 90%
<35. Justin
Bieber #1 with
12mm
“Unfriend”
added to
New Oxford
American
Dictionary
Google’s version
of social
networking.
300mm active
users. Extremely
important for
SEO.
Video sharing
tool (app)
owned by
Twitter. Max
length :06
Photo
messaging app.
Recipients see
image for 1-
10sec before it
disappears.
700mm
photos/videos
per day.
80
65
42
15
40
38
37
15.5
900
310
255
250
120
110
100
Unique Monthly
Visitors (millions)
A Brief Social Media Timeline
1,000

14. The Most Tweeted Event, Ever

15. #IBelieveThatWeWillWi
n
The Power of a Hashtag (#)
Hashtags allow
users to highlight
keywords and
phrases. Others
may then search
on a term
including a
hashtag to get
more information.
If enough people
use a hashtag on
a specific term,
that topic may
start ‘trending’.

16. Hashtags on Twitter

17. http://www.digitalsherpa.com/blog/how-social-media-has-changed-in-the-last-few-years/

18. http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-stats-2014_b54243
General Information

19. The Power of Social Media
(Google Image Search for “#SizemoreGirls)

20. A Cautionary Tale
#SizemoreGirls

21. Social Media Trends &
Statistics

22. “Baseball statistics are like a
girl in a bikini. They show a
lot, but not everything.”
- Toby Harrah

23. http://realinternetsales.com/solutions/social-media-marketing/facebook-ads-jump-start-guide/
Average User Spends 3.6 Hrs/Day
Who spends the most time on social media? Single, unemployed women <35
with low income/education. Interesting. Could they be referring to teenagers?

24. Smart Insights http://www.smartinsights.com/managing-digital-marketing/marketing-
innovation/digital-marketing-statistics-2014/
35-64 age group seeing significant
number of new social media users

25. But the under 30 market is still
largest consumer of social media

26. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/11/teens-facebook_n_5127455.html
Teens dominate the market,
but their tastes are changing

27. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/how-teenage-behavior-predicts-the-future-of-technology/282031/
Instagram quickly becoming the
‘best’ social media tool

28. http://blog.marketingzone.com/social-media-use-among-teens/

29. http://disruptmedia.co/guest-post-taking-advantage-of-facebooks-new-audience/
No Surprise; LinkedIn Skews “Old”

30. http://www.business2community.com/social-media/looking-back-social-media-numbers-2013-
0728246#!6pJ3r
Sites with advertising
(“sponsored posts”,
“promoted pins”,
“promoted tweets”)
include Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube,
Pinterest,
Foursquare, and
Instagram
As Popularity Increases, So Do Ad
Revenues

31. Social Media for
Business

32. Why Social Media?
• Communicate with existing/potential customers
• Develop your brand
• Develop your messaging
• Establish yourself as a thought leader or “trusted
resource”
• Great for SEO (search engine optimization)
• Allows for engagement with different constituencies
• Allows for personal interaction

33. A Brief Interlude: SEO
Search Engine Optimization
•Wikipedia defines it as “…the process of affecting the
visibility of a website or a webpage in a search engine’s
natural or unpaid (“organic”) search results”
• 93% of all internet activity begins w/ a search engine
• 75% of users don’t get beyond first page of results
• 39% of customers come from a search engine
•Multiple factors (hundreds?) included in Google’s ranking
algorithm. This includes;
• Site structure
• Quality/relevancy of site content
• Frequency of updates
• Quantity/quality of inbound/outbound links
• Social Media

34. “Technology Solutions”
Need to have
Google+ business
page to get map
listing results

35. “Organic” vs. “Paid” Search Results
Organic results are based on website,
content, credibility, social media
presence, etc. Results can take 3-9
months to achieve, but are longer lasting.
Paid search results appear as soon as
you set a budget and make a payment.
“Instant gratification”, so to speak. But
once you turn off your campaign, your
listings disappear immediately.

36. Statista: http://www.statista.com/topics/1538/social-media-marketing/
Now, Back to Social Media
for Business Owners

37. http://www.lorigama.com/Social-Media-Statistics-2014-i125/
Know Your Audience
Manufacturers
and industrial
firms don’t need
to worry about a
Facebook page,
while YouTube
presents a huge
opportunity to
highlight
machines in
action.

38. YouTube in Action

39. http://www.lorigama.com/Social-Media-Statistics-2014-i125/
Do You Have The Time?
61% of
business
owners
using social
media
commit 1-10
hours/week

40. Katharine Heigl suing drugstore
chain for $6 million. Suit
specifically names violations of the
Lanham Act (which prohibits
things like trademark infringement
and false advertising), Heigl's right
to privacy and publicity (using
name, image, or other likeness for
commercial purposes) under New
York State law, and unfair
competition. Duane Read found
the photo on a gossip website,
tweeted it without her permission,
then refused to take it down.
A Cautionary Tale, Part II.
Businesses Need to Beware, As Well

41. Don’t Forget:
• Acceptable Usage Policy
• Social Media Guidelines
• How to Interact with Customers

42. Social Media: DIY
• Stake Your Claim
– Blog
• Check with your web company
• WordPress
– Facebook
• After 25 “Likes” you can get a custom URL
• Not strongly recommended for B2B
– Twitter
• Become a ‘trusted resource’
• 80/20 rule; 80% of tweets should be informative, 20% should be
sales pitch for your product/service
– YouTube
• 2nd
most used search engine in the world (behind Google)
• Great way to showcase your products in action.
• Branded pages are available
• Great SEO tool, since it’s owned by Google
– LinkedIn
• Professional networking
• Need a corporate page, at minimum
• Product/service pages are also available

43. Social Media: DIY
• Listen & Learn
– Alerts
• Alerts.google.com
• Socialmention.com
– Blogs
• Get an RSS reader
• Reader.google.com
– Linkedin
• Generate Discussion
• Post jobs
• Join groups
• Share your thoughts
– Facebook
• Follow peers/competition
– Twitter
• Follow peers, competitors, clients, vendors, news sources
• Look for and use hashtags (#)
• Reply and ReTweet
• http://bit.ly/dKtTyp
– YouTube
• What are your peers sharing with their followers?

44. Social Media: DIY
• Engage
– Blog 2-4 times per month, Variety of topics & authors.
Warning- this can be very time consuming!
– Tweet daily, FB Updates 3-5 times per week
– Engage in conversation
– Use URL shorteners (bit.ly, tinyurl.com)
• Schedule & Streamline
– Develop a content strategy & plan
– Use automation tool (hootsuite.com, tweetdeck.com)
• Integrate
– Integrate onto your website
– Promote on your literature

45. Social Media: DIY
• Evaluate
– How much time are you spending doing Social Media?
– Are you seeing increased traffic to your website (Google
Analytics)?
– How many followers do you have on Facebook/Twitter?
– How often do your posts get “liked”, shared, retweeted, etc.
(Bufferapp.com, truesocialmetrics.com)
– How many views are your videos getting?
– How often are your blog posts read? How often do people
respond?
– How many worthwhile connections have you made on LinkedIn?
– Are leads mentioning they saw your blog/tweets/videos etc?

46. Schedule Your Posts In Advance

47. Use Infographics: Easily Shared via Social
Media, Easy to Understand & Digest

48. Don’t Buy Your ‘Friends’
Views, followers, likes,
and friends can all be
bought. The more of
these you have, the
greater your
credibility, thereby
improving search
engine results. Google
is catching on (as they
always do), and if your
fans are fake, Google
will penalize you.

49. Too Much of a Good Thing?
Joined
Twitter Dec
‘08. ~2000
days since
then.
178,000
tweets = 89
tweets/day.

50. Social Media: Outsourcing
• Be certain what you are getting
– Custom
Twitter/Facebook/YouTube page
– Content Consulting
– Content Augmentation
– Content Creation
– Monitoring
• Pricing varies
– Is what you are paying equal to
the time you would have to put
in?

51. In Summary
• Start small, and grow
• Connect to your constituents in whatever
manner they choose
• Build your brand. Brag about yourself!
• Build your followers
• Give your followers something to be
excited about, and something to talk about
• Interact with your followers, as often as
possible

52. Questions?

53. Jim Abbott
jabbott@ashtonsolutions.com
216.539.3685