DohertyWhite Social Media for Small Business

Social Media for Small Business
Growing sales through more effective marketing
Profitnet Plus
Letterkenny, March 2011

Agenda
How to drive sales, generate leads and increase revenue using Social Media Marketing
Today when people want to buy something the first place they look is the web, whether they’re looking for shoes, a car or a house
People spend a lot of their time using Social media – Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn ...
You can use social networks to raise awareness of your business and to sell your products and services
During this presentation I’ll be describing why social media marketing should be included in your promotional activities and how you can get started

Contents
Introduction
What is Social Media
Why Social Media?
How to do it – overall approach
Blog
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
LinkedIn
Your Website

Introduction to DohertyWhite
1
What we do
We help businesses generate more sales through better marketing
Digital Marketing and PR consulting
Website and social media design and implementation
Marketing Automation software
Magical
Minds

Introduction to DohertyWhite
1
Co-founder and MD of DohertyWhite since Oct 2009
Enterprise Ireland Marketing mentor to 20 early stage firms
Donegal County Enterprise Board mentor
Expertise in online marketing, sales and marketing processes, strategy and general business consulting
Ex Head of Marketing at Singularity – helped double revenue in 2 years, won the Irish Software Association Sales Achievement award 2008
Senior Software Product Manager at Siemens, Senior Business Analyst with Elavon, Management Consultant with Deloitte & Touche, Implementation Manager with Misys Corporation, software developer with AIB Bank
Ex-Member of Forrester Research Technology Marketing Executive Council
Trinity College Dublin Computer Science graduate (1990), Post-Grad Dip. Computing (2004)
Michael White

What is Social Media Marketing?
2
What is Marketing?
2.2
The purpose of marketing is help you acquire new customers
Lots of tools you can use – advertising, PR, website, radio, direct marketing ...
?
Me
How do I reach them?
My potential customers

2
What is Marketing?
Press ads
Radio
Offline
Direct Mail
PR
Marketing
Website
Online
Google ads
Social Media
Email

2
Facebook, Blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, blogging, slideshare...
Generate interesting stuff people want to see, read, hear
Publish it everywhere, with links back to you
Share intersting stuff you find on the web
Connect with people you’ve worked with or who you find informativve
Interactive rather than one way communication
Now everyone can contribute, write, edit, shoot video, record audio
People/customers can talk back, engage, ask questions
You’ll get more web traffic, visitors, business

2
Why focus on Social Media?
Because your prospective customers will find you before you them.
The first place people look for products or services is online – primarily Google and now Facebook
The first place someone looks after contact is your web-site or your Facebook page. What’s on your site that would encourage them to become a customer?
Will they find you? How do you compare with competing sites?
If you are promoting yourself the same way you did 10 years ago then you’re doing something wrong

2
1. Because it makes business sense
More cost effective – Facebook, Youtube, LinkedIn are free
Greater impact – you can market to 1000s for same price as 100s
Small businesses can look like big businesses
Small businesses can access bigger potential markets
2. Because people buy differently today
People’s buying habits are changing
They start shopping by looking on the web, especially Google and Facebook
They are buying online more frequently, and this will increase
Basically, you can generate more sales at less cost

2

2
550 million plus users worldwide
1.5 million plus in Ireland
60% female, 40% male
37% over age of 35
Facebook users by age

How to do it
3
What are you trying to promote? (Your product, service?)
1
Who do you want to target, and where? (Everyone? Particular types of business? Particular types of consumer? Donegal? Ireland? Europe? the US?
2
Who are your competitors (and why are you better?)
3
Pick the tools you’ll use to promote your business from the list available
4
Set out a plan with actions, dates and expected outputs
5
Get going – implement the activities on your plan and measure how effective they are in producing sales. Experiment, adjust, test again. Start small, then increase efforts where you enjoy success.
6

How to do it
3
Blog
Facebook
LinkedIn
YouTube
Twitter
Connect to Website

How to get started
3
Blogs
What? Basically like a website that you can easily edit and update
Why? Draws more traffic to your web-site, leads, sales
Can form the basis for your Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter marketing
Allows readers to provide feedback
Can paste in YouTube videos, SlideShare slides
Tips
Decide who you’re targeting
Mix of entries – news, opinion, video, photos, informative
Set a schedule e.g. once a week
Use images and video
Basic, medium and rich posts, light & heavy
Strong headlines

How to do it
3
Why start a blog?

How to do it
3
How to start a blog?
Keep posts short – 200 to 300 words
Write about how you do your job, how to use a product, trends in your sector, “top 10 tips”
Long enough to cover everything important, short enough to keep people wanting to see more
Put in images and videos, otherwise visually boring
Have a “Call to action” at the end – offer people something, get them to do something

How to do it
3
Facebook
Why do you care? - over 1.5 million active users in Ireland
Lots of your customers
2nd most trafficked website
Get found, promote your stuff, connect with others
Get started: Set up a personal page first
Connect with friends, join groups
Set up a business page second
Put links to your facebook pages on emails, web-site, ….
Encourage people to “Like” your page
Set up and promote events
Test Facebook ads

How to do it
3
1. Set up and fill-in your Personal Profile
2. Set up Facebook Business Page (not Group and not Personal page)
3. Put links on your website, email signature, press ads
4. Encourage people to ‘Like’ you
5. Find other pages that have high numbers of your target customers, “Like” them and post to their wall
6. Post videos, make offers, upload photos – keep up a steady stream of content on a frequent schedule - Your wall posts appear in people’s news feed NOT on their page/wall

How to do it
3

How to do it
3
Facebook
Try Facebook ads
11 targeting factors
Includes location, age, birthday, sex, workplace, education and interests
So, could run ads to women only in 30 to 40 age bracket in your area to test the results
http://www.facebook.com/marketing

How to do it
3
Why? To draw online traffic, and to sell to people 24 hours a day
Video yourself talking about your product or service
Relate to your business – e.g. “how I design wedding cards”
Video a customer talking about themselves and working with you
Home-made is good
Sign-up on YouTube (2 minutes and its free)
Post it on YouTube, and customize your YouTube page
Link to YouTube from your website, blog, Twitter ….

How to do it
3
What?
Professional network
250,000 users in Ireland
75 million worldwide
Why?
So people can find you
So you can find prospective customers – ‘ prospecting’
So you can promote events
How
Create your personal profile
Connect to people you know
Join Groups
Get staff to create their profiles and connect
Create company profile
Fill out company product and services

How to do it
3

How to do it
3
What: Listen, Tweet, Respond
Why?: Traffic to your website, inbound links, leads, sales
How: 140 character “tweets”
E.g. press release headline
Can also insert links to stuff you like/find interesting
Follow others e.g. customers, influencers
Make your tweets useful e.g. links to web-site, video, news item
Tweet about good stuff your business is doing
Customer service

How to do it
3
Create your personal account
Look for people to follow
Tweet about special offers, news, discounts
Link to your blog – tweet all your posts
Link to press releases – tweet all your releases
Link to your Facebook and LinkedIn Accounts
Put “Follow us” buttons on your email, website, blog
Check out what happens on Google analytics – e.g. can see people clicking on Tweet, coming to blog, then coming to your website

How to do it
3
Dublin bus – special ticket discounts
Running last minute promotional discounts
Twitter followers receive offers via mobile phone

How to do it
3
What
Free storage area to put up slide presentations, word documents, PDF documents
Really useful for anyone involved in professional services
(Will post our slides here after the seminar)
Can collect leads from people who download your content
Can place stuff here and link to it from your blog
Can also record voice over on your slides then post it here, then link to your blog or website – good for recording a sales pitch or product demo

How to do it
3
Put share buttons and Facebook “Like”button on your home page
Connecting with your website
Make sure all staff put all contact details and social media connections on the ‘signature’ of their emails
Put “Follow us” buttons on all pages of your site and on your blog
Put Facebook “Like” button everywhere on your site and blog

How to do it
3
Connecting with your website
Example site – www.SwillyGroup.com
“Follow us” buttons
Blog entries are displayed on home page, and all blog posts are also automatically shown on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook
News section that gets updated and feeds Facebook and Twitter
YouTube videos are displayed, and there is also a link to their YouTube channel

Wrap-up
4
Some key points
Who – who are you selling to, and what are they interested in?
Commit weekly resources
Integrate what you are doing with your overall promotional plans
Use social media to support offline promotions too – sales, events
Start blogging first - it’s the basis of the other stuff
Regularly generate content – blog posts, tweets, video, images
Focus most on the platforms that drive best results – probably Facebook and a blog for most B2C and SME businesses
Put in clear calls to action in your social media posts – if you don’t ask you won’t get
Analyse and measure your performance – web traffic, likes, sales enquiries, sales leads, revenue increase

Wrap-up
4
Some random thoughts
Content – do you offer discounts (buy attention) or good information (earn interest?). Depends on what you’re selling and your target customers
Check out Gary Vaynerchuk – www.garyvaynerchuk.com
Setting objectives – “Likes”, web visitors
Vendorshop on Facebook – F-commerce
And remember – if you don’t know how to do something, just do a search on Google or Bing – someone somewhere will have written an article or recorded a video explaining how to do it
Small and micro businesses should remember the proverb “An ténachmbíonnláidirnífolláirdóbheithglic” – He who is not strong must be clever

Thank You
Emailmichael.white@dohertywhite.com
Twitter @michaelgwhite
Mobile +353 86 383 8981
Phone +353 7493 81986
www.dohertywhite.com

DohertyWhite Social Media for Small Business

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