This presentation provides an introduction to social media channels. It will examine the importance of social media and how to use platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn successfully. It will explore the main principles of social media, and how it can be used by organisations to transform their marketing communications. The area of social media monitoring and risk will also be examined along with some practical advice on how to successfully protect your organisation's reputation online.

2. About Today
Understand more about what social media is
The most common reasons for poor social media
marketing and what to do about them
Social Media Channels – Inc Facebook, Twitter and
Linked In + top tips to improve performance
Social Media management, resourcing and policy

3. About You?

4. Part 1.
Social Media Overview and
Channels

5. Social Media Marketing
Stories Often Start Like
This…………

6. We really
should be
using
And ”

7. We think about
the tools, but we
should be
thinking about…..

9. What problems
does this create?
Social Media ‘broadcast’
Corporate tone of voice
Wrong tools for the job – not using the
right social media channels
Content is boring / no content
No integration etc.

10. 7 Habits of highly
successful social
Support from management media use!
An evolving business and media culture
Resources in place to do it properly
Content and social currency to use
They know their audience and are not 100%
afraid of them
Use the right tools with confidence
Are ok about doing things a bit differently!

14. Sharing

19. Social Media
Channels

20. Digital / Social Media
Channels

22. Search Engines:
SEO PR
How visible is
your organisation
Google Search?

23. Digital Display

24. Online Media and
Communities:
What ones that
matter to you?

25. Online Video:
Promote and
Share

26. Online Surveys:
Canvas Opinion
and feedback

30. Q. What Digital Channels are
you using?

35. What is ?
“Pinterest is a social network that allows users to
visually share, curate, and discover new interests by
posting, also known as ‘pinning,’ images or videos
to their own or others’ pinboards.”
Users can:
• Upload images from their computer
• Pin things they find on the web using the
Pinterest bookmarklet, Pin It button, or just a
URL.
Source: Hubspot, 2012

36. Why is important?
1. Traffic – Effective at driving traffic to
websites.
2. Links – Use of the ‘Pin-it’ button on your
website provides a link back to the source.
3. Social Sharing – Users log in using their
Twitter or Facebook profiles for social
sharing.
Source: Hubspot, 2012

37. The problem of too much choice……

40. Part 2.
Facebook in Practice

43. Top Reasons for
Facebook Failure
Using as a corporate broadcast tool (No.1 issue!)
Posts are too long
Not enough engagement and interaction

44. Top Reasons for
Facebook Failure:
STRATEGY
No overall strategy and objectives
No content – all text based posts, but what about other forms
of content
Little Integration with PR, marketing
Almost no integration with other areas of the organisation
(customer service?)

45. Top Reasons for
Facebook Failure:
MARKETING
Symptom: Few fans – no fan growth
No investment in Facebook advertising
No integration with offline comms and marketing
No marketing via email newsletters, website etc

47. Becoming a Content Publisher
You need an Editorial Calendar – Plan and
source your posts
• Yearly breakdown of activity – events and
campaigns etc
• Weekly list of links and short term posts +
spontaneous content

50. Growing FB
Engagement
# 1 Start by stopping - Avoid:
• Declarative status updates
• Text-only status updates
• Repetitive topics

51. Successful Engagement is About:
• Relevant and timely
• Emotional appeal
• Crowdsourcing – Ask questions, polls and
survey
• Replies to posts
• Sharing Content
• Creating momentum (Campaigns!)

53. The Problem?

54. Traffic Building
• Advertise: Facebook Advertising / Sponsored
Stories
• Integration with Comms Material
• Better Posting and overall experience

55. Promoting Your Business with Ads
Step 1: Identify Your Goals
Define what you want to promote and the goals you want to achieve
e.g. building awareness, driving sales or growing fans.
Step 2: Target the Right People
Select criteria for the people you want to reach based on the interests
of your audience not what they might be looking to buy.
• Target by Location, Language, Education, and Work
• Age, Gender, Birthday, and Relationship Status
• Likes & Interests
• Friends of Connections
• Connections

56. Step 3: Design an Engaging Ad
Create versions of your ads with different
images and text to find out which
performs the best.
• Include key information in the title
• Provide a call-to-action
• Use an eye-catching and relevant image
• Target different audiences

57. Step 4: Manage Your Budget
• Determine if you want to pay on CPC or CPM basis
• Set a bid within or above the suggested range
• Set your daily budget
Step 5: Review and Improve
• After you launch your campaign edit and optimise your ads
based on the data provided such as impressions and clicks
• View specific time periods to see how your ads have changed
over time.
• Remember to refresh your ad text and image if they have
been running for a considerable amount of time.

58. Traffic Building
Integration with Comms Material
• Offline marketing: Include Social Media Icons on your
marketing - Billboard ads, posters, and brochures
• Website: High visibility of social icons on the website
• Email Info: include your FB Page URL and Twitter address
• FB URL – need to have this!

59. Traffic Building
Integrating with PR: Carry the PR story onto Facebook. You are
the publisher and so are your friends!
Social Media PR: Source Pages where conversations happening
about consumer issues. BBCNI and Belfast Telegraph FB sites
Digital Integration: Integration with Email marketing and Online
PR

60. Facebook Insights

61. Facebook Metrics
Main metrics I would focus on are:
• ‘People are talking about this’
• Liking your Page
• Liking, commenting on or sharing on one of your Page
posts
• Answering a question you have posted
• Tagged your page in a posts or status update
Remember ………
• Need to give it time and test performance
• EdgeRank Rules!: What is Edgerank?

62. Facebook EdgeRank
EdgeRank is an algorithm that ranks objects in the
Facebook News Feed. Pages with high EdgeRank Scores will be
more likely to show up in the news feed than Pages with
low EdgeRank Scores!
• Affinity: dependent on a user's relationship with an object
in the news feed e.g. likes and comments.
• Weight is determined by the type of object, such as a
photo/video/link/etc.
• Time Decay, as an object gets older, the lower the value.

63. Improving EdgeRank
Pages with a high EdgeRank are more likely to show in
your “Top News” stream. Users with a low EdgeRank
may not even show in your “Most Recent” news feed.
Some tips to increase your Edgerank:
• Publish Objects That Encourage Interaction
• Make the Most of Photos and Videos
• Share Links
• Keep It Fresh
• Ask Users to Share

64. Recap….
• Need to create lot more activity around your
campaigns – leverage very strong public
awareness campaigns
• It’s about the experience – talking to the
community, engage, encourage them to share.

65. Exercise
Login to Facebook
Review Charity Water Timeline
Note the main characteristics of the
Timeline?
Discuss how it compares to the
strengths and weaknesses of your
own Timeline

68. What do you think of
?

69. Is…
The World’s Largest Professional Network
It could be your most important social media
channel!
An opportunity to create a dynamic, highly
visible online profile…….. + more

70. What can I do on ….
• Gain Connections with other professionals
• Research and generate leads
• Status Updates
• Gain and show recommendations
• Gain Introductions
• Source and join groups
• Recruit

71. Why do I need to be on …….
?

72. ?

74. Facts and Figures

75. 150 MILLION
PROFESSIONALS
WORLDWIDE

76. Not just another social media site……..

79. Credits: Amodiovalerio Verde

80. Tour

81. Linked In:
Top Tips
Add to Your Profile
Start to grow your network – connections
Link up with the real world
Don’t sell on Linked In
Use search

84. Twitter in Practice

85. How does it work?
Twitter lets you write and read messages of up to
140 characters, or the very length of this sentence,
including all punctuation and spaces.
The messages (also known as tweets) are public,
and you decide which accounts you want to receive
messages from

86. Example of Tweets.

88. Post tweets
People like tips, links to interesting stories and
blogposts (they don’t have to be about your
Organisation)
People like the human touch and will appreciate
posts with your thoughts and experiences more than
you think.

89. Key terms…
To follow somebody is to subscribe to their messages
A tweet is an individual message
A DM or direct message is a private message on Twitter
RT or retweet is to repost a valuable message from
somebody else on Twitter and give them credit
Trending topics are the most-discussed terms on Twitter at
any given moment.. E.g ‘Flu’
hashtag—the # symbol followed by a term and
included in tweets e.g #fluvaccine

90. Twitter Terms in Detail………

91. What is following?
Following someone on Twitter
means:
you are subscribing to their Tweets
as a Follower their updates will
appear in your timeline
that person has permission to send
you private Tweets, called direct
messages

92. If you follow @sprsquish, What is following?
you'll get their updates on your Example
homepage when you log in, as shown
below.
Your follower/following statistics are also
listed on your home page.

93. Search for followers:
schools, businesses,
politicians and
community groups!

94. Retweeting
If someone tweets something that interests you and you feel it
would interest your readers, you retweet it for your readers.
Essentially, you are forwarding the original tweet to your
followers – It’s like forwarding an email to your email database.
Retweets can be used to promote
relevent news and views from
You also want your Tweets to be retweeted
by other people including politicians, locals,
Businesses, media etc

95. DM (D): It stands for Direct Message. This is
like email and only you can see your DMs. As
opposed to replies and regular tweets, DMs
are private.
This feature is used if you want to write
something privately to someone, but more
importantly, if you are writing something that
your followers will not find interesting.

96. Hashtag (#): The # symbol, called a hashtag,
is used to mark keywords or topics in a Tweet.
Hashtags: helping you find interesting Tweets
People use the hashtag symbol # before relevant
keywords in their Tweet to categorize those Tweets to
show more easily in Twitter Search.
Clicking on a hashtagged word in any message shows you
all other Tweets in that category - #WaterChargeWatch

97. Reply (@): Twitter has a unique
replying feature. Whenever a
person’s name is preceded by a
@ symbol, that means that the
sentence (tweet) that follows is
directed at them. So if you want
to reply to someone, simply
type @ and then their name,
then type the reply.

98. URL Shorteners:
When linking you may need to shorten
links.
Why: Twitter only allows you 140
characters, so long links are an issue
URL Shorter –Bitly – shorten link and add
to the tweet.

100. How Consumers and Organisations Use
Twitter

101. Source: Econsultancy Report: Twitter for Business, 2011.

102. Twitter Best Practice…..

103. Twitter: Top
Tips
Listening: Use tools to listen to relevant tweets. Follow
the conversations – map people and their issues + Scan
local / sectoral media for relevant stories
Audience mapping: map out target people and groups.
Eg. Community groups, MLAs + journalists
Twitter For Crowdsourcing:
Canvass opinion, ask questions and gain feedback etc
PR and Media Relations: Need to build relationship with
Journalists on Twitter

104. Twitter: Top
Tips
Think Like a News Editor!
Source stories from:
1. Other part of the business / organisation
2. Sectoral Media
3. Top News Publishers (Guardian, Bel Tele etc)
4. Twitter and Facebook and You Tube
+ You need a content strategy!

105. Twitter: Top
Tips
Showcasing PR mentions – promote coverage in @BelTel
etc
Integrate with real world: Tweet at live events E.g Stormont
events – ‘good point by ??MLA on water charges’.

106. Twitter: Top
Tips
Promote Twitter handle!:
Make visible on the website! Integrate with
other marketing and communications

107. Style
Be Interesting! Create and tweet about things that are
interesting
ReTweeting: Retweet valuable and interesting stories –
but not too much!
Personalisation: Who is Tweeting – have staff names on
CC profile

108. Monitoring
http://tweetstats.com/
http://www.tweetdeck.com/
Remember – Social Media success is about promoting the org,
being useful and interesting, holding together a
community…………… not about tools and technology!

109. Metrics
Keep It Simple !
Number of followers?
Retweets
Number of replies or engagements

111. Management
and Resources

112. How Does The
Internet and Social
Media Change Your
Organisation – Start
The Conversation!

113. Q. What is the role of Social Media within
your business or organisation?
Q. What are the attitudes towards it?
Q. What are the challenges you face

114. Social Media
Budgeting and
Resourcing
69% of companies are planning to increase budgets for off-site social
media, including Facebook and Twitter.
The number of organisations without any dedicated social media
personnel in place has dropped from 29% in 2010 to 25% in 2011.
Social media is typically owned by the marketing department,
according to 70% of organisations. Just under a quarter of respondents
(23%) report that a mixture of departments own social media.
[Source: Econsultancy.com]

116. Social Media
Barriers
Some 40% of companies have implemented training and governance
models related to social media, while 60% have not.
The biggest barrier to effective social media engagement is the lack of
resources, cited as a significant issue by more half of companies (52%)
surveyed. The next biggest issue is the lack of budget, which is cited by
30% of companies.
[Source: Econsultancy.com]

117. Social Media
Barriers
In some cases, social media activity has failed to meet expectations or
has been discontinued……..
When asked to describe the value their organisations have got from
social media investments, almost half of companies (47%) say
‘the jury is still out’
specifically because they have not been able to measure results.

118. Attitude of Senior
Management

119. Online
Reputation
Management

120. Social Media Policy

121. “Let’s hurry home and follow the
earthquake news. And don’t forget
to order your favourite KFC menu”.

122. Consumer
Policy
“Our policy explains our rules and guidelines for interacting
on our social media channels including our
Facebook Page and Twitter,……..”
Removal of posts and profiles.
“We believe that our social media sites should be open and
tolerant forums which are free from content and comments
that are likely to cause offence and harm to other people.

123. The Council will remove from its social
sites the following content and comments
Consumer
which are or we believe to be: Policy
Offensive, bullying, threatening in nature
Sectarian, racist or sexist
Libellous or defamatory
Attack, intimidate or threaten council
employers
Attack, intimidate or threaten other users
and individuals
Off-topic or irrelevant
Disruptive

124. Social Media
Guidelines and responsibilities Guide for Staff
Responsibilities: employees are responsible for
content they post online
Be professional:
Best to participate in the same way as you would
with other media or public forums.
Tone of voice:
Always adopt a professional tone and be polite and
courteous to people online – even when you
encounter instances of difficult individuals who
have posted negative comments
Sometimes you will encounter people who are
rude or annoying, but remember not to engage in
public disagreements.

125. Social Media
Guidelines and responsibilities Guide for Staff
Monitoring:
Who should monitor? Social media manager +
employees with responsibility for Facebook Posting
How often?
Responding to Comments:
Review comments and select ones that require
responses.
• Questions about Council Services e.g refuse collection
• Feedback on Council services, events etc (Feedback
can be positive or negative)
Remember we don’t need to respond to all comments!

126. Social Media
Guidelines and responsibilities Guide for Staff
Consumer Guidelines:
Refer to social media policy for consumers using our
Facebook Page.
People cannot post offensive material on our channels
or breach any of our rules - remove the post, thread
etc or even bar the user
In the case of a persistent offender, please refer the
issue to the social media mentor for advice on blocking
comments from the user.
However it not advisable to take a very strict policy to
the removal of posts – need two-way conversation.

127. Integration

130. The Challenges of the ‘Always On’
Multi-Channel Marketing Function?

131. Metrics

134. Connect on: www.linkedin.com/in/paulmcgarrity
Follow me: @paulmcgarrity
Visit the website: www.OctaveOC.com
Why not join our email newsletter list?

135. What to download the workshop on
SlideShare?
http://www.slideshare.net/OctaveOC/social-
media-fundamentals-apr-2012.