Social Media For Business Part 1

Social Networking for Businesses
By Elizabeth Sugar Boese
succeedInEveryWay.com
October 2009
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Social Networking For Businesses
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succeedInEveryWay.com
(c) 2009 by Elizabeth Sugar Boese. All Rights Reserved. succeedInEveryWay.com

Elizabeth Sugar Boese
liz@succeedInEveryWay.com
http://www.succeedInEveryWay.com
Entrepreneur: 4 businesses
Computer Science instructor: 8 years
Business Consultant: 4 years
Current websites: 8
Who am I?
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Why Social Networking

Market research
Customers likes/dislikes
Competition
Business connections
Find employees
Find colleagues
Knowledge sharing
Branding
Build relationships
More accessible to customers/clients
Get name out there
Rise in search engine rankings
Improve traffic
People trust other peoples’ recommendations
“Free”
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Why get involved
“yellow pages on steroids” – David Teten, Fast Company

52% of Social Networking Users Have “Friended” or Become a “Fan” of at least 1 Brand (src: Microsoft)
Reasons For Having Brands As Friends…
29% Notice of events, sales, or exclusive offers
28% Recommended by a friend
23% Want to associate with them
23% Discounts, coupons, free samples
11% Want to support them
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Why Social Networking

46% Social networks keep them on top of trends and what’s new
40% They discover brands and products they really like through social networking
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“I think the biggest contributing factor to the Social Media success story will be COMPANY CULTURE. Social Media is about building a culture of collaboration, authenticity, trust, openness and innovation.” - Nitin Gupta

24% more radical innovators were executives participating in Social Networking(William Baker, San Diego State University study)
Out of 1,600 executives
Hire right people
Market product better
Social Networkers more innovative
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“ Social networks make viral marketing and word-of-mouth marketing much easier than before. The best use out of social networks is not to make money ‘directly’ off them, but to harness their marketing potential and to use them to market your own business.” –theEcommerceSolution.com
Social Networks make it easy
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If you build it…
Will they come?
Social Media Networks
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Photo by: Gabriella Fabbri

Top 10 Gaining Site Categories by Percentage Change in Unique Visitors (U.S.)April 2009 vs. March 2009
Comscore ranks top 50 U.S. Web properties for April 2009.
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#1

Yesterday’s Marketing: 4 P’s
Product
Price
Place
Promotion
Today’s Marketing: 4 C’s
Content(education, relevant, user-generated)
Context(aggregated and filtered)
Connections(with people, products, and brands)
Community
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Changing with the times

What is Social Networking

Definition:
Group of people
Share interests/activities
Connected online
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Social Networking
Photo by: www.rodolfoclix.com.br

Viral: spreading across the Internet.
Instant messaging: sending a text or pic/video to someone else currently online.
Chat: open dialog of instant messages between two people currently online.
Blogs: short for Web Log – personal or professional articles.
Micro-blogging: short blogs (e.g. status updates, Twitter).
RSS feeds: Method for receiving new blogs to your reader as soon as they are posted.Atom feed: One form of RSS feed.
OpenID: shared user ID and password among various sites that utilize one authentication service.
Podcast: Audio blog.
SEO:Search engine optimization.
Tagging: categorizing for everyone’s ease of finding (bookmarking sites, photos, notes)
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Important jargon

Social media does not replace your traditional website.
People are talking about you in social media
Join the chat, help direct it
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“Like me – Know me – Trust me – Pay me.” –Joel Comm

Top 4 for business
Blogs
Twitter
FaceBook
LinkedIn
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Social Networks
A little outdated

There are TONS of social networking sites
Networking
Social: FaceBook, MySpace, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut, Bebo, Tribe
Business: LinkedIn, Ryze
Blogging
Twitter
Blogger, WordPress, Xanga
Bookmarking
Del.icio.us,Reddit
Media
Documents: SlideShare, Google Docs
Video: YouTube
Images: Flickr
Reviews
Yelp
Articles
E-zine Articles, Reddit
Others
Internet radio, podcasts
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Popular Social Networking Sites

General guidelines for all social media
Follow net etiquette
All upper case letters = yelling
Do not slander/flame others
Go for solutions, not attacking others
Keep it real
Be you. Personality is important. Have one.
Don’t cheat the system – anything you do will be found out.
Be a good role model.Remember, people talk. Guide their conversations.
What you say will live on forever (Way Back Machine at archive.org)
Track your ROI. Google Analytics or hire someone.
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Guidelines

You’ll notice a lot of the same benefits across the various categories
Branding
Relationship building
“Free” advertising
Become a recognized expert
Monitor your competition
Ranked in search engines
Direct the conversation
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Benefits

Extra spam received
Non face-to-face communication
Does it work?
Conflicting studies
Handling negativecomments
Time-consuming
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Disadvantages

How to pick which ones

Who is your audience
Where are they?
What do they like?
Reading articles
Watching videos
Quick updates
Keeping abreast of the most current products/services/courses/etc.
How to get started?
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What role will you play?
Listener
Eavesdropper
Market research
Aggregator
Filterer
Writer
Answerer
Connector
Producer
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Social Networks

Goals – what do you want to achieve?
Audience
Who are they?
Where are they?
What type of interaction do they want from you? Does it match with what you want to offer?
Accounts
Set up social media accounts
Personality
Have one
Keep it real
Update frequently (use automation tools)
Steps
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Have your customers provide your content
Contests
Coupons
Offer incentives – discounts for loyal customers who participate, recognition at events, links to their own sites from your business site
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How to get customers involved
It’s like a cocktail party, where it’s easier to listen in to any conversation.

“I don’t want companies to advertise to me.
I want them to be my friend.” — Rob, 27, Los Angeles
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Automate
TwitterFeed feeds blogs to Twitter automatically.
FaceBookhas options to automatically update from blogs/Twitter.

Time-block social networking time.
Determine your strategy/goals.
Play with a bunch, select a few.
You can’t be on every site – there’s too many.
Use clients/customers content (and reward them).
Turn off email notifications
Most sites email you when anything happens on your site. Turn these off. Look under “Settings” for something like “notifications”.
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My advice

Mashable.com : Social Media guide with how-to section
Look for Part 2 in this series on Social Networking for businesses
Articles
“The Business of Social Networks” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef98Q623pn8
“List of 50 Social sites for businesses” http://www.insidecrm.com/features/50-social-sites-012808/
“Social Media in Plain English” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE
“How Twitter will change the way we live” Time magazine. June 2009.http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1902604,00.html
“20 Social Networking Sites for Business Professionals”http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2009/07/28/social-networking-sites-for-business/
Useful Resources
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Questions?

Available
Seminars
Workshops
One-on-one instruction
Initial setup on social media sites
Ongoing content on social media sites
Contact:
liz@succeedInEveryWay.com
http://www.succeedInEveryWay.com
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Contact info