Social Media For Business: What You Need To Know

Using Social Media for Business:
What You Need To Know

1

Your Presenter

• Roland Reinhart has over twenty years of experience in direct marketing.
While working at leading advertising agencies, Mr. Reinhart planned and
executed scores of advertising campaigns, marketing programs,
corporate and promotional websites.

He runs a digital marketing company, Reinhart Marketing Group, that
helps businesses and non-proﬁt organizations achieve their goals of
attracting new customers and growing existing customer relationships.

Custom Website Design Digital Advertising
Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Advertising
Email Marketing Mobile Marketing
Social Media Marketing Audio/Video Content Creation

Social Media for Business
This information may not be reproduced or distributed without the authorʼs written consent.
©2010-2011 Roland Reinhart. (908) 344-5688. http://ReinhartMarketing.com 2

Today’s Discussion

• Social media in brief
• Planning to carve out your niche online
• How to use Social Media
• Building your online networks
• Tactics to get value from your efforts


Why Social Media? 61% of online Americans use a social network
[source: PewInternet & American Life Project 12/9/2010]

• Social media is about engaging an audience of like-minded
individuals.

• You can no longer depend solely on paid advertising as the
primary method of creating awareness for your brand or cause.

• Find new ways to cut through the noise and clutter
competing for your consumer’s attention

• You need to engage your prospects and customers where they
spend their time.

• Monitor social media for negative commentary about your brand
then try to positively engage that commenter to help resolve
problem or escalate to someone who can.

Your ultimate goal is...


Your Ultimate Goal Is...

Create raving fans and enthusiastic evangelists!


Let’s Start At The Beginning...

Grod has been living under a rock (literally)
• He’s a simple caveman.

• Been busy doing his caveman things:

• Clubbing, hunting and gathering

• Checking out the next valley

• Keeps hearing around the campﬁre that
the Internet is the place to be.

Now what?
(ugh)


What Do You Want To Be Known For?
• Grod’s trusted advisor suggests that he start by
clearly deﬁning and reﬁning:
1. What he is best at, and
2. What he wants to be known for:
• Vague answer:
"I'm a cave consultant."
• Better answer:
"I help cave dwellers have peace of mind."
• Best answer:
"I save cave dwellers an average of 15% on
their cave insurance."


Can You Be Found Online? Google yourself
(and Bing yourself, and Yahoo! yourself)

• Check out yourself and the competition (gather competitive intelligence)
• The good… • The bad…
• A few results exist in the • No professional info found.
ﬁrst few pages of results.
• Maybe someone with the same
name is online, posts questionable
photos and is very vocal about his
politics and religious opinions.


Finalize Your Plan

• Deﬁned niche:
1. Professional name to be listed as.
2. Service to promote / be known for.
3. Profession to be associated with.
4. Keywords and phrases that prospects would use to ﬁnd you.
TIP: Think in terms that your customer would use
and avoid your industry jargon.

• Setup website/blog as the destination you
drive to from all your activities online.


Which WHY
should I should I use
use? them?

HOW do I
use them?


Please Raise Your Hand If...

You have Linkedin proﬁle?


Linkedin: Why?

• Publish your “resume” online
• LinkedIn has over 90 million
• Building a network of quality connections to: members in over 200
• Solicit recommendations (people, solutions) countries and territories
around the world.*
• Provide contacts
• About half are outside the U.S.
• Answer Polls • Executives from all Fortune
500 companies are LinkedIn
• Provide testimonials/recommendations
members.
• Get introduced

• Find a job

*As of 3/17/2011. Source: http://press.linkedin.com



You have Facebook account?


Facebook: Why?
• More than 500 million active users

• 30% are in the U.S.

• 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day

• Average user:

• Has 130 friends

• Spends more than 55 minutes per day

• Creates 90 pieces of content each month

• More than 35 million users update their status each day

• More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories,
blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week

• More than 3.5 million events created each month

• More than 3 million active Pages

• More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages

Social Media for Business Source: http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics


You have Twitter account?


Twitter: Why?
8% of online Americans use Twitter
[source: PewInternet & American Life Project 12/9/2010]


YouTube: Why?

• YouTube is one of the largest video sharing communities online. But you should also explore
others to ﬁnd where your target audience is likely to be.

• Metacafe, Revver, Viddler, Hi5, DailyMotion, UStream, etc.

• You don’t have to provide high quality, lengthy content to upload. Think guerilla marketing
style. With low/no budget, you can still be creative with cheap, portable video recording
devices to capture short, bite-sized content to share:

• Testimonials

• Behind the scenes

• Helpful tips

• Create a free account on these services, upload your videos, embed them on your website
and start telling people to check out the videos on your website.


Which Should
You Use?

Depends on:
• Who you’re trying to reach, and
• What you want them to do!


Get Started On Social Networks
The objective is to be found and associated with what’s relevant to your business expertise.

• Start creating online proﬁles and link back to your main site:
• Make connections -- reconnect with former coworkers, tribe
members, friends, etc.
• Linkedin.com, Facebook.com
• Event networks
• Meetup.com, Upcoming.org, Eventful.com
• Social networks
• Biznik.com, Ning.com, Twitter.com, Gather.com, Naymz.com,
FriendFeed.com
• Create written content
• Offer to be a guest blogger on related websites.
• Submit to industry mags, article sites.
• Write online reviews


Get Started On Social Networks (con’t)
The objective is to be found and associated with what’s relevant to your business expertise.

• Create and post short videos on video sharing sites

• YouTube, Viddler, Blip, Vimeo, Daily Motion, Hi5, Revver,
Stickam...

• Create and post presentations on SlideShare.net and
other document sharing sites.

• Distinguish yourself from others with similar name as you/
your brand.

• Use Claimid.com, FindMeOn.com, BusinessCard2.com
to aggregate links to your sites/proﬁles/articles.


Build Your Networks
Make the most of who you know.

• Find industry groups and participate in the conversation.
• Setup Google alerts to track your most important keywords/phrases.
http://www.google.com/alerts
• Grow your connections daily:
• Every new business contact you meet, invite them to connect via Linkedin,
Facebook, etc.
• Strive for QUALITY, not QUANTITY.
• Treat as an advisory board. Solicit advice and opinion.
• Research who knows who.
• Ask for introductions.
• Ask for recommendations.
• Ask for endorsements.
• Let them know what you’re up to.

I can show
Join The Online Conversation you a good place
Participate in relevant ways. to hunt in the
south valley
• Share valuable information and links.
• Don't add to the noise:
• "Drinking a rabbit smoothie for breakfast!" (Honestly, who cares!)
• Meaningful criticisms are okay (just don’t be nasty/spiteful/unjust)
• If you complain about a service (utility, airline, hotel, etc.), you might get a response
from an employee who may be able to elevate your concern to someone at that
company.
• Don't share intimate details:
• "At Disneyland with the family." (Great, I can go rob your house in NJ.)
• "My 4 yr old Dylan got a gold star today." (It's creepy to let all these anonymous
"friends"/followers know too much about your family.)


Social Media Publishing

TIP: Publish your status/“news” to several networks
simultaneously...

• Hootsuite.com -- Includes link click tracking.
• Ping.fm
• Postling.com


Make It Part Of Your Overall Marketing Mix

Direct Mail Website Social Media
SEO
Networking
g
Event Marketing Article Writin
Email Marketing
Print PR
Blogging
tis ing
Tradeshow Adver
Online
g
Promotio
ns ui ldin
B
L ink

LEADS / SALES CONVERSIONS


Measuring Success?

• Don’t forget to decide how you want to measure success?
• Visits
• Views
• Downloads
• Registrations
• Leads
• Sales
• Increased brand awareness
• Tell a Friend
• Other Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

Measuring Success? (con’t)

• There are many free tools to use to get meaningful statistics:
• Evaluation:
• Google.com/sktool -- Keyword research
• Compete.com -- Compare your website to others
• WebsiteGrader.com -- Evaluate your website from an SEO perspective



• Tracking:
• Google.com/analytics -- Robust website visitor data
• Woopra.com -- Realtime website visitor data
• Crazyegg.com -- Visualization tool to learn where people click on your
website
• Bit.ly -- URL shortener which gives you click through stats
• Hootsuite.com -- Includes link click tracking.
• SocialMention.com



• Trending Topics:
• Google.com/trends
• Search.twitter.com


Keys To Success

• Learn the ropes (there are rules to learn and follow to be a good netizen)

• Make your content bite-sized and sharable

• Be authentic and transparent

• Make it interesting

• Participate where appropriate

• Share info that has value: actionable, relevant, insider tips

• Don't make it all about you.

• Give your audience and customers the tools to spread the word on
your behalf. Create enthusiastic evangelists for your brand.


Don’t let it overwhelm you.
1. Have a plan
In summary... 2. Keep it manageable
3. Make it part of your
daily routine


Your Homework Assignment

• Create an account on Linkedin.com
• Send invitations to connect with people you know
• Ask for recommendations/testimonials
• Deﬁne what you want to be known for and start sharing information of value


Questions?


Thank You For Attending! Keep In Touch...

Connect with me:
Roland Reinhart We’re experts at building Custom Websites,
(908) 344-5688 Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing,
http://ReinhartMarketing.com Digital Advertising, Online Audio/Video and more!
http://Linkedin.com/in/RolandReinhart
http://Twitter.com/RolandReinhart

Make A Free Internet Marketing Counseling Appointment
with me at the Small Business Development Center
at Raritan Valley Community College Bridgewater NJ Campus
(908) 526-1200 ext. 8516 or visit http://www.SBDCRVCC.com/counseling

Register for a class I teach at Raritan Valley Community College
http://www.SBDCRVCC.com/courses/general


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