UNCW Professional Education--Social Networking Workshop

Social Networking Options

Twitter : This social networking and micro-blogging service enables users to post brief messages. These notes, a.k.a. “tweets,” offer real-time info on goings-on. For instance, a business might announce a call for management resumes. The message would appear on the Twitter profile page, but can also be set to show on the company’s Web site, Facebook and other online venues.

These text-based posts can only be 140 characters in length. Aside from updates being displayed on the user's profile page, they’re also delivered to other users following said business.

Twitter Use At Local Businesses :

Coastal Cupcakes twitters about their daily cupcake flavor of the day.

Queensboro Shirt Company includes posts about sales.

Front Street Brewery promotes events and specials.

Twitter Applications :

Twitter Grader : Grades your Twitter usage and ranks top 50 users in cities, including Wilmington.

TwitterLocal : Search and follow based in zip codes.

TweetDeck : Customized browser for Twitter.

Social Networking Options LinkedIn : This social networking service is a business-oriented site, mainly used for professional networking. According to recent reports, it had more than 35 million registered users, spanning 170 industries, as of February 2009. LinkedIn users create a profile that mostly highlights their employment and education history. The site allows you to maintain a list of contacts (or connections), who are people you know and trust in business.

LinkedIn Use At Business:

Get Introduced to a professional you want to know through one of your connections.

Find jobs, people and business opportunities through your connections.

List jobs and search for potential candidates.

Write recommendations for you and/or your business.

Social Networking Options Facebook : This social networking service lets users create a profile that includes photos and information about their education, job and interests. Offers message wall, friend list, etc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school and region to connect and interact with other people. They also can add friends and send them messages. In addition to personal profiles, Facebook allows business owners to create a profile for their companies. Users can become “fans” of businesses.

Facebook Use At Business :

Filter prospective employees.

Company Facebook account (to reach broader demographic for free). Can do RSS feeds, videos, etc. A mini Web site.

To promote new services, products achievements, etc.

Easy, accessible way to get quick feedback from clients.

Other Ways to Boost Business Online:

Blogging

White Papers /sell cheap, value in building contact database

Viral Marketing: (example e-mail offers that prompt people to forward message about business.)

Useful Links:

Pingfm.com allows you to simultaneously update your status across multiple social media sites.

www.squidoo.com/twitterapps offers a comprehensive list of Twitter applications.

SlideShare find this (UNCW Professional Education Social Networking Workshop) and other presentations related to social media.

Twitter Proves Its Worth as a Killer App for Local Businesses By Abbey Klaassen NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- All those brands trying to figure the ROI of Twitter? They might do well to follow the lead of the local pizza joint. Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that's hoping to go national -- Mark Cuban is a backer -- has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business. "Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful," said Jeff Leach, the restaurant's co-founder. "Sure, there's the brand marketing and getting-to-know-you stuff. ... But we wanted to know: Can it make the cash register ring?" Mr. Leach is one of many small businesses using Twitter as a marketing tool -- and his group could turn out to be a lucrative market for the fast-growing site if other local entrepreneurs have similar experiences. Twitter's real-time messaging service is turning out to be a boon to local establishments, who are starting to get onboard -- mostly because the message pops into users' Twitter feeds and they're close enough to act on it. For Mr. Leach, who is targeting people within a three-mile radius of his store, that's key. He's gone so far as to erect a billboard outside his store publicizing Naked Pizza's Twitter handle (which got him written up in TechCrunch). After that, Twitter contacted him; he's going to be working with the company to beta test some applications for small businesses. Low barrier to entry Twitter has a golden trait that appeals to small businesses: It's easy. "It's simpler than a blog, than setting up a Facebook or MySpace page,“ said Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, which specializes in the local-marketing sector. "It's very much like e-mail. And e-mail, from small-business standpoint, has been one of the most effective marketing tools." The social nature of it is also appealing: Consumers are already using Twitter as a question-and-answer recommendation service and to forward ("retweet") messages they receive from brands. Michael Farah, founder and CEO of Berry Chill, a yogurt shop with three Chicago locations, has been using Twitter to send out "Sweet Tweets" -- promos that require users to show they're Twitter followers of the store. In a month, he's logged 700 followers and, he said, "sweet tweets" haven't diminished his daily sales. "Our last big promotion we gave away 1,100 yogurts -- $5,500 worth of product -- but sales were the same as the day before," he said. "The people who were existing customers standing in line attracted people who hadn't tried it." Add the location-based technology nearly every mobile device will soon have, and many say it'll really earn its keep as a killer local app. Continued on Next Slide

Potential

"The reality is Twitter's got all sorts of business models available to it," said Todd Chaffee, general partner at Institutional Venture Partners and a Twitter investor. "We're putting together monetization framework, things like features for commercial accounts, which could be for global companies all the way down to local companies." He said the business model will be largely driven by the creativity and needs of the businesses using it.

Naked Pizza's wish list includes analytics tools that help it understand the most effective times of the day or week to deliver promotional

messages, much like an e-mail-marketing-services provider would, and other applications geared toward helping consumers find local offers.

Mr. Leach, who spends up to $60,000 a year on direct mail and almost $2,500 a year on e-mail-marketing services, said he'd gladly pay a

monthly fee for services like those.

In the next 90 days, he said, he's aiming to sign up 5,000 followers that have city of New Orleans as their location. As he puts it: "That's

5,000 people I don't have to mail a postcard to."

Five tips for local businesses looking to use Twitter

TRACK EVERY SALE. Sure, Twitter's relatively cheap, but you still want to know you're getting something for the human effort. Naked Pizza's point-of-sale system codes the origin of every order -- was it from a specific coupon or a box topper? -- which allowed it to calculate that a recent "Tweetie Pie" Twitter promotion, accounted for 15% of his shop's revenue on the day it ran.

TWITTER IS NOT FACEBOOK. Twitter is more immediate -- if a person doesn't check their Twitter feed for an hour she could easily miss the

message. Berry Chill CEO Michael Farah uses Twitter for real-time communication ("Spotted: Justin Timberlake at Berry Chill!") and Facebook for longer-lead calls to action, like enlisting focus-group

volunteers.

CREATE A CONVERSATION. Don't blast promotions incessantly. Intersperse them with other nuggets of wisdom or news related to your products and industry or neighborhood. Or, if you have a broader social mission, use Twitter to communicate that. Naked Pizza co-founder Jeff Leach suggests that if these kinds of social technologies become game changers, there may be a day when companies' initial business plans take into consideration whether they have anything worth microblogging.

SELL LAST-MINUTE INVENTORY. Twitter's immediacy is its biggest strength -- so use it to pump up business during lulls or discount

last-minute unsold goods, said Zack Steven, co-founder of LocalTweeps, a local Twitter directory, who caught same-day discounted tickets at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis via Twitter.

ALERT FOLLOWERS WHEN YOU'RE ON THE GO. Venture capitalist Fred Wilson likes to point to KogiBBQ, Korean taco truck that drives around Los Angeles, alerting its almost 20,000 followers to its current and future locations via a Twitter feed.

Thank You!