A presentation to a group of laid off executives from a major oil company. It was an introduction to the market and consumer forces driving social networking, describing what social networking is and the most common tools and then discussing how/where this fits into a small business business and marketing strategy
Agenda
Introductions
Rules
Let’s have a discussion, ask lots of questions
Where are bathrooms
Breaks
What is Social Networking?
What are the major social networks out there?
Why Social Networking for business? (what’s different than regular marketing marketing)
How to use social networking for your business
Depends on your market
Who are your customers? This will influence the way you go about this. For example, if the market is very old people, or poor people, (yes, obvious examples, I know) they are unlikely to be on the internet; so why build a web site?
Who is your competition and how do they promote their products? Also, how are the products promoted overseas – this may or may not translate for (South) Africa? Google has some useful, free, tools that help you with this research
How does your product interact with customers? This will influence if, how and where you may use social media for promotion.
What is the best way to build a community around your product? Competitions?, mail blasts?, blog?
What are the keywords and the related content you will create on your web site, blog, emails, social media, that will help the Search Engines (Google, Bing. Yahoo), find your website? Again Google has some free tools and there are some other very good free tools.
Once you have their details, how do you provide value to them so they remain interested in you and your product?