Slides from an Intuit Small Business Town Hall discussion on Social Media. See other Town Hall events at www.IntuitCommunity.com

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Using Social Media to Grow Your Business
July 25, 2009
Long for Success
Small Business Town Hall
Agenda
• What is social media?
• How can it help grow my business?
• Success stories
• Getting started
• Q&A – approx 30 minutes
This is the first of many Long for Success Town Halls
THANK YOU for participating!

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Special Guests
• Michelle L. Long, CPA
– Author of Successful
QuickBooks Consulting
– M. Long Consulting, LLC
• Chris Kim
– Social Marketing
Manager, Intuit Payroll
• Dante Layton
– Dante Layton, Inc.
• Ruth Perryman
– The QB Specialists
Your
Biz
Blog
What is Social Media?

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Blogging

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How can it help me Grow my Business?
• Another marketing method
• Focus on your target market & how to
reach them
• Provided useful and relevant content
• Be consistent and persistent
• Benefits:
– Create Brand Awareness / Name
Recognition
– Build Credibility
– Get new clients or customers
Twitter Success Story
• http://twitter.com/ruthperryman
• 17,000+ followers (growing about 300/day)
• Clients acquired – Cybertary, Your Virtual
Assistant, affiliate link purchases
• Key Tips
– Don’t just post ads
– Follow everyone back
– Leave room for retweets

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How to Engage in
Profitable Conversations
• Promotion
• Conversation
• Idea
• Results
Using an RSS Reader
• What is an RSS Reader?
• A free website or application that aggregates and updates numerous
sites into a single place
• What are the benefits?
• Time Saving: The content comes to you vs. having to visit each site
individually
• Fresh Content: Content is updated in real time
• Easy Organization: Allows you to organize sites into folders, similar to
Outlook
• What are my choices?
• Web-based (eg, Google Reader)
• Stand-alone app (eg, FeedDemon)
• Plug-in (eg, MS Outlook, Internet Explorer)
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How to subscribe
• Click on the “RSS” icon
on a given web page
• 2 ways to subscribe:
1. Often a 1-click option
to add to Google
Reader
2. Copy/paste option
• Copy the RSS Feed URL
• Click “New
subscription” or “add
feed” in your reader
• Paste the RSS Feed URL
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For a short video on RSS go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU
What to subscribe to?
• News sites
• Blogs
• Twitter
– Create keyword searches such as
• QuickBooks
• #QBtip
• Any other topics of interest
• Community Forums, eg:
– Intuit Community
– Yahoo Answers (keyword searches)
– Other forums you participate in
• Google Alerts
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Final Thoughts
• Do NOT post anything online that you
would not want a customer or client to
see
• Always maintain your business image at
all times
• Provide useful and relevant information
• Q&A – Request to Speak or type in Chat
Window
– Michelle – mlong@mlongconsulting.com
– Chris – Chris_kim@intuit.com
– Dante – Dante@dantelayton.com
– Ruth – Ruth@theQBSpecialists.com