Social Media For Business Part 1 Social Media Basics

Social Media for Business 101: Social Media Basics February 18, 2009 Steven Fisher

What is Web 2.0?

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users.

Source: Wikipedia “ Second generation of internet based web services.” Web 2.0

The rise of Web 2.0 technology has ushered in a era where people are talking, ranting, complaining, praising, reviewing, and sharing everything online for the world to see.

They are talking about products, services, companies, experiences (bad or good) and providing their feedback, on their terms.

They demand to be heard!

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Social Media A Shift to Publishing a Conversation Institutional Voice Audience Traditional Social Media Blogs Communities Traditional online tactics focus on crafting institutional messages and assets then mass distributing them to a core audience. Social Media focuses on enabling and publishing a conversation between multiple parties where the community has a steak in the dialogue

Forrester Research Social Technographics Latter of Participation

Components of Social Media Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism (Image source: Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas) http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism.html

Social Media Defined Social Media Social media describes the online tools (created with Web 2.0 applications) that people use to share opinions, experiences, and perspectives with each other. A few prominent examples of social media applications are Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), YouTube (video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Digg (news sharing), Flickr (photo sharing) and Miniclip (game sharing). These sites typically use technologies such as blogs, wikis, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to engage and interact with eachother.

Social Media Defined User-generated content, Consumer-generated media User-generated content ( UGC ) refers to various kinds of media content that is produced or primarily influenced by end-users ; as opposed to traditional media outlets. Consumer-generated media (CGM) describes word-of-mouth behavior that exists on the Internet. Typically, consumer-generated media encompasses opinions, experiences, advice and commentary about products, brands, companies and services—usually informed by personal experience —that exist in consumer-created postings on Internet discussion boards, forums, Usenet newsgroups and blogs.

Social Media Defined Social bookmarking, Social Media Optimization Social Bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata. Social media optimization is about implementing changes to a site (or blog) so that others can easily link to it, tag it, post a comment to it; and then submit it to social bookmarking sites; making it social media ready!

Consumers trust each other first

Losing faith in corporate messages

Forrester Study

Consumers trust in ads plunged 41% in last three years

69% of them are interested in products/services that lets them avoid ads

92% cite that “WOM” is the best source for researching new products

Most people trust discussion boards/forums/wikis/blogs than ads in the media

Trends of Social Media Forrester Research

Study showed that …

77% of online shoppers read consumer product reviews and ratings before making a purchase

$2 Billion of online travel purchases a year are affected by social media

24% of online car shoppers have changes their mind about a vehicles purchase based on social media

51% of journalists read blogs for story ideas

28% of top search engine results are social media sites

Trends of Social Media Juniper Research

Participation

Full Disclosure

Two–way Conversation

Building a sense of community

Connection

Collaboration

Facilitation (facilitating something that is ALREADY happening)

June 8, 2009 Distinctive Qualities of Social Media

Social Media here at Network Solutions

Tools We Utilize:

Blogs

Twitter

Social Bookmarking

Flickr

Key characteristics

Transparency: forthright & honest, not always positive.

Active Listening: responsive to dialogue

Voice of many

Conversational

Facilitate and enable 2 way communication

Contributing to brand & marketing goals: Bottom line this is for a marketing end.

How can you and your department benefit from leveraging social media?

Listening - using social media as “real time” research and gaining insights from listening to customers

Talking - using conversations with customers to promote products or services

Energizing - building brand stewardship; and identifying enthusiastic customers and using them to persuade others

Supporting - making it possible for customers to help each other

Embracing - turning customers into a resource for innovation

June 8, 2009 Before you jump into social media head first There is some planning involved

Social Media Tip #1 – Use the POST Method

People: Assess your customers’ social activates and understand if they even participate in social media.

Objectives: Decide what you want to accomplish.

Strategy: Plan for how your relationship with customers change.

Technology: Decide which social media technologies to use (communities, blogs, twitter, Facebook, etc.)

The POST Method was created by Forrester as a way to provide people with an easy way to decide how to use Social Media

Social Media Tip #2 – Optimize Your Content to Go Everywhere

Optimizing content is not just about making changes to a site. You should have content that can be portable (such as PDFs, video, podcasts).

Submitting them to relevant sites will help your content travel further, and ultimately drive links back to your site

RSS – allow others to subscribe to your content

The end goal is to achieve Omnipresence

Social Media Tip #3 – Increase Linkability

Blogging

White papers

Thought pieces

Flash demos

2-way dialogue

Remember, the key is to have content that “engages” others and makes them want to link to your site.

Social Media Tip #4 – Reward Inbound Links

Who is linking to you and what are they saying?

Track your inbound links

Allow display of trackbacks

Highlight people who write about you

Engage in conversations on blogs that link to you

June 8, 2009

Social Media Tip #5 – Make Tagging and Bookmarking Easy

Adding quick buttons to "add to del.icio.us“

Making sure pages include a list of relevant tags

Adding tags to pages first on popular social sites

A “tag” is just a word(s) that describe content. Tags that describe the content Easy to bookmark and add to Social Media Sites

Social media is about conversations and relationships

Customers are in control, but not total control because you CAN participate

People do not want to me marketed to; they want to be heard and can relate more to another human than a banner ad

It’s not just about great content, it’s about relationships

Chances are there is a conversation going on online about your products or services, or even the business itself. Are you going to participate, or let someone else?

Final Thoughts … but wait, there are two more slides