This Social Media 101 workshop was geared to a government audience. But the slides are equally useful for corporate and small business managers interested in starting or improving a social media program.

1. Social Media 101

2. Threat advisory is
“elevated”
This says it all
Despite Department
of Defense’s
“elevated” threat
level, acceptance of
social media as a
way of
communicating –
and staying in touch
– so important for
members of the
military – is now
mainstream.

3. Discussion What is your goal for today?
FOSE 2010
Workshop
March 25, 2010
Washington DC
Convention
All slides in this deck copyright Debbie Weil, 2010
Center

4. Workshop Agenda
What will you achieve using social media?
How will you measure success?
What is your biggest challenge or obstacle?
Case Study: Mayo Clinic
Overview of social media tools
Twitter and blogging tutorial
GUEST SPEAKERS

5. What will you achieve using social media?
Proof Point: • Increase awareness of your brand or agency
Dell’s social media efforts • Increase positive / decrease negative mentions
resulted in negative online
sentiment declining from
• Improve customer service
48% to 23% from August • Drive traffic to a specific site for sales or downloads
2006 to mid-2008,
according to Dell’s
• Create platform for 24X7 crisis communications
Richard Binhammer • Collect feedback from stakeholders
(Senior Mgr, Corporate • Knowledge management (internal use)
Comms)
• Innovate through collaboration and crowdsourcing
http://bit.ly/c8KMgM • Thought leadership for senior managers
• Build a community of evangelists
Fulfill the Open Government Directive issued
by Pres. Obama in Dec. 2009
http://www.whitehouse.gov/open

6. Benefits of crowdsourcing
NetFlix awarded $1M prize to outside
developers who improved its movie
recommendation engine.
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk lets you
choose HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks)
and work when / where you want.
GeniusRocket and CrowdSpring
crowdsource creative design (including
Web design, videos and logos) at
remarkably low prices.
My Starbucks Idea has crowdsourced
thousands of espresso drink,
merchandizing, payment, customer
involvement ideas.
TSA (Transportation Safety
Administration) actively solicits feedback
through www.tsa.gov/blog.

7. Metrics: How Will You Measure Success?
The results of using social media can be tied to a business
objective, just as they can for any communications strategy.
For example, measure increase or decrease in:
• Awareness (number of mentions – positive or negative)
• Sales or Downloads
• Service (surveys – compare year over year)
• Other ideas?
Also consider ROI: Return on Ignoring
(cost of not using social media)

8. Anecdotal proof point: Increased Revenue
According to July 2009 study by Altimeter Group and Wetpaint, the most
engaged brands saw revenues grow in 2009.
1. Starbucks (127)
2. Dell (123)
3. eBay (115)
4. Google (105)
5. Microsoft (103)
6. Thomson Reuters (101)
7. Nike (100)
8. Amazon (88)
9. SAP (86)
10. Tie - Yahoo!/Intel (85)
These brands are engaged in seven or more social media channels.
Links to study http://www.engagementdb.com/ and http://bit.ly/socialmedia_financialsuccess

9. Key misconceptions about use of social media
Using social media is a waste of time
54% of CIOs ban employees from using any social networking sites
(Twitter, Facebook, etc.) at work
Robert Half Technology Study: October 2009
Social media is not mainstream
91% of Inc. 500 companies are now using social media
UMass Center for Marketing Research (Dr. Nora G. Barnes): 2009 Study
16% of Fortune 500 are now blogging; growth is “slow and steady”
UMass Center for Marketing Research (Dr. Nora G. Barnes): 2009 Study
There is no ROI
69 percent of respondents report that their companies have gained
measurable business benefits, including more innovative products and
services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of
doing business, and higher revenues.
McKinsey Global 2009 Web 2.0 Survey

10. What is your biggest challenge or obstacle?
Fear?
Lack of knowledge?
Resources: Time? Staffing?
Legal / regulatory?
Cultural mindset? Historically, this has been an
obstacle in government agencies – where there is often
an emphasis on command and control, as well as siloed
thinking.

11. How can you surmount obstacles?
Launch small skunkworks project as proof of concept
Empower yourself by learning to use social media: start a
Posterous blog, create a Twitter account. Start following
hashtag #gov20 on Twitter for news and case studies
you can learn from
Ignore the prevailing “can’t do it” mindset
(read Seth Godin’s newest book LINCHPIN)

12. Case Study: Mayo Clinic’s social media program
Find this presentation at:
http://www.slideshare.net/LeeAase/energizing-word-of-mouth-through-social-media

13. Podcast blog
Patient stories blog
Mayo Clinic Social
Media Hub
Facebook: over 14K fans
Over 30K followers

14. Mayo Social Media roadmap from Mayo Clinic
Social media Guy Lee Aase*
1. Start small
2. Budget $0.00
3. Cultivate MacGyver mindset (i.e. laid-back, resourceful secret
agent Angus MacGyver from TV series)
4. Expect a few missteps (no one will notice)
5. Think creatively about how to combine old media with new media
6. Reuse your content across multiple platforms
7. Publish news (be your own news channel)
8. Don’t expect hard ROI tied to dollars
9. Be anecdotally successful as your proof of concept
- Patients tell physicians they heard Mayo podcast and chose Mayo
- increased media coverage
* Source: phone interview with Mayo Clinic’s Lee Aase 09.02.2009

15. Mayo’s BigClinic’s big wins
Mayo Wins
Podcast downloads went from 700 to 74,000
Twitter followers on @mayoclinic went from 1,200 to 7,000+ in 6 months
by making the Tweets interactive (not just publishing news)
Successful integration with what Mayo was already doing (radio show
listeners leave comments and questions on Twitter)
Three Mayo Clinic blogs successfully serve three different audiences
1. news 2. podcasts 3. patient stories
A patient-created video of octogenarian couple playing duet in lobby
went from 1,000 views on YouTube to nearly 7 million views, after
Mayo promoted the video on their blog

16. Mayo’s Big Wins
Power of viral video (and simple tool – a camera - to create it)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RI-l0tK8Ok0

17. Lee’s Insider Tips
Mayo Clinic Social Media Manager Lee Aase’s insider tips
Your “social media guy” should have a
little gray hair
You can’t hire a kid to tweet for you
He/she should LOVE this stuff so
they’re not counting hours
He/she should be jack-of-all-trades (like
“News gatherers” at Seattle PI
online newspaper who report, write,
edit, take photos, shoot video and
run the Web site)
Train those inside your organization to
feed you content

18. Key Learnings From Mayo Clinic
Key learnings from Mayo
1. Start small, fail cheaply [fail fast, if possible]
2. Don’t reinvent the wheel
3. Learn from your mistakes
4. Test, then ramp up
5. Let your social media evangelist develop a
personal brand

19. Help! How do you get started?

20. Social
Media
Grab
Bag
overwhelmed
Don’t be

21. Social
Media
Simplified
It Simple
Keep

22. Social
Media
Simplified
Most commonly used tools
Blogs use Posterous for instant blogging
Twitter is most popular micro-blogging platform
Social networking Facebook and LinkedIn
Photo sharing Flickr
Video Youtube or Vimeo – record with smartphone or Flip digital camera
Wikis most useful for internal knowledge management
Podcasts most difficult to do well – BlogTalkRadio.com is one solution

23. Your
Social
Media
Road
Map
common tools
Start with most
Your blog should be your
social media hub. You control
the content on your blog.

24. or
Start
With
Social
Media
Media Hub
Southwest Airlines Social
Mindset
www.blogsouthwest.com
Blog
Over 1M followers on Twitter
@SouthwestAir
Great Twitter bio:
“Airplanes can’t type so
@ChristiDay and
@Brandy_King are piloting the
Twitterverse.”
http://www.blogsouthwest.com/

25. or
Start
CDC Social Media Hub www.cdc.gov/socialmedia/
With
Social
Media
Mindset
Widgets
eCards
CDC social media
hub

26. CDC explainsith
Social
Media
Mindset
Social Media Campaigns
or
Start
W both its Social Media Tools and

27. WhiteHouse.gov is a social media hub
Issues
Uses AddThis.com to
Photos & Video
“share” content from
blog posts
White House has 11 blogs.
Note organization of huge
amount of content from Government
WhiteHouse.gov hub
Executive Branch

28. These are all the tools you need to create social media

29. Case Study: Red Cross Social Media Training
Wendy Harman, Red Cross Social Media Manager
Wendy ran a training session to teach 200 Red Cross volunteers how to Tweet, take
photographs and create videos for the Red Cross blogs – using only their smartphones.
Check out the Social Media Handbook she created. It is posted on her Posterous blog:
http://wharman.posterous.com/

30. Walking the talk
Twitter tutorial

31. 7 Keys to Effective Twittering
1. Follow the influentials in your sector
2. Find gov’t Twitter accounts on GovTwit.com
3. Tweet about news, events, conferences,
interesting blog posts, OTHER people & orgs
4. As often as possible, include a link in your tweets
5. Use hashtags when appropriate [#gov20 #FOSE]
6. @ reply people to get their attention
7. Occasionally ask people to follow you to get their
attention

32. Twitter – 7 ways to get RTs and Followers
7 ways to get Retweets and followers
Set up a poll and invite
Always link - to your site, readers to take it. Tweet
to a blog, news article or the results.
photo/picture
use #hashtags like
RT another tweet that is #gov20 and #hcr
Break news (not useful, newsy, provocative,
just yours) memorable
Occasionally, be inspirational: Report live on a conference using
a quote, a photo, a word of the the event hashtag
day, a funny video

33. My Mashable article: 5 Ways to Write Retweetable Tweets
Find it at: http://mashable.com/2009/10/06/retweetable-tweets/

34. Ask an influential to Follow you

35. Re-tweets by “influentials” noting that space available
in FOSE Social Media Workshop

36. Twitter Tools
Twitter tools
www.Twitter.com - Twitter home page where you change settings
(bio, little photo and background)
Twitter Search http://search.twitter.com/
BingTweets http://bingtweets.com/ another Twitter search tool But It’s Not Google
Use Bitly for a URL shortener http://bit.ly
Tweetie2 – app for your iPhone ($2.99 download from App Store)
Ubertwitter or OpenBeak – Twitter apps for your Blackberry
Tweetdeck.com – tweet from your desktop (and manage multiple Twitter accounts)
Hootsuite.com or Cotweet.com enables multiple individuals to tweet for one brand
TwitterBackgrounds.com – free or customized for $99
Mashable’s Twitter Resources http://mashable.com/category/twitter-lists/

37. Walking the talk
Blogging tutorial

39. It’s always about your content

40. It’s
(Always)
the
Content
killer content
Secrets of
1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotion
6. Story
- from Made to Stick

41. It’s
(Always)
tsecrets of effective blogging
7 he
Content
1. Choose a topic that relates to what your stakeholders
are interested in
2. Find a conversational voice you’re comfortable with
3. Use self-deprecating humor
4. Embed videos
5. Package your content - 10 Tips, 5 Rules, 7 Mistakes
6. Always, always link
7. Publish consistently
From Chapter 7 of The Corporate Blogging Book

42. TSA blog – scabies and exploding chickens
(Photo is a dramatic
recreation)

43. Use Posterous for instant blogging
debbieweil.posterous.com

44. Posterous: one-stop blogging
Type a new blog post
through email. Do it from
your smartphone. Send it to
post@posterous.com
You can attach photos and
videos.
The post automatically
appears:
- on your Posterous blog
- as a Tweet with a link in it
to the post
- as a status update to your
Facebook page
- and more

45. What’s wrong with many corporate or organizational blogs
1. Not integrated with main corporate site New study by Compendium:
2. Inconsistent linking between social 80 percent of traffic to corporate
networking spokes and blog hub blogs is 1st time visitors. This
means your blog has to be
3. Not updated frequently enough designed with clear links
directing 1st time visitors back to
4. Not enough personality. Corporate speak your main site or social media
is deadly hub. And content needs to be
persistently useful and well
5. Not written to attract search engines written.
More about the study:
http://bit.ly/cSfpNA

46. Value of personal branding
You can’t execute social media successfully unless you can
walk the talk (i.e. know how to Tweet effectively)
Encourage entrepreneurial “take ownership” behavior in your
organization
Employees who develop a personal brand are creating a
permanent digital footprint that moves with them from job to job
Check out the Personal
Branding Blog at
www.personalbrandingblog.com/

47. Key Takeaways
Big picture strategy is important but so is experimenting
tactically: start small, learn how to use the tools.
Don’t make it too complicated: think of a blog as the easily
modified, interactive section of your main site.
Establishing your blog as your social media hub enables
you to control / manage your content AND your search
results.

48. Parting Words ofMedia 101 Thought
Final Social Advice
You gotta walk the talk yourself
create a LinkedIn profile
start a blog (use Posterous)
start Twittering
get on Facebook
just do it

49. guest speaker
The TSA Blog
Lynn Dean
Senior Communications Strategist
Office of the Deputy Administrator
Transportation Security Administration
Department of Homeland Security
@TSABlogTeam on Twitter
http://www.tsa.gov/blog/

51. guest speaker
The American Red Cross
Wendy Harman
Social Media Manager
@wharman on Twitter
wharman.posterous.com
http://blog.redcross.org/

53. guest speaker
Booz Allen Hamilton
Steve Radick
Social Media / Gov 2.0 Lead
@sradick on Twitter
Personal blog: http://www.steveradick.com

54. Steve Radick is the principal
twitterer for Booz Allen. Although
there is no link to his Twitter page
from Booz Allen home page.
www.boozallen.com

55. New new things

56. Think mobile
In five years, 2/3 of U.S.
residents will carry a
smartphone. Whatever you
are doing with social media
should be easily accessible
– and legible – via mobile.

57. CDC mobile version of site

58. Think geolocation: Foursquare and Gowalla

59. Required Reading
Required Reading
Blogs / Sites
AllTop to find best blogs on every topic www.alltop.com
Web Strategist blog by Jeremiah Owyang www.web-strategist.com/blog/
Subscribe to SmartBrief on Social Media free e-newsletter www.smartbrief.com/news/socialmedia
GovLoop.com social networking site for government employees
Books find on Amazon
FREE by Chris Anderson
Linchpin by Seth Godin
Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith
The Corporate Blogging Book 2010 Updated e-book edition with new preface, new section on
Twitter and updated resources throughout. Search for “The Corporate Blogging Book” in the Amazon
Kindle store. Note: no Kindle required to read it.

60. Contact
Required Reading
debbie.weil@gmail.com
mobile: 202.255.1467
www.debbieweil.com
@debbieweil on Twitter
Debbie Weil is an author, speaker,
consultant and corporate social media
consultant based in Washington DC.
She is available for customized in-
house workshops.
30 Seconds
Purchase and download the 2010
Updated e-book edition of The
Corporate Blogging Book from
Amazon’s Kindle store.
http://bit.ly/aPWmdo
NOTE: No Kindle required. Use free
Kindle apps to read the book on your
iPhone or Blackberry, Mac or PC.