The document discusses leveraging social media for small businesses. It provides an overview of Michael Bowers and the Ohio Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at Columbus State. The Ohio SBDC advises small businesses and facilitates loans, job creation, and business growth. The document discusses developing a social media strategy and using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Pinterest to engage customers and reduce marketing costs. It emphasizes creating valuable content, building communities, and focusing on outcomes rather than tools.

1. Social Media For Small
Business
Leverage It Or Get Left Behind

2. So, Are You Ready?

3. Who is @MichaelBowers?
District Center Manager for Ohio SBDC at
Columbus State since 2002
SBDC State Star for Ohio in 2007
Won the SBA Innovation and Service
Center of the Year for Ohio and SBA
Region Five in 2007
Won the State of Ohio SBDC Innovation
Award 2011
Striving to accelerate the growth of
entrepreneurship and small business
innovation. #RunNerds Marathoner.
What's worth doing is worth doing for 26.2!

4. Ohio SBDC
An experienced & award winning team providing
no-cost, one-on-one business management advice
with four centers to serve you at one location:
Specialty Centers
Ohio SBDC Manufacturing Center
Ohio SBDC International Business Center
Ohio SBDC Latino Center
The Ohio SBDC at Columbus State

5. Where is the Ohio SBDC at
Columbus State

6. Advised 1,087 Small Businesses
Conducted classes for over 1,500 attendees
Facilitated $4,804,950 in loans / investment
capital
Assisted in the creation or retention of 617
jobs
 51% of SBDC clients are women owned
 36% of SBDC clients are minority owned
2012 SBDC Activity

7. SBDC Business Assistance
 Business Start-Up ~ BizStartNow, a three week
intensive program covering the specifics of business
start-up and operation ~ No Charge
 Topic Specific Small Group Advising ~ Topic specific
content delivered to small groups of business owners to
help them quickly address pressing needs ~ No Charge
 One-On-One Business Advising ~ SBDC Certified
Business Advisors work one-on-one with the business
owner to address the specific issues that will take the
business to the next level ~ No Charge

8. Slides Available at Ideas2Deals.com

9. No Stupid Questions
(Although I will talk & Tweet about
you afterwards)
I love you all it just may not seem
like it (Tough Love)
Ground Rules

10. What Are We Doing Today?
Discuss the strategic development of a social media strategy.
Discuss the various social media platforms and how to best
leverage these to reach your goals.
Discuss how using Social Media will help you get your ideas to
spread and reach customers.
Discuss how use Social Media to reduce marketing costs
How to manage time to best implement a social media strategy

11. It’s All About The
Story…
What’s Your Story?

12. On The Top Of The
Evaluation Form
Write ONE Thing You
Want To Learn Today

13. Social Media Tools Without Strategy.

14. Why Did We Start With Social?

15. Seth Godin, Getting Your Ideas
To Spread

16. There are so many options and
media now that are competing for
consumers’ attention that it is easy
for them to ignore traditional
“Push” advertising
Traditional Advertising Won’t Work

19. Be Remarkable
Key To Success…

20. Being Good Is Easy To Ignore

21. Being Safe Is Bad

22. Want To Hear From You
Want To Ignore You
Work The Edges

23. Earn Attention Of People That
Want To Talk To You
Build Trust With Them
They Will Share With Their Friends
Key To Success…

24. The Power of
Digital

25. Why Participate?
Marketing is changing
The need to spend money on push
advertising is diminishing
“Word Of Mouth” is a click away

26. Your customers are on-line NOW!
You must be there too if you are going to
reach and sell your customers.
If you are not there you can bet your
competition is
Why Participate?

27. What Social Media Can Do For You
Improved Marketing outreach.
Marketing cost savings.
Improved customer flow.
Improved impact
Better Results!!!

28. I am not a technical person. I know
less about programming and
computers than anyone.
I just know how to push buttons and I
have a pretty cool phone.
Anyone Can Do Social Media!

29. Social Media Done Right…

30. Social Media is Strategic
Social Media Done Right…

31. “In preparing for battle I have
always found that plans are
useless, but planning is
indispensable.”
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Words of Wisdom…

32. Social Media is not the TOOLS
Social Media is the strategy and
the story behind the tools
Using Social Media!

33. Lead
Don’t Push
Social Media Done Right…

34. Through “Engagement” You
will create “Fans” that will
follow you and buy from
you
Social Media Done Right…

35. Social Media Is Simple…
Just Moving People Around the Internet

36. Building Activity ~ Prospecting

37. Goals ~ What do you want to
achieve?
Platforms ~ Where are your
customers? This will determine
where you should be.
Promotion~ How are you going
to promote and engage?
Three Steps in SM Development

38. Social Media is about
Building a “community” of
people interested in what
you do.
Do You Remember Community?

39. Strong Value
Strong Story
Strong Engagement
If You Build It Will They Come

40. Your Website
Where The Magic
Happens

41. This is where the magic
happens and by magic I
mean SEO and
CONVERSION.
Your Website Is Critical

42. Your Website Is Critical

43. Ohio Growth Summit

46. Your Blog
Your Story

47. Thought Leadership
Your Expertise
Your Value
Your Blog

48. Content Drives Traffic.
Your Blog

49. The Blog Allows
You To Tell The
Story…
Content Marketing

50. Content Marketing means creating and sharing
valuable free content to attract and convert prospects
into customers, and customers into repeat buyers.
The type of content you share is closely related to what
you sell; in other words, you’re educating people so that
they know, like, and trust you enough to do business
with you.
via www.copyblogger.com
Content Marketing

51. You have to create content ~ Get in the habit
of writing
Embrace Brevity ~ Not everything is a 5,000
word manifesto. Remember your content will
probably be read on a 3 inch screen
Keep it simple ~ This isn’t English class. Write
to your audience.
Content Marketing

52. Most important
Be Helpful
Content Marketing

53. What Is Your
Content
Strategy?

54. Ideas To Deals Blog

55. Embed Video For Content

56. Write Content ~ Answer Questions

57. Social Media Tools
You Don’t Buy
Drills You Buy
Holes

58. Social Media Tools
Focus on the outcome,
the desired result, not
the tool

59. E-Mail Marketing

60. E-Mail Marketing
With Social you can’t really know if
people saw your message.
With email at least you know it went
to their email box and you can track
opens.

61. E-Mail Marketing

62. E-Mail Marketing
Email marketing only works if
you have a quality list to send to.
Build a consistent deliver pattern
and provide value

63. Engagement
Visual
Easy
FaceBook

64. My Personal Facebook Page

65. facebook.com/SBDC.Columbus

66. facebook.com/ohiogrowthsummit

67. facebook.com/ohiogrowthsummit

68. facebook.com/ohiogrowthsummit

69. Be sure to direct people to
your page and ask for the
“Like”
Facebook.com/SBDC.Columbus
FaceBook Tips

70. You can schedule your
updates, pictures and videos
but be sure to interact and
respond.
Engagement!
FaceBook Tips

71. 140 Characters
“Lead” people to where you
would like to go.
Twitter

72. Twitter.com/MichaelBowers

73. twitter.com/OHGrowthSummit

74. twitter.com/Ohio_SBDC

75. Great for business to
business activity.
Big in job seeking and full of
people considering
entrepreneurship
LinkedIn

76. LinkedIn Profile

77. Linkedin Groups

78. People like Visual
Great way to draw attention
Google owns it…Google
Likes It!
YouTube

79. www.youtube.com/ohiosbdc

80. www.youtube.com/ohiosbdc

81. www.youtube.com/ohiosbdc

82. www.youtube.com/ohiosbdc

83. You Tube Interviews

84. YouTube Interviews

85. YouTube Interviews

86. Vine ~ 6 Second Video

87. Goggle +

88. Goggle+

89. Goggle+ Hangouts

90. Pinterest

91. Pinterest

92. Pinterest
• Pin from your website so when people find it they
will click back to your site.
• Add your business name and address to your
photo so when people find it and pin it they see
your information.
• Create pinboards for various topics your
customers are interested in and looking for.
• Participate ~ Pin things you like and people will
follow

93. Pinterest

95. Instagram
Visual Social
Sharing

96. Instagram
Visual Social
Sharing

97. Why Instagram?
• Instagram launched as an iPhone app in
Apple's App Store on October 6, 2010.
• By December 2010, Instagram had one
million registered users.
• By July 2011, Instagram users had shared
over 100 million photographs. It reached 10
million registered users in September that
year.
• The number had hit 30 million by April 2012.

98. Check-In Tools

99. Why Foursquare
• Foursquare has had over 3 billion check-ins
• Foursquare sees 2,000 check-ins per minute
• 60% of Foursquare's 25 million users are
male
• 41% of Foursquare users are between the
ages of 25 and 34
• 60% of Foursquare users are male
• More than 2/3 of active Foursquare users post
tips

100. Check-In Tools

101. Why Yelp
• Yelp had 22MM reviews on its network in September
2011, an increase of 66% over September 2010
• A one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to a 5-9%
increase in revenue
• Yelp had a monthly average of 84 million unique
visitors in Q3 2012
• By the end of Q3 2012, Yelpers had written more than
33 million rich, local reviews
• Yelp's mobile application was used on 8.2 million
unique mobile devices on a monthly average basis
during Q3 2012

102. Check-In Tools

103. Why Google+ Local
• 59% of consumers use Google every month
to find local businesses
• 20% of searches on Google are related to
location.
• 67% of Android users used Google Maps
apps in the past 30 days

104. Social Media Tools
You Don’t Buy
Drills You Buy
Holes

105. Social Media Tools
Focus on the outcome,
the desired result, not
the tool

106. You can manage your sites
from a single tool.
You don’t have to go to each
site and it doesn’t take that
long.
SM Management

107. Hootsuite.com

108. Hootsuite.com

109. Buffer.com

110. Be Sure You Are Listening

111. Listen With Twitter Search

112. Listen With Google Alerts

113. Listen With A Reader ~ RSS

114. Listen With Hootsuite

115. Final Thoughts (Almost Done)

116. Be Strategic. What do you Want
to accomplish?
Always Think Community
Engage, Engage, Engage
Final Thoughts

117. Be Heavy on Content
Don’t Push, Lead
Final Thoughts

118. Be Patient.
Social is a long term strategy that
will build long term client/customers
Create Small Successes.
Final Thoughts

119. Create Value
Final Thoughts

120. Where Am I?
E-mail mbowers3@cscc.edu
Ohio SBDC http://www.sbdccolumbus.com/
Blog http://www.ideas2deals.com/
Twitter @MichaelBowers and @Ohio_SBDC
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/michael.bowers
https://www.facebook.com/SBDC.Columbus
https://www.facebook.com/Ideas2Deals
Google + http://gplus.to/MichaelBowers
Pinterest http://pinterest.com/michaelbowers/
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/mbowers030

121. Do or Do Not…
There Is No Try!
If You Choose to Participate…

122. The Ohio SBDC at Columbus State
p. 614-287-5294
www.SBDCColumbus.com