The document explores the evolving landscape of professional social networking, focusing on strategies for leveraging platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn for business growth and customer engagement. It outlines key trends in communication and marketing, emphasizing the importance of developing a clear social networking strategy and content plan. Additionally, it discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by social networking tools, encouraging organizations to educate and connect with their customers effectively.

1. Professional Social Networking:
How to Leverage Facebook
and Other Social Networking Tools?
© 2009 Bizucate, Inc.

2. Who am I?
• Principal of an education, consulting,
coaching and marketing company serving 4
kinds of customers
• I’m an entrepreneur of a small business very
similar to some of your customers
• I’m a business owner, consumer, member
and donor…just like many of you
– B2B, B2C, A2M, NP2D
2

3. I’ve got 105 minutes
• Share a key communication trend
• Share a key marketing trend
• Define social networking
• Discuss social networking strategies
• List and define some social network technologies
• Describe business benefits and shortcomings of
social networking
• Discuss content and where it comes from
• Address your questions
3

4. Current State of Communications
• Cultural shift in the way we communicate and want to be
communicated to
• “Traditional” methods of communication experiencing a
wholesale overhaul
• Print, radio and TV being redefined to survive challenges created by
new technologies, ever evolving global economies and user
expectations
• “New” communication methods are either totally new (ie. Twitter,
Facebook), reimagined uses (ie. PURLs and VI) or effective
combinations of the two or more, also known as Multi-Channel
Communications
• New ways of communication include many channels to
communicate with individuals and organizations
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5. Foundation of Communications
F ee
dba
ck
Sender
Message
Channel
Receiver
5

6. Message
Message
Sender Mobile App Constant
Feedback
Message
Soc. Ntwrk
TV
Message
Message Message Radio
E-Mail Message SMS Text Message
E-News E-Stmnt
Message Message
SEO Inst. Messg.
Message
Message Message
PURL
Blog
Message Phone Message
Widget Podcast
Instantaneous
Message
Message
Website
Feedback Message
Viral Video
Receiver
Print
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© 2009 Bizucate Inc.

7. 3 Points of Communication Trend
1. Shear number of communications is
enormous and growing each day
2. Number of channels (ways to
communicate)
is increasing
3. Being heard/seen gets harder and harder
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8. Old Marketing Trend
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9. New Marketing Fact
Website
Direct Mail
E-Mail
Social Net
Collaterals
Radio
9

10. 3 Points of Marketing Trend
1. Amount of funds is smaller than before
2. Funds are now divided across more
channels
3. Focus on ROI more important than ever
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11. Defining Social Networking
• A social network is a social structure made of individuals
(or organizations) called "nodes," which are tied
(connected) by one or more specific types of
interdependency, such as friendship, kinship, financial
exchange, dislike, sexual relationships, or relationships of
beliefs, knowledge or prestige
• A social network service focuses on building online
communities of people who share interests and/or
activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests
and activities of others. Most social network services are
web based and provide a variety of ways for users to
interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services
Wikipedia.org 11

12. Social Networking Strategy
• What do you want to achieve from your social
networking efforts (defined as goals)?
– Personal, business or both
– Deepen relationship with existing customers
– Help new customers find you
• GETTING FOUND is becoming more popular
– Getting found by the right person is just as important
• Deepening relationships is secondary to many
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13. Your Social Networking Plan
• What content will be developed?
– Unique messages for each channel
– Same message in multiple channels
– Individual messages in multiple channels as part of a central
theme
• Who will develop the content?
– Organization
– Individual
– Inside or hired
• What channel(s) will it be presented in?
– Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace and soooo many more
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14. • Blog (Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress or private)
– Type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of
commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
• MySpace.com
– Social networking website with an interactive, user-submitted network of friends,
personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and more
• Facebook.com
– Social networking website where users can add friends and send them messages, and
update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves. Additionally, users
can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region.
• LinkedIn.com, Plaxo.com, Spoke.com, Orkut.com
– Business-oriented social networks allowing professionals to build a list of contacts and
leverage the power of the network to meet new people
• YouTube.com
– Video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos
• SlideShare.net
– Presentation sharing website users can upload, view and share presentation files
• Digg.com
– Social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on
the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted
links and stories
• Ning.com
– Platform for creating your own social network. Our passion is putting new social
networks in the hands of anyone with a good idea
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15. Social Networking Workflow
• How to use it
– Internally: build office relations, establish company wide brand
experience/ownership, content management, training
– Externally: Recruiting, lead generation, build brand recognition
• Considerations
– Maintenance and Engagement: Do you have the time and
personnel to make the most of your company’s network
presence? Is it worth it to have an ideal Company Page?
– Who is your audience & market? Which service is most likely to
attract them? Do any of them?
– What kind of controls would be necessary?
– Use a college intern to help implement your strategy
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16. Social Networking
Challenges and Opportunities
• Using all the potential of today’s tools (especially
mostly free) vs. using the old methods that may not
be giving the return you hoped
• Identifying people who are passionate about a topic
vs. forcing someone to write about a topic they don’t
really like
• Devising a plan to effectively use the tools vs.
getting lost and worried about not being able to fill
the channel with valuable content
• Being able to reach your goals in the time available
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17. Learning How To Social Network
• Review how other verticals do/use it
• Review how other companies do/use it
• Try it yourself as part of your strategy
– Do it yourself
– Get other employees to try it
– Hire interns to help you do it
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18. Investigate a Vertical
• Google Search: Associations + social networking
• http://www.foliomag.com/2008/associations-
adopting-digital-social-networking-applications
– More associations adopting social media
– 57% tried at least one social networking application,
• Facebook 43%, LinkedIn 35%, and YouTube 31%
– 38% set up their own social media Web site.
• 27% building their own
• Others are using pre-existing programs like Microsoft SharePoint,
Higher Logic or Moveable Type
• Look for: Who’s doing the talking, what are they
talking about, how are they sharing the content
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19. Get Specific: Growing Businesses
• How do growing businesses use social networking?
• Look for: Who’s doing the talking, what are they
talking about, how are they sharing the content
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20. No. 22 of 5000 in 2009
vAuto, Oak Brook, IL
• Industry: Software
• Founded: 2005
• Growth: 4,659.9%
• 2005 Revenue: $327,400
• 2008 Revenue: $15.6 million
• Employees: 61
• Website: www.vAuto.com
• What They Do: vAuto designs and sells inventory
management software for used automobile dealers.
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21. No. 124 of 5000 in 2009
TAG Employer Services, Phoenix, AZ
• Industry: Human Resources
• Founded: 2002
• Growth: 1,396.0%
• 2005 Revenue: $1.3 million
• 2008 Revenue: $19.7 million
• Employees: 43
• Website: www.tagpay.com
• What They Do: TAG Employer Services administers payroll,
insurance, and other human resources services for small
businesses.
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22. No. 21 of 5000 in 2009
Blue Entertainment Sports Television, Louisville, KY
• Industry: Media
• Founded: 2004
• Growth: 4,685.3%
• 2005 Revenue: $478,501
• 2008 Revenue: $22.9 million
• Employees: 80
• Website: www.ExperienceBest.com
• What They Do: Blue Entertainment Sports Television owns,
manages, and produces sporting events and television
properties and represents sports and entertainment
celebrities such as Reggie Bush, Magic Johnson, Shawn
Marion, and Caroline Wozniacki
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23. What Could You Discuss?
6 Reasons Why People Buy™
1. Save me/Make Me Money
2. Make Me/My Organization Look Good
3. Make My Life Easier
4. Save Me/My Organization
5. Challenge Me
6. Because It’s the Right Thing to Do
Bizucate’s 763 Approach to Business Development
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24. Where will your
future work come from?
• How will people know you’re there?
• How will they know what you do?
• How will they know how long it will take?
• How will they know how much it will cost?
• And on and on…
• Preparing to grow should start with a strategy
…same goes for social networking
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25. When Tactics Drown Out Strategy
New media creates a blizzard of tactical opportunities for marketers, and many
of them cost nothing but time, which means you don't need as much
approval and support to launch them.
As a result, marketers are like kids at Rita's candy shoppe, gazing at all the
pretty opportunities.
Most of us are afraid of strategy, because we don't feel confident outlining one
unless we're sure it's going to work. And the 'work' part is all tactical, so we
focus on that. (Tactics are easy to outline, because we say, "I'm going to post
this." If we post it, we succeed. Strategy is scary to outline, because we
describe results, not actions, and that means opportunity for failure.)
"Building a permission asset so we can grow our influence with our best
customers over time" is a strategy. Using email, twitter or RSS along with
newsletters, contests and a human voice are all tactics. In my experience,
people get obsessed about tactical detail before they embrace a strategy...
and as a result, when a tactic fails, they begin to question the strategy that
they never really embraced in the first place.
The next time you find yourself spending 8 hours on tactics and five minutes
refining your strategy, you'll understand what's going on.
Sethgodin.com 25

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27. Linking Together…
• What do changes in the way we communicate have
to do with my business as well as my customer
• All it takes is for someone to see the opportunity in
each and link them together
• Develop a strategic approach that can include
services to deal with the changes
• Design products that can tangibly address the
changes…turning change into opportunity
• The link is all about doing business
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28. Your Opportunities
• Your greatest opportunity is to educate and
motivate your customer on how they can market,
sell, create and efficiently produce profitable
business products/services that people need
• You can use social networks as a way to
– Deepen relationships with existing customers
– Help new customers find you
– Help new business ventures to develop
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29. What Will You Do?
• You’ve already increased your knowledge
• You may choose to do something
• You may choose not to do something
• Be sure to know you are making a choice and you
are allowed to change your mind
• You may have to do some work, but it could be
work that makes a bigger difference in your life
and the life of your organization
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30. Thank You
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