Exploring Social Media
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Calvert Design Group, Inc. was asked by the Calvert County Chamber of Commerce to deliver an introduction to leveraging social media for businesses presentation at their Business over Breakfast series on December 3, 2009.
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Exploring Social Media
- 1. Exploring Social Networkingfor YOUR Business A new Digital Relationship now exists…
- 2. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Understanding Context Digital Initiatives
- 3. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Understanding Context Digital Initiatives
- 4. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Understanding Context What is Social Networking?
- 5. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Media
- 6. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Media
- 7. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Media
- 8. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Media
- 9. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Media
- 10. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Media
- 11. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Networks
- 12. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Networks
- 13. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Networks
- 14. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Networks
- 15. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Networks
- 16. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Social Networks
- 17. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … How to Get Involved! Make sure your part of the conversation adds value
- 18. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … How to Get Involved! Make sure your part of the conversation adds value
- 19. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … How to Get Involved! Make sure your part of the conversation adds value
- 20. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples So how do all of these things work together…
- 21. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples We Weill typically Facebook.com
- 22. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Twitter.com
- 23. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Bookmark Sharing
- 24. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Blogs – Wordpress.com, Blogspot.com, Xanga.com
- 25. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Blogs – Wordpress.com, Blogspot.com, Xanga.com
- 26. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Blogs – Wordpress.com, Blogspot.com, Xanga.com
- 27. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Media – YouTube.com, Flickr.com and iTunes
- 28. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Media – YouTube.com, Flickr.com and iTunes
- 29. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Media – YouTube.com, Flickr.com and iTunes
- 30. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Internet Forums and Discussion Groups
- 31. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples “Follow Us”
- 32. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Specific Examples Your content gone VIRAL!!!
- 33. Exploring Social Media for YOUR Business … Questions? Brian Raines brian@calvertdesigngroup.com 410-414-5621 http://www.calvertdesigngroup.com
Editor's Notes
- Thank you for allowing me to be here today and to the Chamber for putting this together. Social networking is one of the buzzwords everyone knows, but very few know how to effectively leverage for their business.A new digital relationship now exists between your customers and prospects and your business. Smart businesses today are seeing this new relationship as a fresh direction for marketing by allowing them to talk WITH customers and prospects, as opposed to talking AT them.
- As we begin to explore the concept of social networking we should first establish context.One goal of your digital initiatives should be to drive traffic to your website. It is then the responsibility of your website to convert that traffic into a desired transaction. As much, if not more, effort should be made to bring a customer TO your website as has already been made to convert them once they are there.Your digital initiatives should include the obvious, such as an effective, action oriented website acting as a “hub” of Internet activity for your business, solid search engine optimization, professional email marketing, business branding through traditional channels for your web presence, and you should have a plan for procuring backlinks. Those are all important initiatives that you should be addressing.
- Today we are going to discuss what is maybe a less familiar digital initiative, social networking, help you discover what that means and provide some insight into how it can have a positive impact on your business when leveraged correctly. And as we consider context it is important to understand social networking is not something that replaces your website or acts independently, but it can work to support all those other activities. It is both an independent component of a solid digital marketing plan, as well as an integral part of making sure your other digital initiatives will succeed.Social networking can be broken down into 2 components – social media and social networks.
- Wikipedia defines social media as follows…“a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”In a nutshell, social media is the “content” that is found on social network websites.Social networking is defined by wikipedia as…“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”Social networks are the platforms, or website applications where social media exists.Social Media and Social Networking are inexplicably married to each other by default, but they are distinct and different. Let’s take a look at some specific social media “types” and their associated social networks.
- Social media encompasses things such as Internet forum discussions, blog posts, podcasts, multimedia photo & video, bookmarks, and status updates.
- When you think of Internet forum discussions it is obvious those conversations take place of any of the multitude of Internet forum websites. What you can and can’t do is dependent upon the rules established by the forum moderators. Commercial linking is a “hot-topic” and while these forums can be a great place to make contacts your mileage will vary with to what you can do there.
- Blogs are a highly recommended mechanism to use as a platform for your message. Some of the most popular blogging platforms are Blogspot (owned by Google), Wordpress, Xanga and Typepad – just to name a few.A blog can be used in so many ways to further your message and we’ll talk about tactics a little later. At this point it is enough for us to make the distinction between the “network platform” and the “media” we can place on those platforms to help build the digital relationship with our customers and prospects.
- Podcasts are distributed in many ways – through your website, through directories, but the most popular is through the iTunes store. Creating an RSS “feed” of your podcasts (which is basically an XML file on your website that contains pieces of information about each podcast show) and then registering that “feed” with iTunes allows you audio content to be available to a whole network of potential listeners.
- Everyone knows or has heard about YouTube.com – the home of Internet video. What some people don’t take the time to consider is that there is a social networking component to YouTube. Similar to other social networks, users can subscribe to your videos and be notified on new entries – they can also comment on your videos creating this social component.Flickr.com is a website build around photo sharing. It is not just for posting up your photos for family and friends, although that is a great personal use it doesn’t add much to the business conversation. Just like YouTube, Flickr allows for the creation of social groups and networking with others with like interests.
- Bookmark sharing sites like Digg, Stumbleupon and Newsvine allow users to share relevant and interesting websites based on common interests. Again, the social component is there allowing users to follow certain individuals that routinely discover and share good web material. It can be challenging when your only method of research or discovery of quality web content is a search engine. These sites gather the best of the best as ranked by users with common interests and make them available to you.
- Sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all about “what is going on right now” with friends and acquaintances. Users connect with each other and build networks. A business is able to tap into these networks both on the personal level and the “corporate” level through company or business pages on both Facebook and LinkedIn and as a business presence via a Twitter account.
- Now that we have a base level understanding of makes up social networking and the distinction between the network and the media, now we can begin to explore how we can tap into the power for our businesses.The same basic process applies across all the networks…Step 1 – MonitorCreate accounts on the platforms that have value for you, then simply monitor activity and conversations. This helps you get a feel for protocol and activity.
- Step 2 - ParticipateJoin in the conversation, but remember to apply the most important rule. Bring VALUE to the conversation.Don’t simply self promote. There is a basic equation every business owner is familiar with – know, like, trust. The first thing you have to do in any relationship, digital included, is to “introduce” yourself and get your customers and prospects to KNOW you. The next step is to get them to LIKE you – the best way to accomplish this is to always bring value to the conversation. If you simply promote your business it is not hard to see that is all you are there to do and you will quickly be labeled as such. Once they know you and like you, it will follow they will begin to TRUST you through the repeated value of your part of the conversation.
- Step 3 – GenerateNow that your prospects know you, like you and trust you based on the value of content you bring to THEIR conversations you can begin the process of generating your OWN content.This is your opportunity to marry self-promotion with valuable content. Tell your story through video, blog posts, tweets, status updates, photos, etc. Carry your own marketing message that provides value to your customers and prospects in a manner you control.Lather, rinse, repeat….
- Nothing works better to explain a concept than a real world example.As a part of our business we operate a website that is focused on regional sport fishing – it is found at www.southernmarylandfishing.com.It generates revenue through sponsorships and advertising, as well as affiliate product sales.Each time we add content to this website we have a process we walk through to promote the new content and “funnel” traffic to the website. This process includes several blogs, Twitter, Facebook, several social bookmark sharing websites and if applicable Web 2.0 media platforms such as YouTube, Flickr and iTunes.We add audio podcasts weekly, videos are added routinely and article content and photos almost daily.
- We will typically start with Facebook.com posting to our business page.We will post “teaser” content with an associated link and usually a photo.As of today we have 119 Facebook fans. Our wall post (link) will show up in their news feed.
- We’ll then move to Twitter.com.We will post the content title and a link using bit.ly (which is a URL shortener that comes in handy when you only have 140 characters to work with).Now we also have several of our blogs, as well as Facebook.com set up to “re-post” recent items to our twitter account. We could spend the entire morning talking about how to effectively use twitter alone – items like how to use hashtags, what are some great twitter tools like TweetDeck, how to link your blogs and facebook to twitter, what are some recent changes to twitter like lists and their new retweet tool, what is a retweet, the importance of backgrounds, what is this madness all about with collecting “followers”…call us if want to be educated on all of that.But at the end of all that the basic idea is that as a business owner I am establishing myself as an authority, sharing links, comments, ideas and joining in a conversation with my customers and prospects. And I am doing all this on a personal level where my customers and prospects can come to know, like and trust me.
- Next we’ll move to bookmark sharing…I have a screen capture of just one site, Digg.com but we will also post article teasers and direct links to StumbleUpon.com and Delicious.com, as well as others.The basic idea is that I am sharing quality links that are tagged and organized so people with like interests can now follow my suggestions and discover content they otherwise may not have been able to find. Search engines are increasingly becoming cluttered, social bookmarking helps bypass the waiting game of “when will my content show up in the index?” and instead puts you in the drivers seat of promoting your link. And as a side benefit, these social bookmark links can also help the search engines actually discover and index your content. Social bookmarking is one of the best traffic generators of all – why? Because it is based on a recommendation. And why not recommend your own quality links, but at the same time remember you need to bring value to the conversation. Find other links that will interest people and by doing so establish yourself as an authority.
- Next come the blogs…We utilize 3 separate blogs, all of which are free. Blogspot.com (AKA Blogger), Wordpress.com and Xanga.com. Again on each blog we will generate a blog post consisting of a short version, excerpt or teaser to our primary website content, usually embed an associated photo and of course add a link to the website content.This blog content will draw in new users, remember to use effective tags so users can find it. Also, become a part of the blog community and find other related blogs to comment on – this will, again, establish you as an authority as well as give a whole new set of users the ability to discover your content. Side benefits also include giving search engines another avenue to discover your content.
- Next come the blogs…We utilize 3 separate blogs, all of which are free. Blogspot.com (AKA Blogger), Wordpress.com and Xanga.com. Again on each blog we will generate a blog post consisting of a short version, excerpt or teaser to our primary website content, usually embed an associated photo and of course add a link to the website content.This blog content will draw in new users, remember to use effective tags so users can find it. Also, become a part of the blog community and find other related blogs to comment on – this will, again, establish you as an authority as well as give a whole new set of users the ability to discover your content. Side benefits also include giving search engines another avenue to discover your content.
- Next come the blogs…We utilize 3 separate blogs, all of which are free. Blogspot.com (AKA Blogger), Wordpress.com and Xanga.com. Again on each blog we will generate a blog post consisting of a short version, excerpt or teaser to our primary website content, usually embed an associated photo and of course add a link to the website content.This blog content will draw in new users, remember to use effective tags so users can find it. Also, become a part of the blog community and find other related blogs to comment on – this will, again, establish you as an authority as well as give a whole new set of users the ability to discover your content. Side benefits also include giving search engines another avenue to discover your content.
- If you have generated content, such as video, photos or audio podcasts, now is the time to add that content to the appropriate social network platform. Video goes to YouTube.com, photos get uploaded to Flickr.com, and audio content gets posted via an RSS feed to the iTunes store. All of this is in addition to adding the content either directly or embedded to your own website, as well as all these other platforms we have discussed – blogs, Facebook, Twitter…
- We’ll now venture out into several different internet forums.You should use caution when posting links to your website content into discussion boards. Some website operators have no problem with this activity, while others will take offense at your attempt to drive content away from their website and towards your own. Simply make sure to read the terms of the website and send an email to the website operator if there is any question.You should be able to find at least a few related discussion forums where link posting is acceptable. And you’ll want to participate in conversations and contribute outside of solely self promoting your own website content.
- Encourage your website visitors to follow you on your various social networks.Include “Follow Us” links and graphics to Facebook.com and Twitter.
- A big part of participating in social networking also involves making sure it is easy for your website visitors to share your content with their networks. I recommend you integrate the ShareThis widget into your website content. A single button allows your visitors to share your website content across their own social network. They can directly post with a single click your web page link to Facebook, Twitter, their own blogs, etc. This tool also streamlines your own process of posting your own content. Find out more at www.sharethis.com.