Slide deck from the April 7th webinar on Social Media for Small Businesses. We covered the fundamentals of social media and briefly over-viewed some of the different platforms available.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA FOR
SMALL BUSINESS
Social Media for
Small Business

2. What Is Social Media?
Social Media for
Small Business

3. Social Media for
Small Business

4. Why Use Social Media?
• Keep up with friends and family
• Meet new people, build relationships
• Communicating and engaging with
people
• Discuss your passions, hobbies, etc.
• Learning and teaching
• Sharing and discovering
Social Media for
Small Business

5. Social Media and Small Business
• Engage customers, monitor your reputation
• Make your business more accessible
– Gain more connections locally and beyond
– Generate leads
• Share information with you customers
• Networking
– Recruitment
• Market and advertise your brand
– A company voice other than from advertising/sales
team
– Word of mouth marketing
• Customer Service and/or Tech Support
– Improve customer loyalty
Social Media for
Small Business

6. The Numbers Behind Social
Media
• Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn: 2.5 billion visits
in September 2009
– Facebook: 350 million active users globally
– LinkedIn: 50 million professional accounts
– Twitter: 15 million active users
• More than 700,000 local businesses have
active Fan Pages on Facebook
• Reported that YouTube to serve more than 75
billion video streams
• Blog count is over 133 million
– Average of 900,000 blog posts in a day
– 38% of bloggers post reviews
Social Media for
Small Business

7. Social Media Myths
• No way to measure social media ROI
• The more friends, the better
• Using social media is easy
• For the younger generation
– Average ages for Twitter (31), Facebook
(33), LinkedIn (39)
• Only for large brands
• Replaces traditional marketing
Social Media for
Small Business

8. Before Y Start…
ou
1. Relax
2. Develop social media policy
3. Define goals
a. Short-term and Long-term
b. Stay active with your initiatives
4. Complete, committed effort
5. Integration
6. Personalize your social media brand
a. Make sue to use same branding across all social
media
7. Listen, think, and then respond to
conversations
Social Media for
Small Business

9. Social Media Networks and
How to Use them Professionally
Social Media for
Small Business

10. Facebook Accounts
• Business Account
– Monitor your Facebook ad campaigns
– Create Facebook pages
– Option for converting to personal
account
• Personal Account
– Personal use or business use
– Create Facebook Ads and Pages
Social Media for
Small Business

11. Facebook Business Strategy
• Securing your company name
• Branding
• Friends
– Mailing list
– Groups
• Connect with existing contacts, reach new customers
• Don’t go in blind
– Research competitors, top users
• Educate and add value
– Distribute content
– Promote events
• Fan Pages and Facebook Ads
Social Media for
Small Business

12. Facebook Fan Page
• Organizations, businesses, celebrities, bands, etc.
• Communicate updated content and engage
community
– Interactive
– Exclusive content
• What you can’t do
– Cannot see profile of fans, only name & photo
– Do not receive a news feed about what fans are doing
– Cannot send messages to individual fans
• The power of a Fan Page
– Promotion
– Custom tab interface w/ FBML
– Applications
Social Media for
Small Business

14. Facebook Ads
• Highly targeted
• Not all about sales
– Fan Page
– Video
– Events
• Cost-per-click
• Cost-per-thousand
impressions
• Realtime reporting
Social Media for
Small Business

15. Why Use Twitter?
• Communicating and engaging with
people
• Keep up with friends and family
• Meet new people
• Discuss your passions, hobbies, etc.
• Learning and teaching
• Sharing and discovering
Social Media for
Small Business

16. What Twitter Can Do For
Business
• Network and communicate
– Build and maintain relationships
– Engage customers and share information
– Humanize your company
• Real time conversation
– Communicating and engaging with people
– Customer Service, quick responses to user’s
needs
– Monitor opinions of your brand
• Friend, follow, share, and discover
• Market and advertise your business
• Recruiting
Social Media for
Small Business

17. Twitter Strategy
• Branding your Twitter account(s)
– Business
– Personal
• Securing your company name
• Following other users
– twellow.com
– tweepsearch.com
• Tweeting
• Monitoring
– search.twitter.com
Social Media for
Small Business

18. Twitter Third Party Tools
• TweetDeck – desktop client that helps
organize your Twitter account
• HootSuite – more business oriented
desktop client
• TwitterCounter – statistics of your
Twitter account
• TweetStats – analysis of your Twitter
activity
Social Media for
Small Business

19. Blogging Basics
• Blogs let anyone post content
• Use blogging software or host blog on
company site
– Wordpress
– Blogger
– TypePad
• Build additional web traffic
• Share knowledge and expertise easily
– Less formal
– Short, concise postings
• Connect with audience
Social Media for
Small Business

20. Blogging for Small Businesses
• Connect with customers
• Easy to use, set up
• Low cost
• Post any content that you wish
– Links
– Thoughts/Opinions
– Video
• Showcase your expertise
• Readers are able to read and make
comments
Social Media for
Small Business

21. Blogging Tips
• Write about what people are interested
in
• Ask for participation
• Read comments and engage
• Consistently blog, set up a schedule
– Multiple blog postings a day = greater sales
• Combine with other social media
initiatives
• Read and follow other blogs, listen
Social Media for
Small Business

22. LinkedIn Basics
•Large network of business
professionals
– More business focused social networking site
•Connections
•Recommendations
•LinkedIn Answers
•Groups
Social Media for
Small Business

23. LinkedIn Business Strategy
• Securing your company name
• Find clients, resources, deals
– Recruiting
• Recommendations
• Promotion
• Feedback
Social Media for
Small Business

24. LinkedIn: Ads
• Large audience of
professionals
– Over 60 millions
users
• Targeted ads
– By industry, age,
company size, job,
location
• Pay-per-click or
• Pay-for-impression
Social Media for
Small Business

25. Conversations About Your
Company
Social Media for
Small Business

26. Monitoring and Tracking
Services
Free Services Paid Services
1. Google Alerts
a. Free email updates from
Google Search about any
topic 1. Radian6
b. Company name, competitor
names, top keywords,
product names, slogan, etc.
2. Visible Technologies
2. Search Facebook & Twitter
a. Search for company name
and see who is talking about
you
3. Nielsen Buzzmetrics
3. BackType Search
a. Searches conversations from
b.
blogs and social networks
Daily emails about the
4. Buzzlogic Insights
conversations on your
topic(s)
Social Media for
Small Business

27. Questions?