This document discusses social media opportunities and provides tips for using various social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and blogs effectively. It explains that social media is about conversation, engagement, and great content rather than direct marketing. It provides advice on setting up profiles and pages on each platform, how to post and engage others, and how to track analytics. The key is to differentiate your business, target a niche, generate great content, and represent your brand's personality.

1. Social media
opportunities
The ubiquitous PowerPoint presentation...
Joel Lumsden – Attacat

2. What is social media?
• Can you define it?
• Where does it begin and end?
• What constitutes social media? Does a blog?

3. What is social media?

4. What is social media?
Whatever the platform, social media is about:
• Conversation
• Engagement
• Great content
It’s not about direct marketing – “pull not push”
Long-term developments – building your brand
prestige etc.

5. Success stories
• LittleMissMatched odd socks
• Attacat’s very own recruitment campaign

6. Blogging
• Seth Godin and Tom Peters discussing blogging:
“No single thing in the last 15 years has been more
important to my professional life. Blogging is the
best marketing tool bar none.”
Tom Peters

7. Why blog?
• Trust – brand and personal
• Humanises the organisation
• Promote yourself as an industry expert – comment
on articles etc.
• Interactive elements
• Telling stories and engaging in conversation
• SEO benefits – great, fresh, deep content

8. Why blog?
Use as a syndication ‘hub’:
• It’s all own your own site, so if Facebook disappears
you’re OK!
• Benefits tracking – everything coming back to your
site
• Link to all of your social sites/presences in one
place

9. Tips
The best ways to be successful:
• Differentiate yourself and your business
• Target an achievable niche and become the expert
• Generate great content

10. Tracking and analytics
• Google Analytics on your blog
• Start tagging up your campaigns
• URL shorteners
• Facebook page insights

11. Why Facebook?
• Huge user base
• Public, searchable presence for your business
• Links to your website
• Keep connected to your customers
• It’s pushed out to a wider audience – interaction is
published in activity streams of fans

12. Facebook
Personal profiles
• Personal profiles are what you are likely to be
familiar with...

13. Facebook personal profiles
• With a personal profile you can make ‘friends’ with
other personal profiles and people on Facebook.
• If you are not a ‘friend’ of a personal profile you will
usually see restricted information.

14. Facebook company pages
• Company pages are very different to personal
profiles.

15. Facebook company pages
• Company pages are always fully visible once
published – the content on the page is not restricted
and you do not have to be a ‘friend’ to access it.
• It is against Facebook guidelines to use a personal
profile as a business presence, and if you do the
account can be terminated at any point. It is
therefore necessary to set up a company page.

16. Facebook company pages
Likes of a page
• It is not possible to befriend a page; instead you
‘like’.
• ‘Like’ to see that page’s posts and updates as if they
were a friend.
• One-way, immediate – no need to confirm the ‘like’.
• Page largely cannot directly communicate with
‘likers’ – all through updates and the wall.

17. User profiles and company pages
• To achieve full functionality a company page needs
to be ‘associated’ to a personal profile.
• Not linked in any other meaningful way – fans
cannot see admins or their personal profile.
Company page
User profileUser profile User profile User profile
User profile
Administrator
Likes

18. Create a company page
• When signed into a personal profile, visit
www.facebook.com/pages and click the ‘create
page’ button.

19. • Then create your ‘official page’ as a local business.
Page name cannot be changed!

20. Edit your company page

21. Facebook posting
• Post using the ‘what’s on your mind’ box
• Posting links is a rich and useful feature

22. Link posting
• Link posts will summarise the page text below the
page’s meta-title and URL.
• You can also choose a thumbnail image from the
page.
• You can also post photos, events and videos!

23. Plugins for Facebook
• Link pages to Twitter
• Link RSS feed from blog to notes / posts
– Dlvr.it
• Static FBML for landing pages

24. Connecting with Facebook
• Get initial followers/fans using your existing
customers!
• Facebook provides options for integrating other web
activity with Facebook presence.
• http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugi
ns/like-box

25. Like box
• Like box – ‘Become a Facebook fan’ immediately
from within your own website
• Like button – apply to individual website pages to
help promote particular content

26. Custom URL
• Once a page acquires 25 fans it will be eligible to
claim a username at facebook.com/username.
• Cleaner, shortened URL.

27. Why Twitter?
• Communication
• Telling stories and engaging in conversation
• Trust – brand and personal
• Humanises the organisation
• Promote yourself as an industry expert – comment
on articles etc

28. Twitter posting
• Just type in 140 characters (including links)!
• Posts are displayed within your ‘timeline’ on your
profile. This is a list of the posts that you have
made.

29. Reply, retweet, message
Reply:
• Not only be shown in your timeline, but will be
highlighted to the user replied to. This encourages
engagement and interaction.
@username
Retweet:
• Repost another user’s post to the people who are
following you.
RT @username

30. Reply, retweet, message
Message:
• Messaging will send a private direct message to the
desired recipient; will not show up in timelines.
Hashtags:
• Text elements added to posts to indicate they are
about a particular subject. Often spread quickly in
Twitter.

31. Following
• Following people means that their updates show
within your Home timeline.
• Following users encourages interaction increases
the chance of them following you.
• Find people using Twitter search, Twellow and
TwitDir.

32. Tweet shortening
• To save space in tweets links are shortened.
• Using shortening services like bit.ly you can track a
tweet’s ‘reach’ and popularity.
• Twitter client dashboards also have integrated
shorteners.

33. Why LinkedIn?
• LinkedIn is a professional social network – consider
it an online business-to-business networking space.
• Great way to keep in contact with colleagues and
associates and promote your company.

34. Why LinkedIn?
• Stay in the minds of your contacts and customers
• Recruit
• Keep your friends close and your competition closer
• Convince potential customers of your expertise by
sharing unique content
• Network with peers in your industry for repeat
business referrals
• Win new business by answering questions in your
area of expertise
• Tap into the experience and knowledge of your
‘peers’ - crowdsourcing

35. Why LinkedIn?
• Build your industry network
• Find the right vendors to outsource services on
which you’re not an expert
• Keep in touch with people who care most about your
business
• Acquire new customers through online
recommendations and word of mouth
• Promote events

36. LinkedIn
Your profile
• 1895 characters to create your LinkedIn profile. Add
past places you have worked, higher and further
education, activities and professional memberships.
• Have a good, professional photo – part of your
personal ‘brand’
• Professional headline – you job title, but include
keywords and make it stand out.

37. What can I do?
Your activity
• Update your profile with your activity, keep
occasional and important.
Get recommendations
• Case studies for your business.
• Recommend those you’ve worked with.

38. Connections
Connections
• Search for people you have worked with etc. They
will be able to see your connections when
connected!
• Import your address book
• Send invitations to people met and events and
networking
• Use your existing connections to request meetings
with people you’d like to meet face-to-face
• Remember to personalise your connection requests

39. Groups
Groups
• Join to extend your range of targeted networks and
contacts within LinkedIn.
• Professional bodies
• Monitor the activity of competitors?
• Set up your own group?
• Engage: Q&As, influence as an industry expert

40. Business pages
Business pages
• Setup at www.LinkedIn.com/companies
• Gather staff and company info, display your
expertise, blog posts.
• Post job vacancies and new starters.
• Follow other companies.

41. Social media clients
• Use Hootsuite, Tweetdeck or other clients to
manage your posting.
• Hootsuite allows for management of Twitter,
Facebook and LinkedIn posting.
• Search columns so you can see what’s being said
• Easy shortening and analytics integration

42. Posting tips
• Establish guidelines on what content can be posted
on a consistent basis.
• Define a publishing schedule for content. Vary
update types (status update, links, photos).
• Remember most interaction and comments from
users happen within a day of posting.
• Use Hootsuite or TweetDeck to manage your
posting across multiple social media platforms.

43. Posting tips
• Represent the personality of your brand; sound
human.
• Get involved with the community – get to know
followers, share your passion without sales pitches.
• Share content posted by others to encourage
interaction, good will and follows.
• Negative comments? Build a community to defend
your brand.
• Encourage users to become fans/followers with
incentives.