This document provides an overview of social media and best practices for using social media. It defines social media as interactive online conversations using social networking, blogging, microblogging, podcasting, chat, and sharing of photos and videos. The document discusses why companies use social media for marketing, some tips for engaging audiences, and potential downsides. It also outlines tools for social media like Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and Google alerts. Finally, it provides exercises for participants to evaluate social media pages and build their own social media listening dashboard.

1. Understanding Social media
LeRoy Hill PhD
@leroyh
leroyhill@gmail.com

2. Session Agenda
• Social media: A definition
• Social media timeline
• Why companies use social media (what makes
social media a different form of marketing?)
• Some tips to engage
• downside of Social media
• Tools of Social media
• Best practices: case studies

3. What is Social Media
http://trevoryoung.posterous.com/social-media-in-a-tag-cloud-nutshell Thanks @EmLeary and @trevoryoung

4. Social media is…
• “web-based and mobile technologies used to
turn communication into interactive
dialogue.”
• “an umbrella term that defines the various
interaction, and the construction of words,
pictures, videos, and audio.” www.wikipedia.org

5. Social media is…
• 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.” Kaplan and Haenlein
(2010).
Photo credit http://bosmol.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/2945559128_53078d246b.jpg

6. In other words
• Social Media is used to describe the continuous
ubiquitous online conversations using:
• Social networking
• Blogging
• Microblogging
• Podcasting
• Synchronous chat
• Video and audio
• Wikis
• Social photo and video sharing
• And much more
Photo credit http://www.fanpilot.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/social_media_clutter1.jpeg

7. Also understood by values of

8. Social media
enables web 2.0

9. Social media is NOT
• A fad…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?f
eature=player_embedded&v=pkGI
BIuiZcI
Photo credits Julia Amy Long • News media

10. Time-Line

11. Companies use social media
because…
• Face to face promo is getting too expensive
• More efforts are being made to bring
conversation to online communities
• Improve their customer appeal or reputation
so they follow the crowd
• Increase brand awareness
• Build engaging relationships

12. Some easy tips to engage
• Participation is key so make it easy
• Sharing is a fundamental value so make it
sharable
• Provide incentives to the participants
• Entertainment is not a bad thing
• Use promotional codes to track discounts
• Do something nice for someone in your
social media circle, it adds value
• Reward those that promote your
business (reciprocity)
• Your brand your image, protect it,
promote it

13. Testimonial

14. • Since using Facebook I have received
4,761 Likes (4,156 Followers) and 150
Talking Abouts (engaged users). This has
greatly enhanced traffic to the
site, audience engagement and
strengthened relationships with readers.
Today, Facebook rivals Google in top
traffic referrers to Anguilla-
Beaches.com.
Since using Twitter I have received 964
Followers (while only Following 78). This
has significantly strengthened my ties to
the larger travel and tourism industry.
For example, ISLANDS Magazine
reached out to me through
Twitter, asking me to help write a Meads

15. The downside - Warning…its live
• Think before you post, click or follow – its public
• Washing your dirty laundry via social media
could cost you more than the clothes or
detergent
• Using social media launch an attach on a follower
or fan is just plain silly
• Mistakes can quickly cascade
• The customer has more power - power of the
masses.
• Social media is NOT the answer to everything.

16. Tools of social
media

17. Twitter anatomy
Twitter users have developed short-form syntax to make the most of
140 characters. Here are the fundamentals.
• Mention
Once you've signed up and chosen a Twitter username, you and
others can mention an account in your Tweets by preceding it with
the @ symbol, eg: "Glad your shipment arrived @janesmith!"
• Retweet
When you see a Tweet by another user that you want to share, click
Retweet below it to forward it to your followers instantly.
• Message
If you want to privately Tweet to a particular user who's already
following you, start your Tweet with DM or D to direct-message
them, eg: "DM @joesmith234 what is your order number?"
• Hashtag
Users often prepend # to words in their Tweets to categorize them
for others eg: "Check out our new products for the
Fallhttp://t.co/link2 #fallsale" Think of hashtags as the theme of
your Tweet. Users can then click on a hashtag to see other similarly-
themed tweets and find yours in search.

18. Twitter Tips
• Share. Share photos and behind the scenes info about your business. Even better, give a
glimpse of developing projects and events. Users come to Twitter to get and share the
latest, so give it to them!
• Listen. Regularly monitor the comments about your company, brand, and products.
• Ask. Ask questions of your followers to glean valuable insights and show that you are
listening.
• Respond. Respond to compliments and feedback in real time
• Reward. Tweet updates about special offers, discounts and time-sensitive deals.
• Demonstrate wider leadership and know-how. Reference articles and links about the
bigger picture as it relates to your business.
• Champion your stakeholders. Retweet and reply publicly to great tweets posted by
your followers and customers.
• Establish the right voice. Twitter users tend to prefer a direct, genuine, and of course, a
likable tone from your business, but think about your voice as you Tweet. How do you
want your business to appear to the Twitter community?
• Source: Twitter.com

19. Evaluate your tweets

20. Your
TURN!

21. Facebook
• Over 300 million
users.
• Exceptional low cost
marketing
• Consider opening a
business fan page.
HOW TO: Set Up a Winning Facebook Fan Page

22. Facebook Fan Page
• consider securing your company’s username.
• Special rules regarding usernames
• if you reserve your company name for your
personal account, you won’t be able to use it
for your Business Fan Page so you may want to
create a Page before registering your
company’s name.
• You might also want to consider running
hyper-local ads on Facebook.

27. Activity
• Select 5 Facebook fan pages you like
– Suggest a ranking of the five
– Give reasons for your ranking
– Design on paper what your fan page would me like

28. Facebook Fan Pages – Coke STORY
• Coke Fan page was started by two regular users
• In seven months grew to 3.3 million fans
• Facebook changed rules and didn’t allow users to
create branded pages
• Coke teamed up with the creators of the page, flew
them to HQ, gave them a tour, brought them into
meetings, brainstormed ideas, made them part of
the company, let them be real evangelists
• Let your customers build your products
• Be creative – do something unexpected

29. Activity
Search Facebook for 3 fan pages of
non-profit organisation you like and
evaluate their Facebook presence.
What types of Pages have they built?
How many fans or “friends” do they
have? Spend 5 minutes (per
organisation) looking at their
posts, photos and/or videos to
understand how they’re using
Facebook.

30. Business Blog
- Many hosting and
platform options.
- Wordpress.com and
Posterous.com offers easy
approaches
A blog takes up a lot of
time and resources so
plan ahead how you
intend to use blog space.

31. ACTIVITY
• Visit the following blog hosting sites
• Wordpress.com, Posterous.com, blogger.com

32. Blogging Tips
- Write interesting content that people would
enjoy
- Integrate your social activity stream into blog.
- Facebook and Twitter activity listed on blog
- Make it easier for your readers to re-tweet
your blog posts.
- Install plug-ins like TweetMeme button

33. Some other tools
• Google Alerts –the news
sent to you!
• RSS feeds – get the content
updated on your site
• Googledocs – Free online
documents, forms, spreadsh
eets and collaboration
• Podcasting – the latest audio
and video recordings on your
iPod.
• Youtube

34. ACTIVITY
Are you Listening?
• Create an iGoogle Dashboard
In this exercise, you will use iGoogle to create a social media
listening dashboard.
NOTE: You will need a Google Account to complete this
exercise
Open up iGoogle: http://www.google.com/ig
• Click the “add stuff »” link in the upper-right-hand corner
• Click the “Add feed or gadget” link in the lower-left-hand
corner
• Add the following to your IGoogle page
– Twitter search gadget
– RSS feed Gadget
– Facebook
– A news plugin
– School’s VLE login
Set your IGoogle page as your home page in your browser.

35. Session 2
• Session 2 – promoting your
sites, adding Widgets, tools that will
help you monitor, evaluate your

36. THANK
YOU
www.hillconcepts.com
Twitter: @leroyh