Telling your story a quick guide for startups

Telling your
Story
A Quick Guide For Busy Startups

Thursday, September 20, 12

The Three-Headed
Monster

• Paid.
• Advertising, marketing

• Earned. Today’s talk
• Public Relations, news coverage

• Owned.
• Website, blog, Facebook, Twitter


A Few Words about PR
(for small companies)
• Sometimes worth paying for
• Special events, product rollouts

• Monthly retainers harder to justify

• Hourly for speciﬁc projects

• DIY Tools:
• Help A Reporter Out (HARO)

• ProfNet (part of Vocus, maybe a joint
buy?)


“Using social media CORRECTLY is
like putting your Rolodex on steroids.”
- New York Times, Sept. 7, 2012


IT’s Where People Are
Service Total Users Active
B Facebook 950M 800M
r
o Twitter 500M 140M
a LinkedIn 175M 48M
d
Google+ 400M 100M
V Smaller,
YouTube 490M 150M
i but vital
s Flickr 51M 25M for startups
u Instagram 80M 8M
a
l Pinterest 104M 18M


A Lot More Words About
Social Media

• Create reach and relationships
• Build a base of public and industry
awareness
• Modest but regular time investment
• Low to no cost


Basic Mindset
• “Chinese Water Torture”approach
• Schedule 15 minutes a day

• Make it a routine while reading the day’s news.

• A little every day quickly adds up to a LOT

• Your Phone is Your Friend
• Opportunistic
• What do you do that ties to industry trends, breaking news?

• Have A Personality


Hootsuite

Browser
share tools
✴ HootSuite (Business Tool, freemium)
Tools ✴
✴
TweetDeck (bought by Twitter)
Seesmic Ping (Bought by HootSuite)
Automate, Simplify, Optimize ✴ Browser share tools


General Tips

• Follow promiscuously (as appropriate)
• Industry leaders, competitors, journalists, regulators, investors

• Repost notable stuff from others
• Respond to your followers
• Think before you “Send”


Website/blog Additions
• WordPress
• Heavy-duty publishing platform. Lots of power, widgets, options.

• If no blog, use Tumblr
• Free. Huge installed base. Easy to use. Shares to Twitter, FB. Post
links, text, audio, video, photos. Good for SEO.

• Show your Twitter posts with on-site widget
• Twitter resources - widgets

• Social media share buttons
• AddThis; Also add to your email sig ﬁle, news releases


• Set up personal proﬁle, ALWAYS.
• Then you can create a company page
• Ensure all employees have proﬁles & follow
company
• Post (here’s why):
• Events, news releases, product announcements

• News coverage, industry-related stories

• Join, post to LinkedIn industry, trade groups


Twitter

• Company & personal accounts, if you can
• Brief, painless. 3x/week; Easy on mobile
• Tweet about:
• Events, appearances, deals

• Company news, releases, photos, promo docs

• Stories of note about your industry & company

• Perspectives on industry news, trends; Have A Personality


• 950 million users. Need to be there.
• Create personal Proﬁle (keep it to yourself)
• Then you can create company Page, post:
• Company releases, news coverage of company

• Events, photos, milestones

• Marketing videos

• Blog posts (if you have one elsewhere)

• Industry news of note, and your perspectives on it

• Surveys and questions


Facebook’s EdgeRank
• Algorithm decides what followers see
• Priorities are:
1. Video and photos

2. Questions, events, milestones

3. Plain ol’ text and links

• Only a small portion of followers see any post
• Photos/video boost your chance of being seen
• FB advertising probably not worth it


Google+
• Part of Google, GREAT for SEO
• Post same as FB: Links, text, photos, video, events, news

• Claim your personal proﬁle through GMail
• Then you can create your company page
• Have your employees create accounts, put
company page in their circles
• Google offering custom URLS, veriﬁed
accounts. Get them when you get a chance.


Google+ Hangouts
• BIG opportunity
• Free videoconferences with
audiences

• Auto-recorded to YouTube.

• Great for marketing, how-to,
customer support and
engagement.


• Part of Google; helps SEO
• Biggest video-sharing site
• Not core, but if you’re doing video, you
MUST use this
• Events

• Marketing material

• How-to and demos, podcasts

• User submissions


• Sharing for slide shows/presentations
• Post marketing, promo material
• Connect with LinkedIn widget
• Also:
• Learn better PPTs

• Research your industry, competitors


• Biggest photo-sharing site, also handles
video
• Not core; freemium model
• Easy sharing through App Garden tools
• Add-ons for Website, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr, etc.

• Post photos/video of:
• Events, products, appearances, cool things tied to your business


• Not core, but biggest MOBILE photo-sharing
site.
• VERY easy sharing to many other platforms
• Facebook bought it; getting integrated
• Posts from your phone:
• Events, products, appearances

• Users and novel product uses


• Not core. More C-to-C than B-to-B.
• Photo “boards” of things people love:
• Products and product uses

• Things/ideas/inspirational phrases that deﬁne your company, its
approach to business and life

• Female-dominated
• Aspirational


Thanks

David Bloom
Words & Deeds
davidbloom@earthlink.net
310-621-4284
Twitter: @DavidBloom
Tumbler: BloomsDay


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