These are the notes for my presentation "The Importance of Social Media in Business and Ministry"

2. 40% of corporate Twitter accounts engage in some kind of customer service

3. 48 percent of consumers combine social media and search engines in their buying process

4. 97 percent of the top US charities utilize Facebook in their marketing efforts

5. ~140 Million Tweets are sent each day

6. 24 percent of adults have posted a review of a product they have purchased

7. 73 percent of the US internet population visits Facebook each month

8. 62 percent of Facebook users between 35-54 years of age have liked a brand

9. 46 million Americans check their social media profiles dailyMajor Importance of Social Media for your Organisation:<br />1. Social media channel is a good way of increasing a company’s trustworthiness and goodwill which will definitely give the said company and increased and better branding. When companies are able to have conversations with their customers, the result is going to be a great amount of credibility.<br />2. The lead generation is also another basis for companies to go for social media marketing. Since the lead generation serves a very important part for a company’s success, then using social media marketing for your campaigns help you reach out your targeted lead generation.<br />3. Social media channels also make it easier and more flexible for companies to engage with its customers. You have to put this on your top priority list since customer engagement is a very crucial since this will help your company retain your existing customers and of course increase your brand credibility.<br />4. Social media channels are also responsible for generating a highly powerful traffic for your site. You don’t even have to worry since there’s a lot of social media channels that will be able to help you and would make it easier for you to obtain for your website the relevant and quality traffic that it will need.<br />5. Aside from that, when you promote your products through social media channels, this will definitely help you so that you can increase your return over investment or ROI. This process will be able to help you in increasing your conversion rate and benefit from a desirable ROI.<br />6. Your industry is considered to have a backbone if you have total access to customer’s feedback. This is because the feedback actually helps in improving your products based on what your customer’s require. Due to the fact that social media channels aid in making customer engagement possible, then customer feedback will always be available for the company to use as basis for improvement. With this, you can always expect customer reviews and feedback that can help you in making your products or services even better.<br />7. There is no better way or an even cheaper way than a social media channel when it comes to announcing new products or services for your company. Social media will make it easier for you to spread the news regarding a new product or service. You can even include information such as arrival or release dates.<br />8. Another importance of social media marketing is the fact that it will allow you to discover your customers’ preferences so that you will be able to act based on what they want. By knowing their preferences, it will be much easier for you to enhance all of your products and plan your marketing campaigns more effectively.<br />Social Media in Minsitry<br />Can the above principles be applied in Ministry?<br />To a large extent … YES<br />You have to remember, the large amount of people using social media on a personal level (Personal Facebook, twitter, etc) that are involved or wanting to be involved, whether it be financially or physically, in ministry.<br />As a ministry you are needing to reach these people with your needs and updates on articles and mission reports that you publish.<br />These updates (or tweets on twitter) are able to reach key people that you would not be able to reach elsewhere. Bearing in mind that these people are then able to repost (retweet on twitter) these updates to their friends and the cycle is able to continue through their networks. You are literally able to reach thousands through just a few originally.<br />POST<br />P is People.<br />Know who specifically you want to target and your key audience. Are you trying to target the congregation or potential visitors? Are you trying to engage with the “lost” or the “already found”? Is this tool for your internal leadership team, a specific group (or activity), or a program and/or ministry initiative?<br />O is Objectives.<br />Are you educating or informing? Are you starting conversations or picking fights? Are you energizing or evaluating? Are you looking for feedback or telling how it is? Decided on the specific objective before making a move on your technology.<br />S is Strategy.<br />“Strategy here means figuring out what will be different after you’re done.” Is your goal a closer relationship with your congregation, ministry leaders, or to establish a “presence” in the lost online world? Do you want people talking about your church or about what your church does? What is the result of this particular effort? Why?<br />T is Technology.<br />After going through the above three, decide on the technology that’ll best engage the people, fulfill your objectives, and meets your criteria for strategy. Is it a blog? A community of blogs? A wiki? A social network, an application? What? Make a move and do it!<br />Information Sources:<br />Social Media Today (www.socialmediatoday.com)<br />My Magnetic Blog (www.mymagneticblog.com)<br />