understanding social media

Understanding Social Media

Presented by Kim Stiglitz & Jill Bastian

VerticalResponse Marketing Team Members

Follow Us: VR4smallbiz

Webinar hashtag: #vrwebinar

Agenda

• Overview of social media

• Best practices for social media

• Tips for success for those with limited time

| VerticalResponse, Inc.

What is Social Media?

Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue

• Social networking now accounts for 22% of all time spent online in the US.

• A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices in December 2009.

• Twitter processed more than one billion tweets in December 2009 and averages almost 95 million tweets per day.

• Over 25% of U.S. internet page views occurred at one of the top social networking sites in December 2009, up from 13.8% a year before.

• The number of social media users age 65 and older grew 100 percent throughout 2010, so that one in four people in that age group are now part of a social networking site.

*stats courtesy of Wikipedia


How are Social Media & Email Marketing Related?


Slide courtesy of Tyler Willis - Involver

How are Social Media & Email Marketing Related?


Slide courtesy of Tyler Willis – Involver

Get Started with Social Media – One step at a time • You do not need to be

everywhere!

• Save time by getting the most out of your social presence

• Choose the Social Media networks where your customers are

• Pick 2-3 Social Platforms & focus in building from there

• Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, Foursquare, YouTube


Facebook – The World is Obsessed


http://vimeo.com/20198465

Facebook – For Your Business

• Create a Facebook Page – must use different email addy than your personal profile! • http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

• Get Tips & Best Practices• http://www.facebook.com/FacebookPages


Facebook – Build a Good Page & They Will Come


Facebook – Gain Likes


Use email to engage people to like your page

Use social sharing to expand the reach of your messages

Facebook – Incorporate an opt-in form


Use an opt-in form on your FB Page to grow your email subscriber list

Facebook – Track Your Success with Insights


Facebook – More Examples


Facebook – Build a Community of Interaction


Encourage a Community Environment:Ask questionsTalk to your customers Include Calls to Action in Your PostsRely on Facebook Insights to gauge the success of your page & develop a planUpdate on the go, schedule posts (Hootsuite) to save time!

What does Twitter do for businesses?


As a business, you can use Twitter to quickly share information, gather market intelligence and insights, and build relationships with people who care about your company.

Often, there is already a conversation about your business happening on Twitter.

Twitter Lingo – What Does It Mean?


• 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: "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.

• Hashtag (#) : Users often prepend # to words in their Tweets to categorize them for others:

Check out our new products for the Fall: http://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.

Twitter Best Practice Tips


• Share. Share photos & behind the scenes info about your business. 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?

Tools for Twitter Success


• Hootsuite, Tweetdeck:

• Search for brand name, keywords & hashtags

• Schedule tweets & have members of your team collaborate

• Update multiple social media platforms in one place

• Trendistic: find useful twitter trends and hashtags

• Tweetstats & Social Mention

• Twitter Share Buttons for your website, blog & emails enables content sharing

• VR Social Sharing Feature

Tips to Increase Twitter Engagement

• Listen!

• Make the most out of every tweet:

• Use hashtags (#)• Be relevant & timely • Don’t be too promotional• Follow others and RT often

• Ask questions & initiate a dialogue

• Respond to Customer questions & support issues openly

• Be patient; measure engagement ( RT’s mentions, follower retention) not only follower count


Photo courtesy of shutterstock

Social Media Resources


•Hootsuite, Facebook Insights•Mashable.com http://ow.ly/3zvgz •American Express Open Forum http://ow.ly/3zuTU •VerticalResponse Marketing Blog http://ow.ly/3zuDj •VerticalResponse LinkedIn Group http://ow.ly/3zv3f •Social Media Guides http://ow.ly/3zvuy •North Social – customize FB page with Apps http://northsocial.com/

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