understanding social media
TRANSCRIPT
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
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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
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How are Social Media & Email Marketing Related?
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Slide courtesy of Tyler Willis - Involver
How are Social Media & Email Marketing Related?
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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
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Facebook – The World is Obsessed
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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
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Facebook – Build a Good Page & They Will Come
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Facebook – Gain Likes
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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
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Use an opt-in form on your FB Page to grow your email subscriber list
Facebook – Track Your Success with Insights
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Facebook – More Examples
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Facebook – Build a Community of Interaction
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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?
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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?
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• 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
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• 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
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• 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
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Photo courtesy of shutterstock
Social Media Resources
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•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/