Understand what how social media is and how you can use it within your business

1. Social media for business
How to engage with the people formerly
known as the audience

2. What we will cover
• What is ‘social media’?
• Is your business ready?
• Choosing your outlets
• How can you integrate social media for business benefit?
• In Conclusion

3. Where did this come from?

4. What is social media?
Information Content
Sharing
Social Media
Networking
Life Streaming
Passion Tribes

5. What is social media?
• Blogs
• Social networking
• Wikis
• Social bookmarking
• Communities
• http://www.youtube.com/user/leelefever

6. Blogs
• “Blogs.. simply the most explosive outbreak in the information
world since the Internet itself.” Business Week
• Online journal
• Little and often
• Focus on your specialisms
• Publish on your website, or on hosted blogsite
• Tag with keywords
• Scatter with topical links
• Comment – your view is valuable – conversations are happening
without you

7. Blog: your voice potentially reaches a huge audience
Within 1 hr of the London bombings,
there were more than 1300 blog posts
on the event – prompting the BBC to
admit
“ We don’t own the news any more”
- Richard Sambrook, Director, BBC World Service and
Global News Division. October 2005.
“Death by Blog”: Kryptonite lock story
posted on Sept. 12th , 2004. Backed up
– first
by a video on Sept. 13th. Picked up by
bloggers. Ten days later, an article in the
New York Times.
Source:
• http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2004/09/64987
• http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=45&aid=90065

9. Social networking
• “Why should you care? Because power is shifting from
institutions to communities, your company is at risk”.
Forrester
• Profiles
• Comments/status updates
• Trusted networks
• Special interest groups
• Current interest groups
• Highly targeted marketing platform

10. Who uses Facebook?

13. Wikis
• “The simplest online database that could possibly work.”
Ward Cunningham
• Indexed collection of articles that can be edited by any
registered user
• Organic development
• Public/private
• Knowledge management
• Knowledge capture

15. Social bookmarking
• Organically Organised
• Reliant on ‘tagging’ – tags create the index.
• No formal structure.
• Harnesses collective intelligence (“wisdom of crowds”)
• Users are motivated to participate because their
contributions are rewarded
• Opportunity for virtuous circle of publicity
• The service provided by the software gets better as more
people use it

18. Communities
• Discussion forums
• Focused special interest groups
• Administered by enthusiasts
• Anyone anywhere can contribute and share knowledge
• Get answers to specialist queries

19. Are you ready?
• Take simple steps now
• Search on Google for your business name
• Explore any online references and reviews you find
• Watch for a while to assess the audience
• Review how your audience is composed
• Check if they are who you think they are
• Don’t discount potential new audiences
• Go where they go

20. Engagement principles
• The aim is to get others talking about you
• Keep good ethics and transparency
• Give up control of the message
• Participate in a community
• Provide valuable or entertaining content
• Dedicate resources
• Don’t Hard Sell

21. How do I decide what to do?
• Choose where to engage carefully
• Be conservative in your approach
• Where can you contribute most?
• Where are your audience?
• What do you have the time and resources to do well?

22. Some steps to benefit your business
• Listen and react to what people are saying
• Start blogging IF you can make time (blogger.com)
• Post news and offers to feeds: RSS and Twitter (twitter.com)
• Install Google Analytics on your website (google.com)
• Depending on your audience and business:
• Create a business Facebook page (facebook.com)
• Create a profile on SAGA! (sagazone.co.uk)
• Pay special attention to security

23. Conclusions
• Invest time in understanding the people formerly known as
your audience
• Engage in the ways most suited to your audience and
business
• If you do nothing else watch and take note!