Why should businesspeople - especially small business owners - take precious time engaging in social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube? To meet prospects. To have dialogs with customers, vendors, competitors - learn stuff, share information, mix it up. I don't make MONEY on Twitter. Or Facebook. Or LinkedIn. But I do make key business contacts, develop relationships with key prospects, and get the word out about who I am, what I do, and what kind of person I am. And it doesn't hurt a bit that Google, Bing and Yahoo can find me having those interesting conversations and help other people find me and join in. Susan Price of Firecat Studio gave this presentation 11/19/09 at the San Antonio Women's Business Center's workshop series.

1. Social Media for Business
Ignite Your Marketing with Twitter, Facebook LinkedIn
South Texas Women’s Business Center

3. Waste of Time or Opportunity?

4. Have you heard this one?
• “Social media is a fad. Like CB Radio.”
• “Our CEO wants a blog.”
• “Make sure our employees can’t access Facebook.
Or YouTube. Or LinkedIn.”
• “We need a Facebook fan page.”
• “Just put it out there, they will use it.”
• “Which of you whiny, ungrateful $#@ posted this?!”

5. Riding Technology Waves

6. Here Comes Everybody
Adults Using Social Networking Sites, 2005–2009
50
45
46
40
35
33
35
30
29
25
27
20
19
Ever Used
15
16
17
13
Yesterday
10
11
9
8
5
3
0
2
Pew/Internet

7. WHY SOCIAL MEDIA MATTERS
• Facebook: #2 destination on the web,
• Facebook grew 197% this past year
• Twitter use growing at 1170% year
• 57% of all adults have a social media profile
• 50% of all social networkers check sites every day
• 850 million pix updated to Facebook each month
• YouTube serves a BILLION videos a day
Numbers we can’t ignore

8. Exercise:
Google Yourself

9. Substance or
Snake Oil?

10. Inside the Organization
“Social software is a trend that cannot be
ignored. It is bringing about fundamental
Jakob
change to the way people expect to
Nielsen, communicate with one another.
Nielsen
Norman
Group
Companies cannot use social tools with
their customers and not also allow their
employees to utilize them.”
Users spend most of their time on other sites

11. Social Media Players: Internal
• IT
• Employees
• HR and Benefits
• Departments
• Training
• Project Teams
• Governance
• Vendors / Contractors
• Management
Role-based personalization

12. Social Media Players: External
• Marketing
• Customers
• Communications
• Prospective customers
• Public Relations
• Press
• Community Affairs
• Industry analysts
• Customer Support
• Prospective employees
• HR/Staffing

13. Wikis
47
33
20
Blogs
45
35
20
Have Now
RSS
37
51
12
Considering
No Interest
Podcasts
23
47
30
Social Networking
19
71
10
0
20
40
60
80
100
Global Intranet Survey

14. Choices, Choices, Choices

15. The Big Three

16. Leverage LinkedIn
• Create or update your professional profile
• Create a company profile
• Reach out to your network(s)
• Ask and answer questions
• Join Groups
• Look at LinkedIn Advertising

17. Have Fun in Facebook
• Create or update your profile
• Create a company fan page or group
• Organize your friends
• First to know, first to tell
• Try some applications

18. Try Twitter
• Start with searches
• Practice active listening
• Follow your gurus
• Retweet stuff you like and find useful
• Talk about your passions

20. Remember, They’re Listening

21. Takeaways
1. Claim your profiles.
2. Friend and follow.
3. Lurk and learn.
4. Set up watch lists / keywords
5. Share with a STRATEGY

22. • Try it out, small steps
• Be authentic
• Set boundaries
• Subscribe to your mindfeed
• Listen, share, care
• Pilot, fail fast
• Measure your results
• Get help when you need it

23. • Ping.fm
• tatus updates across social media
S
• ocialOomph.com
S
Time-delayed Tweeting and more
• r. Tweet, Tweepler, Twellow
M
Find and follow, directories, publicizing
• weetDeck, Twhirl, Hootsuite, Seesmic
T
• ultiple accounts, organizing large accounts
M
TOOLS you can USE

24. @firecatsue
susanprice
http://profile.to/susanprice
firecatstudio.com
susan@firecatstudio.com

25. QUESTIONS DISCUSSION
Thanks for inviting me!