An introduction to social media use for small businesses and local businesses. Covers how to start using social media and a basic overview of Facebook and Twitter.

1. An Introduction to Social
Media for Small Businesses
Prepared by Aimee Carmichael
http://www.easywriting.co.uk

2. I will Cover
1. Overview on social media
2. Why use social media
3. Who uses social media
4. Common misconceptions
5. Starting Out
6. Intro to Facebook
7. Intro to Twitter
8. Beyond just a presence..

3. 1. Overview of Social
Media

4. Social Media Points Back to YOU

5. Social media are media for social interaction, using highly
accessible and scalable communication techniques. The term
refers to the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn
communication into interactive dialogue.
Businesses may also refer to social media as user generated
media (UGM). A common thread running through all definitions
of social media is a blending of technology and social
interaction for the co-creation of value.

7. Messages Have Further Reach

8. 2. Why Bother With
Social Media?

13. Business Examples

14. • By the end of 2010 – Dell
had generated over 6
million pounds worth of
sales from social media
alone!!!

15. • Starbucks has been busy with a
bunch of successful social media
campaigns across a range of
networks. The coffee giant
offered mayorships on
Foursquare, give away for tax
day via Twitter, and then made
use of Promoted Tweets.
• They also enhanced sales of
pastries which were not doing so
well in store by promoting a free
pastry day in all stores across
both Facebook and Twitter .

16. 3. Who Uses Social
Media

17. • More than 750 million active users
• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given
day
• Average user has 130 friends
• People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on
Facebook
• There are more than 250 million active users currently
accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
• There are over 900 million objects that people interact
with (pages, groups, events and community
pages)Average user is connected to 80 community
pages, groups and events
• (Facebook Press Site, 2011)

18. #tweets
3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the
billionth Tweet.
• 1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.
• 50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.
• 140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last
month.
• 177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.
• 456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a
record at that time).
• 6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New
Year’s Day.
#accounts
572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.
• 460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.
• 182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.
#employees
8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009,
Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.

19. 4. Common
Misconceptions

20. • You cannot measure social
media ROI
• You cannot target
• The more friends/followers
the better
• Younger generation and tech
savvy are the only users
• Only used by larger brands
with huge budgets
• Replaces traditional marketing

21. 5. Starting Out

22. First decide what you want to
achieve...
• Set Goals and Objectives
• Listen to what is already happening –
competitor and consumer research
• Learn where your audience is and what media
they consume
• Decide what social media will do for you (start
one step at a time)
• Define goals Short-term and Long-term
• Stay active with your initiatives
• Integration with other marketing efforts
• Personalise your social media brand
• Listen, think, and then respond to conversation

23. Set your base this is where you
will direct people back to..

24. Plan your communication, select
your channels and use them to
engage and drive traffic and
activity

25. How to engage
• Ask Questions
• Answer Questions
• Share useful information
• Make existing content easy to share
• Add value, make you audience want
to and have a reason for staying in
touch with you on social platforms –
one way messaging is a NO!

26. Social Etiquette
• AVOID blatant self promotion – no
one likes an arrogant idiot!
• Share interesting info that will
enlighten and engage your audience
• Promote others to build connections
• Refer other businesses (you will look
good)
• Be professional, yet interesting and
inject your personality

27. 6. Intro to Facebook

28. Facebook – Profile or
Page?
Set Up a “Profile” for yourself but only use
this for actual friends, don’t add people
you don’t know its unprofessional.
If you want to build yourself as a BRAND or
promote your business.. You need a
PAGE!

29. A Facebook Page
BUSINESSES
Create a “Page” for your business and then local
community can engage with you!
• With this you can:
• Monitor your Facebook ad campaigns
• Create Facebook pages
• Post updates to the page
• Add photos and videos
• Link your page to the rest of your marketing
• Like other pages – good for increasing business
awareness and building b2b relations

30. Facebook Strategy
1. Secure your company name and place
2. Once you get 25 likes you can customise the url:
e.g. www.facebook.com/mybusiness
3. Tell people about your page – Word of mouth,
inviting existing contacts from your email database,,
add social links to email marketing, and other
collateral
4. Use the page to educate and add value – other wise
those who have joined will leave
5. Find existing content that you have and share this on
Facebook
6. Once you have activity on the page – maintain it
7. Start Small
8. Facebook Ads are a good way to add likes

31. What a business page can and
cant do
What a business page can do
•Communicate updated content and engage community
• –Interactive
• –Exclusive content
What you can’t do
• –Cannot see profile of fans, only name & photo
• –Do not receive a news feed about what fans are doing
• –Cannot send messages to individual fans
The power of a Fan Page
• –Promotion
• –Custom iframe interface – facebook pages can be designed like
mini websites (www.asos.com)
• –Applications
• Can direct users to your website or to contact you
• Sustain relationships for as long as some one likes the page

32. Facebook Ads

33. Why Use Facebook ads?
• An extremely efficient method of targeting a specific
• demographic or criteria of individual that your
• product may appeal to.
• Just by looking at the adverts that appear on your
• facebook page you will see that these are in some
• way or another relevant to your profile.
• This is the real strength of the advertisements
• through Facebook.
• The Facebook system picks up the information from
• the millions of profiles of individuals and places the
• adverts in their side bar.
• This means that only your chosen niche market see
• your product.

34. 7. Intro to Twitter

35. What is Twitter
• Free micro-blogging platform. Answers the
question “what am I doing now?”
• Updates of 140 characters or less
• The sharing of content, ideas and data
.

36. Twitter for Business
• Network and communicate
–Build and maintain relationships
–Engage customers and share information
–Humanize your company
• Real time conversation
–Communicating and engaging with people
–Customer Service, quick responses to user’s
needs
–Monitor opinions of your brand
• Friend, follow, share, and discover
• Market and advertise your business
• Recruiting

37. Strategy
• Branding your Twitter account(s)
–Business
–Personal
• Securing your company name
• Following other users
- Use twellow.com
- Use tweepsearch.com
- Use Wefollow.com
•Tweeting
- Develop a schedule and twitter guideline
• •Monitoring
• –search.twitter.com
• -set up searches on nutshell mail
• Reacting

38. Sending A Tweet
Get started sending tweets set a target of 3-5 per day to start
with:
•Reply to a follower (show interest)
•RT someone’s post (show active participation)
•Tweet a useful link that others will find interesting
•Tweet a piece of news or content (self promotion)
•The Key is to mix up your activity
•Many businesses go about twitter the wrong way as they use it as
a one way communication tool to push out own messages!

39. How to write a tweet
• 140 characters
• Answers the question: what am I doing
right now
• catchy tweets – think newspaper
headlines
• (Catchy title or subject matter) with the
(Link)
• Want to say more? Use Bit.ly
• Desktop applications will auto shorten
or enable you to send longer tweets

40. Finding Followers
There are many ways to find others
to follow on Twitter.
 Tools: twitter.search.com is easy to use. So are
twellow & tweepz.
 Search by interest, name, location, key words.
 Follow competitors to see what they’re doing & saying!
 Follow industry related tweeters: automotive news, car
reviews, top gear
 If you find someone interesting, see who THEY are
following. This is a great way to build a network of
people.

41. Building a community on Twitter
Have a strategy Pay for tools that promise to get you
Follow people with similar interests 1000s followers
Look at competitors engage with some Send Spammy Auto DM’s
of their followers Mass follow (account can get blocked)
Set up targeted searches and build Follow people just to get followed back
conversations from those – always think about adding value
Use offline methods to integrate social Follow too many celebrities
media – incentivise customers to
follow you for special discounts, Forget to tell your friends, clients and
exclusive news etc contacts that you are on Twitter
Share existing content from your Tweet things that add no value to your
website or marketing materials via community
Twitter Think that having thousands of
Learn how to use hashtags and followers demonstrates effective
common twitter etiquette to build use – Quality not Quantity!
rapport

42. Useful Twitter Apps
FIND PEOPLE
• Twellow: the “yellow pages” of Twitter.
• Tweepz: search for other users by location, bio or name.
UPDATE
• Tweetdeck: create lists/columns, update Facebook and Twitter
simultaneously.
• Hootsuite: column functionality, statistics tracking, synch all social
networks.
• Ping.fm: Update all your social networks at once.
MONITOR
• Tweetbeep: Get Twitter alerts by email.
• Nutshell Mail: Get Twitter alerts by email

43. Twitter Etiquette
• It is ok to use short hand /txt language – but make
sure this is consistent and within your brand
guidelines and personality
• RT = retweet, is when you re send out someone else’s
tweets to your followers gaining extra exposure for
that Tweet.
• #ff on Fridays
• Hastags #
• Reveal who is updating the company page
• Make sure you have a profile pic
• Be polite and reply to all @’s
• Don’t swear
• Read more here: (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/a-
brief-and-informal-twitter-etiquette-guide/)

44. 8. Beyond Just a
presence

45. Going beyond just a page...
Twitter Facebook
• Background • Custom profile image
• Logo • Custom landing page to
• Encourage employees encourage likes/ other
to have a personal interaction
account and link to • Combine certain
company page (again sections of website on
adhere to any social facebook through
media guidelines and iframes
talk to employees about • Survey customers how
how you want them to they would use
use Twitter. Facebook to
communicate with you

46. Thanks..
• Hope you found this presentation
useful...
• More coming soon!!
If you are after anything specific email
me : aimee@easywriting.co.uk or
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