This document provides an overview of various social media outlets and how to utilize them effectively. It details statistics on key platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn. Tips are provided on setting up pages and profiles, engaging audiences, and monitoring conversations. The goal of social media is to build relationships and share relevant content and stories with target communities. Regular participation and responding to feedback is important for success.

1. Online Social Media:
Guide to Outlets
Stephanie Brown
Interactive Public Relations Specialist
Constructive Communication, Inc.

2. Social media is an umbrella term that
defines the various activities that integrate
technology, social interaction, and the
construction of words and pictures.

3. Facts
• 2/3 of the global internet population visit
social networks
• Visiting social sites is the 4th
most popular
online activity, ahead of personal email
• Social media is democratizing
communications and is word of mouth on
steroids

4. Facts
• Social media is the biggest shift since the
industrial revolution.
• By 2010, Gen Y will outnumber Baby
Boomers
• 96% of Gen Y are on a social network
• Social media is the #1 activity on the web

5. Facts
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last
year met via social media
• If Facebook were a country, it would be
the fourth largest!
• 1 in 6 higher education students are
enrolled in online courses

6. Facts
• 78% of consumers trust peer
recommendations…only 14% trust
advertisements. What is being said about
your brand online?
• 18% of TV ads generate positive ROI, 90%
of people that can TiVo ads, do.
• 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are
experiencing record declines in circulation

7. Years to reach 50 million users
• Radio: 38 years
• TV: 13 years
• Internet: 4 years
• iPod: 3 years
• Facebook: added 100 million users in less
than 9 months!
• iPod Application downloads: 1 billion in 9
months!
• In the future, we won’t search for news and
products….they will find us

8. Cision Study
• Journalists file 48 stories a week for the 24-
by-7 online news cycle; they are interacting
with 26 sources though they only meet in
person with 4
• Reporters said their most useful interactions
with PR professionals continue to be based
on personal relationships.
• Cision recently found that 85 percent of its
clients are on Facebook, with more than a
third on LinkedIn, and more than half using
social networks for business.

9. Wikipedia

10. • Build up history of reliability
• Always use credible sources and footnote
• Straight facts, not opinion! Cite often!
• 684 million yearly visitors
• 75,000 active contributors working on 13
million articles in 250 languages
• Studies show it’s more accurate than
Encyclopedia Britannica!
• 78 percent of articles are non-English.
Wikipedia

11. • 2.5 million articles in English and growing
• Improve search but keep it neutral
• Requires content to be in HTML format
• Monitor regularly in case of issues
• Use for professional use
• Wikipedia community is passionate about
quality
• It is an open-ended project, a work in
progress
Wikipedia

16. Wikis

17. • Used to communicate internally and
externally, often called a “sharepoint”
• Go in and edit and contribute just like
Wikipedia
• Ongoing process of collaboration
• Intranet and knowledge management
systems
• All users edit any page or create new pages
Wikis

19. Facebook

20. • 140 million active users, growing every day
• 2nd most trafficked site in world
• Average user has 100 friends
• 2.6 billion minutes are spent each day
• More than 4 million users become fans
daily
• Users share more than 1 billion forms of
content each week
• Site membership grew 85 percent in 2008
Facebook

21. Facebook
• Suggest fan pages rather than groups
• Use as a snapshot of internal culture/life
• Often for personal rather than professional use
• 85% are 18-24, 55-65 year old females is fastest
growing age group
• #2 site behind Google
• 5 billion minutes spent on Facebook each day!
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the 8th
most populated in the world, ahead of Japan

23. Results: ACI has tripled the
applications for scholarships
since creating their Facebook
group. They met their goal
and share the link on emails,
website and newsletters.

27. MySpace

28. • Oldest social networking site
• 43 million users
• More than half of MySpace users are 35+
• 8 million artists and bands
• Has many bugs and hackers
• Not user-friendly
• Declining significantly in popularity
• Recently laid off employees and declared
itself as a start-up due to decline in users
MySpace

30. Online Forums

31. Online Forums
• Monitor and be aware of what is out there
• Check out Ask Yahoo and Vark.com
• Also, on Ning, there are a couple of AEC
groups that are becoming popular

37. LinkedIn

38. • Professional relationships and networking
• 30 million experienced professionals from
150 industries
• Average: Male, 41, makes $100k
• Use Answers section and join Groups
• Contribute to the conversations!
• LinkedIn profile is similar to a resume
• Can post jobs within groups or in Job section
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as
their primary tool to find employees!
LinkedIn

39. LinkedIn
• Some reporters now use the Answers
section
• Add a personal note when adding
connections
• Paste email footer in the bottom of
LinkedIn messages
• Linkedin Keywords, March 2009:
• 807 Architecture
• 1,083 Construction
• 3,945 Engineering

44. Twitter

46. • Concept of microblogging: 140 characters
• Asks: What are you doing?
• Twitter messages: 3 million/day
• Total Users: 1 million
• Follow many people and be followed
• Search.twitter.com is a great monitoring tool
• Join in the conversation and retweet often
• Answer question immediately
• Employees are your best PR tool, let them talk
but give them boundaries
Twitter

47. Twitter
• If someone is talking to you, respond
• Be sure to add bio, photo and URL in
profile section
• Change design background colors and
upload your company logo
• Decide if you are going to be the company
or an employee
• Write in headlines!
• TwitterGrader.com

48. Twitter
• Search.Twitter.com= your secret weapon.
Use advanced search to narrow!
• Use hashtags to facilitate conversations
• Embed Twitter in your website/email
signature
• Follow and be followed!
• Quickly share information with people
interested in your company, gather real-time
market intelligence and feedback, and build
relationships with customers, partners and
other people who care about your company

49. Twitter
• Use Twitter to talk to reporters
• When users are angry, meet their needs
• Think in terms of the passion you create
• HootSuite lets you manage many accounts
• Better for B2B= Technical info is not easily
found online whereas B2B info is easy to find
• Use keyword-rich tweets
• Ask what your audience wants and deliver
• Replaced email as a way to introduce and start
dialogue

50. •1,382% is the growth rate
from January to February
2009
•3 million tweets per day!

56. Blogs

57. • There are approximately 200 million blogs
and 346 million people who read blogs
• Blogger.com or Wordpress.com are free
• Use Google Analytics, Technorati to measure
• Use keywords so target audience can find
• Add pictures, videos, short and long articles
• Blogs have readerships that are larger than
daily newspapers
Blogs

58. Blogs
• People find most blogs through organic search.
Readers are searchers!
• Use keywords wisely. Title blog wisely
• Build and initiate relationships
• Have good tagline and name
• Employee blogs are 5 times more credible than
CEO blogs
• Tell a Story
• Create a Policy for Employees
• Measure results
• Most popular blogs have 50k-100k views a day

59. Blogs
• Identify employees who are genuinely
enthusiastic about the opportunity to blog
• Passionate about their work/product
• Enjoy sharing with others
• Risk takers
• Goal oriented and ambitious
• Have a sense of humor
• Receptive to feedback
• Doesn’t have to have great writing skills

61. March 2009: 43,000
visits, 120,000 page
views from people in
60 countries.
More than 1,000
comments posted

63. Technorati

64. Technorati
• Highlight and distribute online conversation
• Introduce millions to social media content
• Information source for your blog
• Monitor authority and what is being said about
your company

65. Technorati

66. Digg

67. • Share content from anywhere on the web
• Influential professionals who are active
online
• Similar to Digg is Redditt, StumbleUpon,
Squidoo and Knol…all are sharing content
Digg

69. Flickr

70. Flickr
• By June 2009, hosted more than 3.6
billion images, roughly one photo per
every 2 people on the planet
• Online photo management
• Control who can see, who can organize
• Share photos
• Improve chances of someone finding you
• Reporters might come here to find
pictures of your company

73. YouTube
Record. Then Share

74. • More than 142 million U.S. users watch an
average of 80 videos per month
• Americans spend a total of 558 million hours
watching online videos online each month
• Online views can grow sales by 500%
• People like to see videos, so share
• Need to monitor
• 412.3 years is the length of time it would take
to view every YouTube video
• 13 hours is the amount of video uploaded
every minute
YouTube

76. YouTube is the 2nd
largest search engine in the world!

78. Delicious

79. Delicious
• Social bookmark sharing
• Allows users to tag, save, manage and
share web pages from a centralized
source.
• With emphasis on the power of the
community, Delicious improves how
people discover, remember and share on
the Internet.

82. Podcasts

83. • Podcasts=Broadcasts
• Audio or File Sharing
• Example: iTunes
• More useful for B2B than B2C, but does
not have a high success rate
Podcasts

84. Podcasts

86. RSS- Really Simple Syndication

87. • Used within the next 12 months by 63% of
consumer product marketers
• 65% media and communications marketers
• 37% financial service marketing
• 38% equipment companies
• Google Reader
• Improves search
• Rich Site Summary
RSS- Really Simple Syndication

89. Search Engine Optimization

90. • 42% of search users click the top
ranking link
• 8% click the second ranking link
• 40% of SEO campaigns aware of their
ROI achieve returns in excess of 500%
Search Engine Optimization

92. Google AdWords

93. • Adwords.google.com
• Partnered with thousands of outlets to sponsor
keywords on sites (i.e., New York Times)
• Google has 77% of market share of search
• 65% begin research on search engines
• 68% of all Internet users never click on ads
• Less than 1/6 of online users drive 80% of
advertising clicks
Google AdWords

94. Steps to getting started:
• research keywords
• set up AdWords campaigns
• write your ad copy
• create your landing pages
• manage bids and budget
Google AdWords

96. Google Alerts

97. • Sign up to receive a daily email about a topic
or keyword
• Monitor what is being said about your
company
• Go to google.com, then go to top right, click
“more”, then click on “even more” and top left
is the alerts button
Google Alerts

99. The World Wide Toolbox
• Gaming
• Productivity Applications
• Aggregators
• Rich Site Summary (RSS)
• Search
• Mobile
• Interpersonal
• Social Networking
• Publish
• Photo Sharing
• Audio
• Video
• Microblogging
• Live Casting
• Virtual Worlds

100. Tips
• Target a specific audience- meet their needs
• Be a thought leader
• Be authentic and transparent
• Create lots of links
• Encourage people to contact you
• Participate
• Make it easy to find you
• Respond to any issues, questions or
complaints

101. Thought leadership
• Be a thought leader through E-books,
newsletters, whitepapers
• Solve buyer problems
• Provide free content without registration
• Understand and write for your audience
• Creating buyer personas and studying target
audience helps to know what they want

102. Thank you!
Kimberly Kayler
kkayler@constructivecommunication.com
614.873.6707
Stephanie Brown
sbrown@constructivecommunication.com
513.469.0030