Oak Room Soc Med Lunch 8 12 09

How small businesses can use social media to promote their Brands

Event planner luncheon Oak Room, NYC August 12th 2009

WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA?

Social Media is a set of online tools and activities  that people use to collaborate and connect on the web.  

In other words: it’s a fancy way to describe the zillions of conversations

that people are having online.

Marketing Small Businesses With Twitter

How Two Recent Events Used Social

Networking Sites to Woo Attendees Using Twitter for the Job Search

Point, click and promote: More businesses tap social networking sites NYC food truck

jumps on the

band wagon

3 Tips for Marketing with Social Media  

WHY SHOULD WE CARE?

Social media really is about tearing down the artificial walls between customers and the individuals who work at companies.

How Does Your Company Attract New Customers? 

Pre-event survey

People don’t want to be shouted at by companies. Instead they want to be listened to and

to be able to have a conversation.

Social media can help achieve all these goals

Think about how you can get through the noise and carve your own niche

Essentials: • Awareness of your specialty • Your reputation • Trust factor

Stand out from a crowd

Example how Elizabeth, President of Fifth Avenue Digital, uses social media to promote her photography business

•  Entrepreneur •  Small biz owner •  Natural Connector •  Passionate marketer •  Social media insider

Elizabeth leverages her strengths:

She doesn’t

It’s Simple. People like working with those who they Admire and Trust

The relationships Elizabeth has developed through her knowledge of Social Media make her stand out.

The business she gets for her photography innovations comes through these relationships.

Building relationships is the key to a successful business today!

A Business Blog has Value

•  Keeps your Website Updated 

•  Is Indexed by Search Engines so is Great for SEO 

•  Drives Traffic to your Website 

•  Shows the World that you are an Expert in your Field 

•  Enables Conversation & Feedback from Customers &  Colleagues 

•  Answers Questions that People have about what you do. 

•  Enables you to Showcase your Company Culture 

•  Is Inexpensive PR for your Company 

Blog topics can also be found on how small biz use social media. 

YOUR BLOG IS WHATEVER YOU WANT IT TO BE

Become  Your Own Rock Star ! 

website

Twitter 

Blogging 

Email Mktg 

Facebook 

LinkedIn 

CONFUSION TRUMPS PERSUASION EVERY TIME!

IS YOUR WEBSITE •  Easy to Use? •  Easy to Find? •  Clear & Precise? •  Secure? •  Up to Date? •  Visible to Search Engines? •  Neglected? 

Pre-event survey

GREAT NEWS! ALL OF YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA ACTIVITIES HELPS TO DRIVE TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE!

•  Over 43 million members in over 200 countries & territories around the world.  •  Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members. 

LinkedIn is a business‐oriented social networking site. 

A Facebook Business Page is a public profile that enables you to share  your business and products with Facebook users. 

•  Over 250 million active users. • Affluent teens and young adults; Slightly female biased following. 

•  55 million monthly visits. •  Highest indexing group: 45‐to‐54‐year‐olds. 

Twitter is the ultimate tool for relationship marketing and for building  your business network. 

•  Make sure your profile to date •  Connect with vendors, partners, suppliers, & customers. •  Check references on people you may hire or do business with. •  Ask for recommendations and share the love by doing the same for others. •  Learn about people you would like to do business with. •  Join  groups that you are interested in and participate. •  Become an expert. •  Share your business accomplishments. •  Upload presentations using Slide Share. •  Review competitors’ information. •  Virally market tips, ideas, articles. 

Great way for people to get an impression of you and interact with your company 

Most of us know how to use this for social

Changed the rules! 

Used Facebook to build an army of supporters. May have won cause he knew no one answered landline!

Your blog posts can appear right on the page. 

Lots of fans means your company is popular 

Your fans will see everything you post on their feeds. 

Your fan’s friends see your company name. 

Great for web traffic because they are indexed by search engines 

WHAT THE HECK IS ALREADY!

• (from our pre-event survey and network) • Letting your network know information important to you in 140 characters in a real time

•  A powerful outlet for instantaneous communication that is very relevant for all businesses

•  A way to share information or learn about a subject from people who are experts or who are talking about what I'm interested in around the world

•  World's Biggest Chatroom

•  Both a megaphone and microscope.

• Twitter: Fast facts, opinions and news feed if you follow the right people. Be picky.

• A readily reliable revolution reporter (iran)

• The pursuit of the unmeetable by the '140-max' Tweetable.“

• Twitter hits the nail on the head… a bunch of birds on a powerline, twittering away. Are others listening? Sometimes! But we’re all on the line together.

• Potential thumb wrecker

The best marketing tool ever! 

Twitter is 50% PBS and 50% QVC‐ Guy Kawaski 

Meaning 50 % of the time you need to offer value to your followers and 50 % of the time they will allow you to hawk your wares. 

How do you use twitter to market? 

•  Gain respect in what your passionate about •  Meet people thru social media •  Engage with people who can help you •  Build your brand with your followers •  Carve a niche for yourself •  Drive traffic to your blog •  New visitors to your website •  Don’t forget to give value back! 

85 % PBS and 15% QVC- Elizabeth Beskin

Twitter is first and foremost a place to connect, learn, and listen.

Small Business Twitter Frustration

Sometimes you give up without talking to anybody because the sheer numbers are overwhelming.

Amongst the business people that I discuss Twitter with there appear to be two types of discouraged small venture owners who give up on Twitter at rapid rate.

The case of the large cocktail party where you know no one

Then there’s the complete opposite… 

Sends out of tons of spammy messages, which spew forth details about her great products  

Only talks about herself 

she will typically stop using Twitter when to her surprise nobody follows him back and she doesn’t receive one @ reply. 

The kid in the candy store- she sees only suckers

Twitter profile essentials: 

  Use a great headshot that you like 

  If your name is your brand, use it! 

  If you want to grow your following with a specific target audience, pick a name that tells what your passionate about 

  Make your bio short and give a sense of what your doing there! 

  Be engaging, entertaining and educate with your tweets 

Terms to Know 

Newbie‐anyone who is new to twitter and just learning. Tweet : A Short Update of what you are doing for about 140 characters. Followers : People who are subscribed to your updates or tweets Direct Message (DM) : Sending a Direct Message to your followers.(privately) At (@) : You can use this when you are referring to someone’s tweets in your updates. You can also use this to reply publicly if the person is not following you. Re‐tweet (RT)‐highest form of flattery‐ if someone re‐tweets what you tweeted‐they are saying‐”I like what you just said and I’d like to pass it along to my followers. Hashtag(#)‐ are phrases or keywords that can be used to monitor who is saying what about a particular topic. Standards for hashtags are one word (#Conference) and can be used for tweetchats to follow an entire conversation. Followfriday (#FF)‐tradition of recommending good tweeters you follow to your following on fridays! URL Shortener‐ Since Twitter only allows 140 characters, every single character counts. URL Shortener allow you to post weblinks more efficiently and some will even offer tracking capability that you can see how many twitter followers click on the link. TinyURL, Bit.ly are some popular URL Shorteners.  

Twitter Tools 

Explained   Tweetdeck –Twitter feed in columns of information based on your preferences, rather than one long 

stream.  I use the following columns: all tweets, A‐list, B‐list, event professionals, photographers, and social media experts. A‐list are the people I learn from and engage frequently. B list are new friends (those I want to keep an eye on). there are @mentions & DMs on the same screen. can also see your Facebook friend feeds on screen and shorten urls from same tweet. AWESOME! 

  Twellow – A search program that searches by bios, names and locations. It has a graphic interface that enables localized searching. VERY useful for dealing with 10% limit on non mutual followers  

  Tweetchat – This program aggregates all tweets for a certain hashtag into a chat room. The benefit of using this vs. Twitter Search for hashtags, is that when you write your tweet, you don’t have to add the hashtag, as it is added automatically — a HUGE timesaver and is so much easier 

  Tweet Later – You can do numerous things with this site. First, you can use it to set up alerts to track keywords you are interested in. You can also schedule tweets at certain scheduled times.  

  TwitPic – Allows you to easily post a photo on Twitter. Just browse to the photo, and it creates a link. It’s built directly into Tweetdeck, so it’s easy to use from there! 

  Bit.ly ‐ Shorten, share and track your links. I find this site to be super helpful in trying to determine the success of a tweet when linking to articles on your blog. Great for tracking best times to tweet. 

TweetDeck (Mashable Version)

Live Twitter feeds during events

#oak09

For this event the hashtag was #oak09

•  It’s networking in your sweats! •  3 E’s‐Educate, Engage & Entertain. •  Be helpful. •  Be polite, say thank you when someone does something nice like #RT or #FF. •  Follow back those that follow you‐this is how you grow your network. •  Don’t make your tweets private‐defeats the whole purpose of Twitter. •  Talk about others and they’ll talk about you. •  How many people you follow is less important than the amount of people who    you converse with. 

Final Twitter Thoughts

Time Management 

•  Choose one Social Media site that best suits your business needs.

•  Start off slowly.

•  Master it well.

•  Everyday use is the best way to develop real relationships.

•  Develop your OWN brand marketing plan

•  Determine what makes YOU different

•  Follow your PASSION

•  LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN, before you talk

•  Embrace your INNER AUTHOR

•  Build out your NETWORK

•  Be ENTREPRENEURIAL, think outside the box

•  SHARE 85% of the time, PITCH 15% of the time

•  Be SELF-AWARE, not self-involved

•  ROI is RETURN ON INFLUENCE

TAKE AWAYS

Social media Is not a one night stand…

It’s a long term commitment !

Betsy Kent Betsy@BeVisibleAssoc.com

Twitter name: @bevisible Just Ask Betsy Blog:

www.BeVisibleAssoc.com/blog/

Elizabeth Beskin Elizabeth@FifthAvenueDigital.com Twitter name: @photobiz Blog: www.FifthAvenueDigital.com/photography-blog

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