Social Media - Waste of Time or Winning Ticket?

Social Media for Business�Waste of Time or Winning Strategy?

New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce

Do You Have Time for This?

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?!”

Riding Technology Waves

Here Comes Everybody

2 3 9

13 17 19

27

8 11

16

29 33 35

46

0 5

10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50

Ever Used

Yesterday

Adults Using Social Networking Sites, 2005–2009

Pew/Internet

Numbers we can’t ignore

WHY SOCIAL MEDIA MATTERS •  57% of all adults have a social media profile

•  50% of all social networkers check sites every day

•  Twitter use growing at 400% per year

•  Facebook is #2 destination on the web

•  Average Facebook user has 120 friends

•  850 million photos updated to Facebook each month

•  YouTube serves a BILLION videos a day

Exercise:�Google Yourself

Substance or �Snake Oil?

Users spend most of their time on other sites

Inside the Organization “Social software is a trend that cannot be ignored. It is bringing about fundamental change to the way people expect to communicate with one another.

Companies cannot use social tools with their customers and not also allow their employees to utilize them.”

Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group

Social Media Players: Internal

•  IT

• HR and Benefits

•  Training

• Governance

• Management

•  Employees

• Departments

•  Project Teams

•  Vendors / Contractors

Role-based personalization

Social Media Players: External

• Marketing

• Communications

•  Public Relations

• Community Affairs

• Customer Support

• HR/Staffing

• Customers

•  Prospective customers

•  Press

•  Industry analysts

•  Prospective employees

Global Intranet Survey

19

23

37

45

47

71

47

51

35

33

10

30

12

20

20

0 20 40 60 80 100

Social Networking

Podcasts

RSS

Blogs

Wikis

Have Now Considering No Interest

Choices, Choices, Choices

The Big Three

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

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

Try Twitter

•  Start with searches

•  Practice active listening

•  Follow your gurus

•  Retweet stuff you like and find useful

•  Talk about your passions

Remember, They’re Listening

Takeaways

1. Claim your profiles.

2. Friend and follow.

3. Lurk and learn.

4. Set up watch lists / keywords

5. Share with a STRATEGY

• 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

TOOLS you can USE

•  Ping.fm

• Status updates across social media

• SocialOomph.com

Time-delayed Tweeting and more

• Mr. Tweet, Tweepler, Twellow

Find and follow, directories, publicizing

• TweetDeck, Twhirl, Hootsuite, Seesmic

• Multiple accounts, organizing large accounts

@firecatsue

susanprice

http://profile.to/susanprice

firecatstudio.com

susan@firecatstudio.com

QUESTIONS & DISCUSSION

Thanks for inviting me!