Social Media Training for the Australian Booksellers Association

Social Media Training for Booksellers

Clayton Wehner - Blue Train EnterprisesM: 0438 925 613 E: [email protected]

A short arousal video… http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=nrlSkU0TFLs

How social media switched on are you?

Who is on Facebook? More than 200 friends? Who maintains a Facebook Page for their

business? Who is on Twitter? Anybody got a blog?

Scope of today’s training Part 1 – Background on the social media

phenomenon and a quick methodology for its use

Part 2 – The technologies available to you – Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc

Part 3 – The risks of social media

Part 4 – Principles for implementing a successful social media strategy

The Vibe Relaxed Lots of video and fun stuff Ask questions at anytime There might be a few questions for you…

Don’t need to take copious notes…you can find this presentation at: http://www.bluetrainenterprises.com.au/

abatraining

Part 1Background & a Methodology

Aussies going online…

28% of users are spending > 3 hours online a day

A further 23% spend > 1 hour online a day

Aussies going social…

8.7 million Australians visited a social networking site in June 2010

44.3% of Australians have a Facebook account (9.4m accounts)

Aussies going mobile…

2.4 million Australians accessed the web via a

mobile device in June 2010(and most are using social media on these devices)

Aussies using apps…

In January 2011, Amazon sold

115 Kindle eBook Downloads for every

100Paperback Book sales

Aussies using tablets & readers…

Aussie organisations lag behind 75% of Australian small-to-medium

enterprises DON’T do social media

30% of Australian SMEs rarely update the content of their business website

78% of Australian SMEs don’t use their websites for e-commerce (ie. selling stuff)

Only 14% of SMEs use email marketing

And book retailers under pressure… Aussie dollar very high Interest rates going up A slew of overseas buying options with cheap

shipping arrangements Big retailers up in arms about overseas operators

avoiding GST (thanks for promoting them, Gerry Harvey)

Universal access to fast internet connections Growing trust in the security of online shopping Greater complexity in life means that people seek

convenience Copyright protectionism on Australian books

Evolution of the web Web 1.0 = ‘one way web’; reading

static web pages; ‘brochureware’

Web 2.0 = ‘two way web’; interaction, community, collaboration

Web 3.0 = The ‘semantic’ web; artificial intelligence; high levels of personalisation, individually-tailored web experience

What is Social Media? Social media is ‘media designed to be

disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques’

Blogs, micro-blogging, social networking, video/file sharing, wikis, social bookmarking, community sites and more

These are all ‘social media’ too… Location-based social networking sites – eg. Foursquare Other social networking sites – eg. MySpace, Orkut, Hi5,

Bebo Really Simple Syndication (RSS) Social bookmarking sites – eg. Digg, Delicious, Technorati Wikis – eg. Wikipedia, Google Sites Content sharing sites – eg. Flickr, Slideshare Blogs Discussion boards / forums – eg. Yahoo! Answers Crowdsourcing / outsourcing – eg. Elance, 99designs Virtual communities – eg. Second Life Voice over IP – eg. Skype Instant Messaging – eg. ICQ Podcasting The mobile web – iPhones, Blackberry, Android, iPads,

Kindles

Social Media in plain English… http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=MpIOClX1jPE

Steady on, tiger…

‘I need to be on Facebook because everybody else is’ – WRONG!

Tendency to start with the ‘technology’ first

Need to focus on the target audience, objectives and strategies, before considering the technologies…

Why? Because the technologies might not be appropriate for your organisation

POST Methodology

P is for PEOPLEO is for OBJECTIVESS is for STRATEGIEST is for TECHNOLOGIES

Forrester Research

POST – a social media strategy People

Who are you targeting? Certain demographic, multiple demographics

Objectives What do you want to achieve?

More sales? Engagement? Awareness? Strategies

How do your propose to achieve your objectives? Competitions, special deals, provision of information, email

marketing Technologies

Which technologies will you use to implement the strategies? Email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, video, etc.

Forrester Research

Get your website right first…

BUT before getting too creative with social media, get your website right first

Your website is the core element of your web presence

Are you awake – pop quiz, hot shot…

Blog is the shortened form of what?

How many characters can a tweet contain?

What does RSS stand for?

Facebook emanated from which US university?

Who owns MySpace?

The Answers Blog is the shortened form of what?

WEB LOG How many characters can a tweet contain?

140 CHARACTERS What does RSS stand for?

REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION Facebook emanated from which US university?

HARVARD Who owns MySpace?

NEWS CORPORATION

Questions….

Part 2The Technologies

Become a consumer first… Join the online book community – learn, discuss

and share info with like-minded people Get a Facebook account and become a ‘fan’ of

book industry pages Get a Twitter account and ‘follow’ book

industry people Get a LinkedIn account and ‘connect’ with your

business associates, suppliers, clients etc Get a feed reader (Google Reader) and

subscribe to industry blogs and RSS feeds

Blogs in plain English… http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=NN2I1pWXjXI

Get bloggin’ Anybody can be a content publisher – not just the

media companies Establish yourself as an ‘authority’; build

credibility Write interesting, provocative posts to engage

with readers Write short articles; write regularly – maybe twice

a week

Start at http://www.wordpress.com for free Transition to a domain hosted blog later – ie.

http://www.yourdomain.com/blog

No. 1 blog in Australia

“I earn a six figure incomeeach year from my blogs…it’s probably creeping moretowards seven figures peryear now…”

An exercise for you… Pair up Take 2 minutes to come up with one idea for a

blog post that relates to books Share it with everybody…

Facebook & Social Networking http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=6a_KF7TYKVc

Facebook it up for your biz Over 750 million active users!

Has overtaken Google in US as most viewed website

‘Facebook Pages’ are for businesses (not standard profiles or Groups)

Set it up in seconds at www.facebook.com/pages

Extending your Facebook presence Claim your vanity URL at

www.facebook.com/username once you have 25 fans

Add custom tabs with your own content

Use apps to extend the functionality of the page – try North Social for sweepstakes, fan offer apps

Display a splash page for non-fans that asks them to become fans

Twitter in plain English… http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=ddO9idmax0o

Start Tweet, Tweet, Tweetin’ Micro-blogging; 140 character limit – basically

‘SMS on the web’ (but best done via a mobile device)

You follow people, they follow you; your ‘tweets’ are seen by your followers, you see the ‘tweets’ of people you follow

Many people write off Twitter: who would be interested in this seemingly banal, nebulous information?

What are those weird characters, man?

Hash tag # - designates a topic (eg. #abaconf11)

@ symbol – designates a Twitter user (eg. @boomerangbooks

Allows Twitter users to search for tags and to isolate tweets that contain that tag

I’m entering @Crust_Pizza #CrustFreePizzaFriday

Ocea Beauty Bar, College Park

Insurance salesman – 29K followers!

Automate & centralise posting Posts on a blog, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin etc

can be ‘ported’ between one another using a variety of tools, removing the requirement to post manually on multiple sites.

Twitterfeed (www.twitterfeed.com) sends blog posts to Facebook and Twitter

Desktop tools (and mobile phone apps) like Tweetdeck and Seesmic can be used as a central hub for posting to multiple social networks at once

Integrate & enable sharing To grow your social media community, make it

easy to connect/follow by integrating social media elements into your pages and enabling sharing options Social bookmarking buttons FB Like buttons Google+1 buttons FB Boxes Twitter widgets

To implement, it’s normally just a small piece of code that is added to your page HTML – ask your geek!

Online video - Where in the World is Matt? http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=zlfKdbWwruY

Online video Video is the biggest growth area on the web as

bandwidth and online storage increases Over 24 hours of video every minute is uploaded to

YouTube YouTube is now the world’s second largest search

engine Video can be done cheaply with a handheld

camcorder

Copy the file to your computer and then upload to YouTube within minutes

Embed the video in your website or blog using the special code…

Start an internal wiki to store stuff Hawaiian term for ‘quick’ A website created by a group of people who

have the ability to contribute and modify content

Often used to create collaborative and community sites – best known site is Wikipedia

Great for internal collaboration – think intranets, knowledge management, document sharing

Questions….

Part 3 The risks of social media

It’s all out there… Who has googled themselves? Ex-girl/boyfriends?? Social media sites can be very insightful about

individuals Ethical? Legal? Make sure that your own internet ‘footprint’ is

‘above board’

"Kyle Doyle is not going to work, f*** it I'm still trashed. SICKIE WOO!"

Total pervvy wanker

The big long list of risks for organisations… Breach of security Breach of privacy Compromised passwords / hack attempts Viruses / phishing Online harassment or cyber-bullying between

workers Slander / libel / defamation Online fraud and deception Disgruntled former employees

Not to mention hits to your brand…

Domino’s

Virgin’s ‘chavs’ (=‘bogan’)

"Rove and Tasma look so cute ... hope she doesn't die, too"

"I do so hope Bindi Irwin gets laid”

Catherine Deveny sacked by The Age for Tweets

The power of Twitter (5,000+ followers)

Dove Evolution

Dove Onslaught

Dove Onslaught(er)

Slob Evolution

Questions….

Part 4 Principles for success

Principles for social media success

1. You have a mandate from the boss

2. You have organisational commitment at all levels

3. Your strategy integrates with the business plan and wider marketing strategy

4. Your strategy fits with the organisation’s website

Australian Army goes social

Australian Army FB Page – 53K+ fans


5. You understand your target audience

6. You understand what your objectives are

7. You are using the correct social media technologies

8. You have a written usage policy in place

An exchange on the Nestle FB Page


9. You have a staff training regimen in place

10. You have an appropriate allocation of resources – people, time, money, equipment

11. There is central coordination and accountability

12. There is devolved responsibility

Devolved responsibility


13. There are regular coordination meetings (but also spontaneity)

14. There is a focus on sustainability and long-term results

15. There is compelling content

16. Content is well-written, error free and keyword-rich

Compelling content


17. There is an appropriate frequency of content

18. There is an appropriate tone and persona

19. There is two-way conversation and engagement

20. There is ‘authentic’ communication

Frequency of content

Small contributions often – one per day

Tone and Persona – Ginger Rundle

Two-way conversation

Authenticity


21. KPIs are monitored

22. There are contingency plans in place if something goes wrong

23. There is constant learning about social media in the organisation – because it is constantly changing!

KPI monitoring

Final words

What you should do now… Secure your names on Twitter, Facebook, etc Sort out your website Check your competitors Dip your toe in – it’s free

Set up profiles on main sites Do some tweeting Subscribe to/comment on industry blogs Connect with associates

Read and learn Monitor brand & reputation

Will social media help us? It’s not a ‘silver bullet’ Like most things, it won’t happen overnight It’s not unlike ‘real’ networking!

Benefits of social media if done well Engage with existing stakeholders Reach new ones Establish credibility Bigger ‘signature’ on the web Greater ‘openness’ and ‘accessibility’

Be a part of the ‘revolution’ in the online world (what is the alternative?)

Questions….

And that’s it… This presentation can be found at:

http://www.bluetrainenterprises.com.au/abatraining

My details: Website: www.bluetrainenterprises.com.au Email: [email protected] Twitter: @bluetrain Skype: bluetrainenterprises I’m also on Facebook, LinkedIn

Technology

Social Media Training for the Australian Booksellers Association