1. An Introduction to Social Media

2. INTRODUCTION
“No profession stands to influence social media more
than public relations.”
Paul Gillin, The New Influencers, A Marketers Guide to the New Social
Media

3. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
Social media is a conversation online.
Look who’s talking:
o your customers
o your donors
o your volunteers
o your employees
o your investors
o your critics
o your fans
o your competition....
o anyone who has internet access and an
opinion.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
The conversation is not:
o controlled
o organized
o “on message”
The conversation is:
o organic
o complex
o speaks in a human voice
Social media is not a strategy or a tactic –
it’s simply a channel.

5. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
The power to define and control a brand
is shifting from corporations and institutions
to individuals and communities.

6. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
Word of Mouth is the Future of
Marketing
Marketers can effectively use social media by
influencing the conversation.
One way to do this is by delivering
great customer service experiences.

7. CASE STUDY
o Zappos, an online shoe retailer, makes customer
service central with a focus on “making personal
and emotional connections.”
o Divert marketing budget to customer service (they
outsource marketing to their customers; they don’t
outsource their call centre)
o Use Twitter to promote their brand
o Website displays any public tweets mentioning of their
brand
o CEO has over 400,000 followers
o 430 employees on Twitter
o $1billion in sales last year and their expanding
into new product categories

8. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
Social media sites are the fastest-growing category on the
web, doubling their traffic over the last year.
o 73% of active online users have read a blog
o 45% have started their own blog
o 57% have joined a social network
o 55% have uploaded photos
o 83% have watched video clips
Universal McCann’s Comparative Study on Social Media
Trends, April 2008. 17,000 respondents from 29
countries, *using internet at least every other day

9. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
Social media can help you in
all stages of
marketing, self-
promotion, public
relations, and customer
service:
o research
o strategic planning
o implementation
o evaluation

10. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
o Learn what people are saying about you
o Create buzz for events & campaigns
o Increase brand exposure
o Identify and recruit influencers to spread your message
o Find new opportunities and customers
o Support your products and services
o Improve your search engine visibility
o Gain competitive intelligence
o Get your message out fast
o Retain clients by establishing a personal relationship
o Be an industry leader – not a follower

11. KEYS TO SUCCESS
10 KEYS
TO SOCIAL MEDIA
SUCCESS

12. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Experiment personally
before professionally
o Try a variety of social
media tools
o Be yourself, make some
friends, and share

13. KEYS TO SUCCESS
1. Discovery 2. Strategy
(people, competition, and (opportunities, objectives)
search engines)
4. Execution
3. Skills (tools, integration, policies,
(identify internal resources and process)
and gaps)
5. Maintenance
(monitor and adapt)
Source: 5 Phases of Social Media Marketing
http://socialcomputingjournal.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=789

14. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Find where your audience is
participating and indentify the
influencers
o Read industry blogs (including
comments)
o Google your company name &
your competition
o Find tools that can help you
listen

15. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Avoid puffery
(people will ignore it)
o Avoid evasion and lying
(people won’t ignore it)
o Companies have watched their
biggest screw-up's rise to the
top 10 of a Google search
o Admit your mistakes right away

16. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Don’t be afraid to share.
Corporations, like people, need to
share information to get the value out
of social media
o Make your content easy to share
o Incorporate tools that promote
sharing:
o Share This, RSS feeds, Email a
friend

17. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Don't shout. Don't
broadcast. Don’t brag.
o Speak like yourself – not a
corporate marketing shill or
press secretary
o Personify your brand –
give people something they
can relate to.

18. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Think like a contributor, not a
marketer
o Consider what is relevant to the
community before contributing
o Don’t promote your product on
every post
o Win friends by promoting other
people’s content if it interests you

19. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Don’t try to delete or
remove criticism (it will just
make it worse)
o Listen to your detractors
o Admit your shortcomings
o Work openly towards an
explanation and legitimate
solution

20. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o Don’t wait until you have a
campaign to launch - start
planning and listening now
o Build relationships so
they’re ready when you
need them

21. KEYS TO SUCCESS
o You need buy in from everyone in
the organization
o Convince your CEO that social
media is relevant to your
organization
o Get your communications team
together, discuss the options, then
divide and conquer

22. THE TOOLS
SOCIAL MEDIA
TOOLS

23. THE TOOLS
o Social Networks
o News & Bookmarking
o Blogs
o Microblogging
o Video Sharing
o Photo Sharing
o Message boards
o Wikis
o Virtual Reality
o Social Gaming
o Related:
o Podcasts
o Real Simple Syndication (RSS)
o Social Media Press Release

24. THE TOOLS
o People and organizations
connect and interact with
friends, colleagues and fans.
o Popular social networks include
Facebook and
MySpace, Linkedin, bebo, and
Ning.
o There are niche social networks
for just about everything.

25. THE TOOLS
o Create online profiles
o Share photos, video, and
audio, links
o Send private message and instant
message
o Learn more about people and
organizations
o Follow brands, celebrities, and gain
your own fans

26. THE TOOLS
o Contains profiles of Fortune 500
executives and leading entrepreneurs
o average individual salary on LinkedIn is
$109,000
o On LinkedIn your can:
o Post a profile and resume
o Connect with colleagues
o Share professional recommendations
o Find jobs
o Forums to demonstrate expertise and
find answers

27. THE TOOLS
o Fastest growing social network in
Canada and the world
(200 million members)
o Powerful tools to engage and
understand your audience:
o Brand pages
o Custom applications
o Targeted advertising
o Audience insights/metrics
o Opinion polls

28. THE TOOLS
o Your brand’s homepage on
Facebook.
o Allow you to post
photos, videos, events and
other messages.
o Users interact with you by
o Becoming fans
o Commenting on your posts
o Participating in discussions
o Post photos to your page
o Fans see your page
updates in their newsfeed

29. THE TOOLS
o Facebook ads give you the
ability to advertise directly to
specific demographic
groups
o This is unlike paid
search, the most popular
form of online
advertising, which only lets
you to bid on keywords the
user is searching for right
now

30. THE TOOLS
o Location
o Age
o Sex
o Keywords (appear in your
users profile)
o Education
o Workplace
o Relationship status
o Relationship interests
o Languages

31. THE TOOLS

32. THE TOOLS
What you need:
o Ad message
(title and body)
o Image
(make it compelling)
o Destination URL
(where you want the ad to take
people)
o Social actions (optional)

33. THE TOOLS
o Social actions show related
stories about a user’s friends
alongside your ad.
o People can vote whether they
like or dislike your ad.

34. THE TOOLS
o Very affordable and easy to
control your budget
o You can specify a daily
budget
o Schedule specific dates for
your ad to run
o Pay for clicks (CPC) or
impressions (CPM)

35. THE TOOLS
o Facebook Insights provides
information about your ad
campaign:
o Track ad performance with real-time
reporting
o Gain demographic and
psychographic insights about
people that view or take action on
your ad
o Use this information to identify
how you can improve your
campaign to maximize your
results

36. THE TOOLS
o Applications are entertainment
and productivity tools that run
within facebook
o Give users a unique ways to
interact with your brand by
developing your own applications, or
add existing applications, to your
page
o When fans use your applications
social stories are created that appear
in their friends news feed and link
back to your page

37. THE TOOLS

38. THE TOOLS
Add social capabilities to
your website by integrating
with Facebook:
o Users log in to your website
with their facebook identity
o You can access their profile
information to learn more
about them and deliver
targeted content
o Publish information back to
their friends’ streams on
Facebook to bring their
friend to your website

39. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o Establish a presence on the social o Create a page and fail to maintain it
networks your customers and colleagues
use o Try a hard sell approach
o Create a page to promote your brand o Censor comments
o Point your fans to your company blog or o Spam your fans/friends with frequent
contest private messages – you’ll drive them
away
o Encourage a discussion and participate
frequently o Post false information
o Explore targeted advertising
opportunities

40. THE TOOLS
o A blog is a website with regular
entries of commentary or news
o Blogs serve to establish your
company as
transparent, relevant, active, an
d expert.

41. THE TOOLS
o Engage in dialogue with your
customers
o Improve your search engine
visibility
o Promote product launches and
events
o Gain expert status by providing
useful tips

42. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o Post on a regular schedule o Write press releases – be real
about why something is exciting
o Encourage conversation by
asking questions o Let complaints go unanswered
o Respond to people that o Make users register to comment –
comment on your posts they won’t bother
o Use a few bloggers from your o Delete fair but critical comments
company for more viewpoints

43. THE TOOLS
o Microblogs are blogs limited
to a sentence or two (about
140 characters)
o People use microblogging to
promote themselves, share
content and follow
friends, celebrities and brands
o Companies use it for
marketing, public relations and
customer service by giving
their brand a voice within the
community

44. THE TOOLS
Twitter can help you:
o Share timely information
o Promote useful content including
resources, contests, deals, etc.
(Not just your own)
o Personify your brand
o Connect with your customers and
develop leads
o Build credibility and influence
o Listen to consumer buzz
o Research competitors
o Network and learn from experts in your
field

45. CASE STUDY
o Churches useTwitter to:
o Ask questions
o Share insights
o Highlight content
o Hype events
o Trinity Church uses Twitter to tell
Passion of Christ
o Westwinds Church experiments with
Twitter during services
o Distracting or Enriching?

46. CASE STUDY
o September 08: Twitter founder Biz
Stone tweets about Charity:
Water, which builds wells in Ethiopia.
o Charity: Water asks people with
September birthdays to accept online
donations in lieu of gifts and raised
$4500, enough to build a well
o The "social media birthday" was
born; asking for donations from online
friends to celebrate your birthday

47. CASE STUDY
o Social media campaign expands:
o Staff post Twitter updates delivering the results of
donations
o Website hosts videos of drilling progress made in
Africa
o A driller tweets live from Central African Republic
o Hundreds of videos uploaded to YouTube by
charity and supporters
http://www.youtube.com/user/charitywater
o Facebook Causes page with over $61,000 donated

48. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o Find and share useful content o Sound like a press release – you’re
in a social space
o Pose questions and reply to others
o Spam with constant links to your
o Keep it fun - put a friendly face on company website, either in tweets or
your brand private messages
o Promote o Post useless information – do
sales, deals, news, updates, and people really care what you had for
build buzz for big releases or events lunch?
o Know what people are saying about
your brand

49. THE TOOLS
o Video sharing sites let you
upload videos and share them
with people.
o They’re a perfect repository for
video blogs, taped
seminars, witty Power
Points, commercials, how-to’s
and a behind-the-scene look at
your organization.

50. THE TOOLS
o Helps you gain exposure and direct
traffic back to your website
o Sparks interest without a hard-sell
o Videos can be low-fi and cheap to
produce - immediacy and content is more
important than quality.
o Videos can be a place to showcase your
leadership in a field, and spread
customer testimonials

51. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o Be informative, useful, or entertaining o Just upload infomercials
o Create a summary and detailed o Be afraid to experiment until you find a
description formula that works.
o Post video replies to others o Pull down other people’s videos
showcasing your product for copyright
o Allow commenting and participate in the infringement
conversation
o Make your video longer than it needs to
o Save bandwidth costs on your website by be – keep it concise and entertaining
hosting videos on youtube

52. THE TOOLS
o Social bookmarking sites allow
users to
save, share, organize, comm
ent on and search webpage
bookmarks.
o Community votes on your
submissions so they either rise
to the top or drop to the
bottom.

53. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o Link to relevant articles about o Spam by consistently
news in your field bookmarking your own material
(not just your own content)
o Cheat by tagging your
o Make friends with other bookmarks with irrelevant popular
bookmarkers in a legitimate way. keywords
o Respect the terms of service o Open multiple accounts and vote
o (Reddit allows self- for yourself – you’ll be exposed
promotion, digg does not)

54. THE TOOLS
o Photo sharing sites give you
a place to upload and
organize your photos
o You can invite friends to
check out your photos and
people can find your photos
by searching for the
keywords (tags) you apply
to your photos.

55. THE TOOLS
o Detail the launch of a new
product, from initial sketches to
the launch party
o Promote special
events, charitable
campaigns, and awards
ceremonies
o Provide an inside look at your
organization, making it appear
glamorous, busy, fun, or
innovative

56. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o Tag your photos with relevant o Stuff linked keywords into your
keywords photo descriptions or comments
o Use your web site address or o Plaster your URL all over the
brand name as your flickr screen photos you upload
name
o Discourage people from using
o Upload quality photos of your your photos (as long as they
products/services, and things provide attribution such as a link
related to your business back to your website)
o Link prominently from your web
site to your flickr photostream

57. THE TOOLS
o An Internet forum, or message
board, is a bulletin board system in
the form of a discussion site
o conversation takes place between
registered members who post
topics (threads) and make public
comments (posts) on those threads

58. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o keep the message board active by o build it and expect people to
regularly participating in the start participating without
conversation encouragement and seeding
o collect minimal information o forget to moderate - spammers
during registration and trolls will drive users away
o keep focus and attract users by o censor or allow militant
clearly identifying your moderators to take too much
community purpose and target control over the conversation.
audience You want to encourage open
discussion, not stifle it.
o promote popular discussions
throughout your website

59. THE TOOLS
o A wiki is a website that
allows visitors to easily
add, remove, and edit
content – this makes them
great collaboration tools
o Wikipedia, for example, is
an encyclopedia is written
collaboratively by volunteers
from all around the world;
anyone can edit it

60. THE TOOLS
Do Don’t
o find references to your o rely on social reference
organization and have websites to be accurate
inaccuracies updated
o spam or overtly advertising – it
o read the terms of use to ensure could get you banned
you are allowed to edit an entry
about you o use it for Search Engine
Optimization (Wikipedia prevents
o research competition search engines from following links)
o use wikis to collaborate with o Don’t sabotage competitor’s
your team entries about competitors (You
could get caught)

61. 5 TAKE AWAY MESSAGES
3 TAKE AWAY
MESSAGES

62. 3 TAKE AWAY MESSAGES
1. Word of Mouth peer-to-
peer discussions are more
influential than the mass
media
2. Participate by enabling
and feeding the
conversation
(follow the 10 keys to
success)
3. Be transparent & honest

63. THE MYTHS
SOCIAL MEDIA
MYTHS

64. THE MYTHS
“Social Media is easy.”

65. END
The End