The document provides information about using social media for business purposes. It discusses the benefits of social media including raising brand awareness, increasing website traffic, finding new customers, and building relationships. It recommends starting with Facebook and Twitter and provides tips on what to post and avoid. The document also lists specific social media platforms and local businesses to check out, and emphasizes creating a social media plan with goals, timing of posts, and methods for measuring success.

1. Social Media Workshop
Facebook & Twitter
Moray Firth Radio, Inverness
27th March 2012

2. Socialnomics Video…

4. Why use social media for business?
• Raise brand awareness
• Increase traffic to website
• Its cheap and its fast
• SEO (search engine optimisation)
• Your customers are using it!
• To find new customers
• Widen your target market and potential reach
• Build strong relationships with customers
• Build strong relationships with local businesses
• Market research
• And much more…

5. What channels to use
and what for…

6. • Facebook - Good starting point, like a mini
version of your website, allows interaction on a
more personal level with customers.
• Twitter - Quick messages/quick response, great
for market research, good for building up business
contacts and relationships, creating a buzz.
• LinkedIn - Business to business platform, great for
making new business contacts, useful forums,
create action groups, professional networking.
• Google+ - One of the newest platforms, not got
that many regular users yet but has huge potential,
more business friendly than Facebook.
• Flickr - Great photo sharing abilities, create good
contacts, ability to set up groups for customers to
share photos, run competitions via it.

7. • YouTube - Largest video sharing platform,
contains its own search engine, ability to create
own channel, contains a lot of adverts.
• Vimeo - Very clean and modern video sharing
platform, great for embedding videos into website,
monthly users are rising.
• Foursquare - Allows people to ‘check in’ at
businesses worldwide, claim your place, ‘check ins’
are shared with users friends/followers, great app.
• TripAdvisor - Largest travel reviews platform,
needs to be monitored closely, claim your venue,
can raise awareness of your business.
• Pinterest – Latest social media ‘buzz’, collection of
collections, helps increase web traffic, great for
‘visual’ businesses, currently invitation only.

8. Social Media Mishaps – What to avoid!
• Using social media channel purely for sales
• Lack of interaction and updating
• Getting too personal
• Having no overall ‘plan’ in place
• Reacting badly to negative feedback
• Talking badly about other businesses
• Inconsistent content, bad spelling, etc
• Not letting customers know you are using it
• Doing updates not related your business/market
• Focusing too much on just one platform
• Too many updates
• Expecting immediate results
• Using social media instead of other marketing techniques

9. Create a social media plan…
• Do research and then outline what channels will be used
and for what purpose!
• How does social media fit in with your business goals?
• How does social media fit in with your marketing plan?
• Set out goals and objectives!
• Decide who will update/maintain the social media channels
and what ‘rules of engagement’ should be in place!
• How will you measure success and ROI?
• Timing of your content, what, when and how?
• Set out how you will analyze, adapt, and improve – This
should be ongoing!

10. What, when, and how should I communicate
on social media?
• Don’t just talk about your business - use it to
promote other local businesses and the area also
• Social media is all about interaction and conversation
• Share your experience and expertise
• Don’t just say something for the sake of saying it –
make sure it makes sense
• Keep posts/updates short and concise
• Be quirky, be different, be innovative
• Timing is everything

11. Businesses on social media to
check out…
• Highland Key
• Jacobite – Experience Loch Ness
• Lazy Daisy Glass
• CairnGorm Mountain Ltd
• Highland Social
• Wee Epics

12. Time to discover
the full potential of
social media…

13. How to let customers know you
are using social media…
• Icons/links on website
• Icons/links within your blog
• Links from other social media accounts
• Icons on printed marketing materials
• Links within email newsletters
• Links on email signatures
• Tent cards within your business premises
• Window stickers within your business premises
• Mention it to customers in conversation
• Get creative…

14. FUN STUFF
Getting creative…

22. FACEBOOK AND TWITTER
Keeping it consistent…

37. Insights & Alerts…

38. www.snowmarketing.co.uk
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