1. Social Media 101
and
Engaging Your Community
Liz Polay-Wettengel
Co-creator JewishBoston.com
Director of Marketing and
Communications, Aviv Centers for Living
@LizPW

2. Social Media basics
Twitter and LinkedIn
• Walk through on setting up your Twitter account
• A quick review of how Twitter works and finding
your way around it.
• Using LinkedIn to build your business network.
• Walk through setting up your LinkedIn profile.
• Walk through how to post links on LinkedIn.
• Walk through integrating LinkedIn and Twitter.
• Community engagement basics

3. Why Twitter?
• Twitter is fast
• Twitter is where people are talking and
sharing
• Twitter is conversational
• Twitter is social

4. Let’s set up your profile

6. The benefits of using your real name
• When representing ClearPoint, you are giving
a human component to your service.
• You are establishing yourself as an expert in
your field.
• You are creating a positive reputation for
yourself as a representative of ClearPoint.

7. Set up your profile statistics
I recommend using an actual photo of
yourself, again this personalizes you as a
representative. The official company Twitter
account is where the logo should be used.
In the Bio section, be as descriptive as
possible. This is your elevator pitch—your
opportunity to convince people to follow you
back. You‘re only allowed room for 160
characters, so consider it a snapshot of your
background. You can include:
•Your company
•Your position
•Your hobbies/interests
•Your specializations
•Your recent projects

8. Follow some people
Twitter is all about facilitating conversations, but until you're
following some people, it's just a blank page.

9. Twitter Basics
• Twitter Handle: Also known as a username. This is the name you select to represent yourself on
Twitter.
• To Follow: To subscribe to someone‘s updates on Twitter. You do this by clicking the ―Follow
button on that specific person‘s Twitter page, which can be found at
http://twitter.com/USERNAME. (Insert the specific person‘s username into the URL, like
http://twitter.com/LizPW). When you follow someone, their updates will be displayed on your
Twitter homepage so you know what they are doing.
• To Follow Back: To subscribe to the updates of someone who has recently started following you. It
is not required to follow everyone back, but many people like to.
• Follower: A person who has subscribed to receive your updates. You can view your total number of
followers on your Twitter profile page.
• Update: Also known as a tweet. Each update can be no longer than 140-characters. (Later we will
talk about different types of updates.) You can post an update in the white text box under ―What‘s
Happening?
• @Reply: A public message sent from one Twitter user to another by putting @USERNAME
anywhere within the body of the tweet.

10. • Direct Message (or DM): A private message sent from one Twitter user to another by either clicking
the ―message link on their profile or typing D USERNAME. Think of it as Twitter‘s version of an
email/inbox.
• Twitter Stream: A list of a person‘s real-time updates. Every time you post an update, it goes into
your Twitter stream, which is found on your account page also at http://twitter.com/USERNAME.
• Hashtag (#): A Twitter tagging system used to aggregate the conversation surrounding an
event, topic, or theme. Hashtags can easily be created by combining a # with a word, acronym, or
phrase (#WORD) and used as a tag within tweets.
• Retweet (or RT): To repeat what someone else has already tweeted. People do this if someone has
said something especially valuable and they want their own network to see the information too.
You may sometimes see MT or Modified Tweet. This means some content was left of to conserve
space.
Example: RT @USERNAME: Check out this cool resource
• Twitter Lists: Public lists that any Twitter user can create. Twitter Lists generate Twitter streams that
include specific Twitter users.
• Trending Topics: Displayed on the right-hand side of your Twitter homepage, trending topics are
words, phrases, or hashtags that are popular (trending) on Twitter at a given time. These can be
organized by location and are updated in real time.
• Promoted Tweets: Tweets that have been supported and promoted by paid marketing efforts.
Think of them as the pay-per-click of Twitter.

11. Go to your own Twitter homepage

12. Who should I follow?
• Follow Thought Leaders and Bloggers: See
if any of your favorite bloggers are on Twitter.
Many bloggers include a link to their Twitter
account in their blog‘s sidebar or personal info
section of their website.
• Collect People’s Twitter Names at Events and conferences: Many social
media-savvy people will include their Twitter handle on their nametag at
an event. Write down their usernames and follow them later.
• Follow Hashtags (#) at Events and conferences: At many events, the
organizer will establish and publicize a hashtag, so anyone tweeting at the
event can tag their tweets with the hashtag. Use Search.Twitter.com to
follow tweets using the hashtag, and follow those people who are
attending the same event as you who you may not have met in person.
• Search hashtags for a subject and follow people tweeting interesting
content.

13. What should I NOT do when starting
to follow others?
• Don’t follow too many people at once: Best practice is to follow no
more than 25-50 people a day, because there will be a time gap
between following people and when they follow you back. If your
profile says you are following 2,000 people and only 30 followers
have followed you back so far, it appears that 1,970 of the people
you followed chose not to follow you back. This unfavorable ratio
won‘t help boost your credibility and may negatively affect people‘s
decisions to follow you. Therefore, give your followers some time to
follow you back before finding a new batch of people to add to your
network.
• Don’t follow hundreds of people at once and remove all who don’t
follow you back: Although many people do this in order to have a
―valuable ratio (or more followers than people you‘re following), it
is artificial network building and not a best practice.

14. What is the best way to build my
follower network?
Like any network, building it takes time.
My best advice? Tweet like you already have
thousands of followers.

15. So, what can you tweet about?
Types of Tweets:
1. An Observation: Tweet about what you‘re doing, thinking or feeling.
2. What You’re Reading: Post a link to an interesting blog post or news article.
3. What You’re Watching: Post a link to a cool video from Hulu or YouTube.
4. What Events You’re Attending: Share a link to the next conference you plan
to attend.
5. Your Content: Post a link to your most recent company or personal blog
article.
6. Someone Else’s Content: Post a link to someone else‘s blog article as a
helpful resource.
7. Chat With Someone: Direct messages to other Twitter users using an @ sign.
8. Retweet What Someone Else Has Tweeted: Retweet using ‘RT‘ or ‘MT’
(modified tweet) at the beginning of the message or clicking Twitter‘s
Retweet button to repeat to your followers what another user has tweeted

16. How often should I tweet?
There is much debate about how often to tweet.
This is what has worked for me:
• 5-6 times a day for original content
• 3-4 retweets a day
• 3-4 engagement tweets.

17. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social network with over 53 million users that
enables you to make better use of your professional network
and help the people you trust in return.
LinkedIn is a great place to network professionally, post and find jobs, and
build thought leadership. It is probably the most obvious way to identify
influential individuals at specific organizations.
A search for your target business or title on LinkedIn will identify people you
may already be connected with, either directly or through your
connections.
LinkedIn is a great tool to leverage your existing contacts to connect with
people and find potential customers online.

18. Setting up a LinkedIn profile

19. Complete your profile. Your profile should be 100% complete. Add work experience, schools, and
other relevant information about yourself. People searching for contacts will make a decision to
connect or not to connect based on the information you provide in your profile. A complete profile
will increase your visibility and help you get found by employers, recruiters, and prospects.
Upload a profile photo. People are more likely to connect with you if they recognize your face and
they feel like they are connecting with a real person.
Get recommended. Ask for recommendations from friends, colleagues, partners, and clients. This will
speak to your experience and add to your credibility in your industry.

20. Network Building
Connect with people with whom you have worked or done
business with before, or people with similar interests or work
in your industry.
Invite thought leaders in your industry to connect so that you
might establish a relationship with them and, eventually, gain
access to their network.

21. Find Meaningful Contacts
• Start with people you know. First reach out to friends, colleagues, relatives and
business contacts as this will help you build the first layer of your network.
• Find people by company. Search under the “Companies” tab so you can start
looking for employees that are working in your industry. You can use this method
of search to find the contacts for the types of companies your business is trying to
target.
• Update your status often. Your status appears on your profile and in the LinkedIn
Network Updates email to your connections. Thus, others may take notice of what
you are working on and decide to connect or click through on links in your status.
• Connect your Twitter and LinkedIn accounts. LinkedIn allows you to connect your
Twitter account to your LinkedIn profile via your status. This feature allows you to
post a LinkedIn status message to Twitter and to pull a tweet into your LinkedIn
status. Enabling this feature will help you leverage both of these networks to build
connections on both sites.

22. LinkedIn Groups
LinkedIn groups give you a great opportunity to reach and
engage potential customers online. There are still a lot of
industries or groups of professionals not yet represented in
LinkedIn groups. If no one has created a group for your
industry, go create one. If there is an established group, join
the discussions, answer questions and engage with a new
network.

23. Posting on LinkedIn
Creating a status update on LinkedIn is very similar to Twitter,
but as you can imagine, it is a different audience.
Here you can see that you can choose to keep the update on
LinkedIn or also send it out to your Twitter audience.

24. Now that you have set up your
profiles…
Let’s engage with your
community.

25. Building Community takes time
• There is no secret sauce, you have to do the
work.
• The 80/20 rule
• At the center of it all is
sharing and providing value.

26. Value?
Value can translate to a video, a photo, a
blog post, a checklist. With value,
"to each his own", so you’ve got to know
what constitutes value for your audience. If you’ve got
music lovers on your hands, maybe that’s the latest
soundbite or leaked video. If it’s engineers, maybe it’s an
infographic that beautifully lays out all the data they need to
quickly digest. For Clearpoint, perhaps it is the content that
Clearpoint already makes available to you through blog posts
and other tools. Financial education is important and people will
find your content valuable
What you must remember us that Value is not all about you.

27. Content
• Five types of content:
– Content that builds trust
– Content that educates
– User-generated content
– Other people’s content
– Content that converts
The reason for building a community and creating
value for the community is to grow your business
and these types of content help you to do this.

28. What are the tools you can use?
Tweetgrid
OPL (Other People’s Lists)
Hashtags
Pocket
WeFollow
LinkedIn Groups

29. What is available to me at ClearPoint?
• Blog content:
– http://www.clearpointcreditcounselingsolutions.org/t
ips-and-tools/blog/
• Twitter tools and retweets
– @knowyourmoneyus
– @BruceMcClary
– @ThomasPNitzsche
• LinkedIn Groups
– Council for Economic Education group
– Financial Literacy and Education
– Your local BBB

30. Final Thoughts
• Be human
– You will have a larger audience if people know you are
real, responsive and engaged in the conversation .
• Participate in the conversation
– Social media is social, not just a platform for your
message.
• Make it Fun or make it useful.
– And don’t always make it about you. Promote your
fellow local organizations who are also using the social
media space and they’ll do the same for you.