capitalizing on social media for small business - which channels are best for your business?

Choose the channel(s) best suited for your communities and business

Capitalizing on

Social Media

Sponsored by: Waterloo Region Small Business Resource Center Presented by: Kelly Craft & Gordon Diver

Introduction AptiSense

@krcraft & @gdiver62

• We are NOT a social media ‘gurus’

• We are experienced business strategists who also know social well

• Lateral, tech-savvy hybrids spanning strategy, design, implementation & analytics

• Diehard data geeks & Compelling narrative story engineers

• Committed to holistic approach to business strategy

• Silo-busters and frequent dinosaur-tippers

© 2013 Aptisense #wrsbrc Presented by: @krcraft & @gdiver62

Housekeeping / Q&A


Connect with us:

LinkedIn: Kelly Craft Twitter: @krcraft LinkedIn: Gordon Diver Twitter: @gdiver62

http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=21923259


http://twitter.com/krcraft

http://twitter.com/krcraft



http://twitter.com/gdiver62

http://twitter.com/gdiver62

10.3 BILLION searches are conducted on

Google every month

Will your customers find you, when, where and how they want? It’s all in the message.

© 2013 Aptisense #wrsbrc Presented by: @krcraft & @gdiver62 4

Raise your hand if you’re already on

Social Media?


Social Media is Pervasive. You need a plan.

Why Do We Do Social?


One compelling reason: The Customers now control the conversation about your brand.

Importance of Social

Social offers: • An opportunity to build rapport • More “bang for your buck,” typically less expensive cost

to execute. • An opportunity to expand your network that lead to

face to face interactions


This is the first day of the rest of

your social business experience


We’ve talked about integrated digital marketing to increase your brand visibility with these goals:

Gain name recognition and credibility.

Attract new contacts, maybe even customers!

Use free marketing channels and tools optimally.

Become a finder (not just a minder or grinder).

Build a collaborative brand community.

Cornerstones of a Social Strategy


Defined Objectives

Brand Profile

Channel and Content

Maps

Measurement and Analytics

Social Channels In a nutshell.


Stalking rebranded.


Keep calm

• You can’t do everything – so don’t even try.

• You have to do something, so start asking/monitoring and find your Audience.


By the numbers

Facebook 1.15 million+ Total Users Twitter 500 million+ Total Users LinkedIn 238 million+ Total Users Google+ 500 million+ Total Users Pinterest 70 million+ Total Users Instagram 130 million+ Total Users

Bottom line = MORE CHOICES


Before you deep dive into all the social media platforms available to you, revisit your strategy and ask these questions:

Who am I trying to communicate?

What do I want them to do, what action?

Where are they on line and what issues do they need addressed?

How am I going to be accessible to them, when, where and how they choose.

Answering these questions will help you define your approach while also helping you to define your intentions and goals within social media as part of your marketing strategy.

The right questions


Consistency

Produce content to communicate that speaks with one voice across different media It’s crucial to maintain your brand across all of your marketing efforts Your brand is your reputation Inconsistency can engagement killer


Why Customers follow Brands


Biggest Mistakes SMBs make on

Social


Leaping in without a strategy and goals.

Lack of Brand Voice clarity.

Failure to engage.

Inconsistency. Social Business takes time & commitment.

Failure to analyze results.

How do you do it right?


• Social media is not just getting a bunch of likes or followers.

• If you think it is, then you’re doing it wrong!


Human engagement

Don’t overlook the key factor of being human.


Customer Journey

From “A” to “D” Awareness to Advocacy


Visitors Leads Customers Promoters

ATTRACT CONVERT

CLOSE DELIGHT

Blog

Keywords

Social Media

Forms

Calls-to-Action

Landing Pages

Email

Social Media

Workflows

Events

Social Media

Smart Content

Prospects

Source: HubSpot

Narrative

• Narrative is creating the story around your brand or product that will best communicate with your consumers.

Integration

• Addresses how will you interact with your consumers across all platforms. Blogging, email and social media are all different mediums and messaging should be integrated, but specific to each channels.

Planning

• Developing content calendars and looking at trends should be a part of your marketing activities. This is done so can you deliver timely content to your consumer when that topic or idea is in the top of mind.

Measurement

• To see what is successful, make adjustments and learn to make more money.

Steps

This is bigger than just social media, so you’ve got to outline how all channels can effectively work together to get your messages across successfully. Four ways to organize your message are:


Facebook



Always a good option, lots of practical applicatons.

Have a separate personal and professional page.

Embrace your Business Page as an effective 2 way communication channel

Business Pages - promote specials, events, services, products, and more .

Can be used for Customer Service – if you monitor it closely.

Fan pages picked up by search engines.

Built in analytics.

Facebook Business Page


A successful Fan page, will provide a powerful image that represents what you do, has a call to action. Note some of the pages missed opportunities.

Facebook best practices.


First step is to see what others are doing: Use the new “Graph Search” to find competitors, industry organizations and watch for: •What are they posting? •How frequently do they post? •What posts are getting the most interaction? •Take note of the number of people that are “talking about this” over a seven day period. •How are they using “Tabs” •What trends can you identify, what issues can you leverage to your advantage?

Facebook best practices


One of the challenges of Facebook for Business is staying current on best practices and the terms of service.

Successful brands, don’t preach or sell to their base, they engage and provide valuable information and make attempts to understand what their “fans” really want from their brand. A great resource is: https://www.facebook.com/business/pagesbestpractices Where this photo came from.

https://www.facebook.com/business/pagesbestpractices

https://www.facebook.com/business/pagesbestpractices

Facebook Terminology


What does “Like” mean any way? Are you a “Fan” or a “Friend”?

Manage your content/message


To set up your content calendar for Facebook:

1. Choose a topic

2. Set up a schedule

3. Develop a curation system

4. Schedule posts (from within Facebook or with a third party like Hootsuite)

Contests and Pay Per Click


Run a contest to drive lead generation for your page and site. Use #hashtags to promote across platforms.

Consider a targeted pay per click Campaign to generate leads, awareness and sales. Can be effective and expensive if not managed appropriately.

An Image is worth a

1000 words


Yes images work, but learn which images can drive engagement.

“Post pictures that are meaningful without having any text next to it”. Leo Widrich, Buffer

Inspire a theme


Unbounce created their successful Marketing Fails posts, based on the response to their blog post – note #hashtags.

Show your human side


Source: Buddy Media

Used sparingly and appropriately, can be very powerful and show your personality.

Knowing when to ask Questions


If your goal with questions is to drive engagement, ensure that it appears at the end of your post. In this example, it’s more an introduction to the theme of the multimedia post. This will be shared because of the video content.

Twitter


Visibility


Visibility filters exist across all social channels.

Get to Know People


Tips on crafting Tweets


1. Make your updates easily Retweetable Leave a few characters free for RTs.

2. Use URL shorteners. (Bit.ly Saves space and provides analytics.

3. Add Personal comments/opinions when you RT something or share someone else’s content.

4. Use Hash Tags, (but not too many in a single tweet and only when relevant.

5. Understand Visibility rules of twitter. Do you know who can see what you share?

Twitter Example


• Basic tweet formula (sample) • Link to product content + Product benefit + hashtag + CTA.

• Each tweet should have a specific audience • Customers, advocates, vendors, community, industry.

• Add value • Share something instructive or compelling.

• Triggers • Mentions, issues, questions, product schedule, news.

• Caution • Avoid being spammy. No more than 2 tweets per hashtag.g per day.

Hashtags #


Use it to start a topic or discuss a trend

Trend or emerging event or at a conference/event

Contests and Promotions

Across channels.

Join Chats

Share something instructive or compelling, etc #smallbiz chat on

Gain more followers

Sharing on common interests

How to create one

Start with the # sign and don’t have any spaces.

r Use sparingly and appropriately

Start with the # sign and don’t have any spaces.

• day.

Social Dashboards


Discover them for yourself, both Free to try!

Twitter Success Stories


LISTS

A great way to do social prospecting and your brand reputation (how do others perceive your brand).

Lists can be public or private. Can track industry, competitors and the voices that influence you.

You don’t have to follow someone to add them to one of your lists.


Marketing Mentors List


Advantages to LinkedIn


Great for business visibility.

Build Your network, personally and professionally.

Join groups and post YOUR info – create authority.

Post about others and have others post about you.

Start an industry-related group.

Read updates and add value through comments.

All activities show in the feed and in your Company page.

Personal Profile


A powerful profile will help you show up in the search results, helping others find you and connect.

Company Page


Linkedin has become more visually appeal with the company page area. Having this real estate to create a strong visual is relatively new.

Products and Services Tab


Benefit to your brand


Have your advocates provide social proof of your good work.

Social Prospecting with LI


A quick search identified 216 connections with and how I might know or get to introduced to someone. Search criteria: Early Childhood, Located in Canada Within 80kms of N4Z1B6

Google+


Personal and Corporate

As with other platforms, there are two sides to G+, we’ll look briefly at both and cover the pros and cons of each.


What to be aware of

It takes time to build an audience on G+ and your particular audience may not be there yet… It can take some time to get use to navigating all of the platforms functions You’ve committed to other platforms


Hangouts


Jay Baer with Alan Quarry

http://youtu.be/-ckDA2zjpc8?t=48s

http://youtu.be/-ckDA2zjpc8?t=48s

Why you might want to care

It has the power to manage multiple goals for you, content marketing, social networking, communications, prospecting, education and collaboration. Hangouts, by far are the greatest strength and draw – video conferencing, create tutorials and entertain. Branding strength with Google Authorship Ability to customize your circles and communities. Drives authority for your brand – verified content was a key upgrade in the latest search update (Hummingbird)


If Search is Important in Marketing, G+ is important to you and your online efforts.


62% of all buying decisions are influenced by social

circles and family

- 2011 Mobile Youth Report

Visual Platforms


A very visual platform that is great for ecommerce and to drive traffic to your company website. Upload video, blogs, product. Here’s a couple of examples to look at.


Social Media Board


Ecommerce


Drive traffic and commerce to your site.

3.4 million followers


INSTAGRAM: Use imagery to illustrate your

corporate culture, building community; help in recruitment efforts and brand recognition.

Best practices

Show your human side – go behind the scenes with your people Showcase your product in an usual way Add text to your image Use video – 15 seconds is a lot to convey your message, but know what you want to say. Drive lead generation by running a photo contest with your followers


The best of both worlds – James Wedmore is a recognized leader for video marketing – here’s an example


http://youtu.be/RXlAve5CGsA

• Email is another marketing channel that people don’t tend to really focus on. Email is a great way to segment your customers and market directly to their interests, but you must build the lists first.

• Capturing emails within your blog is a great conversion goal you can use. Every website should have at least one form of some sort to capture lead emails.

• Another reason email marketing is a great is that’s where a lot of your consumers are hanging out, especially first thing in the morning. “Subscribers, Fans, & Followers Exclusive Research Helps Marketers Use Email + Facebook + Twitter” is a great resource to gain further insight in how to further succeed in collaborating with social media and email marketing.

Integrate with Email


http://pages.exacttarget.com/sff

http://pages.exacttarget.com/sff

Measurement

Measure what you do, and adjust accordingly.


How to do Social without

Sucking 101 – A reminder.


RECIPROCATE! Share, engage, converse, debate, guide, help, serve, instruct, comfort, laugh, learn. Become an expert in your field. Your new business (like many professions) just one long apprenticeship.

Learn about your colleagues and partners and their areas of expertise (and cross-market).

Get to know your customers. Read about each client's business (client web site, google.com).

Attend regional events. Network. Be visible. Be social online & off.

Read at least one newsletter or magazine in your field, cover to cover. Share what you learn.

Aim for perfection in every update and post; you are the editor and publisher!

Your written work (updates, posts, comments, and e-mails) will live forever. Keep that in mind.

Be civil. Be polite. Follow the Golden Rule. Don’t unto others …

So… to recap.

Strategy Brand Content Consistent Relevant Monitor Manage Measure


If you want to reach higher levels of success as a social business, just follow these steps.

We’d like to extend our thanks to all of you for attending the 2nd segment.

Thanks also to the talented team here at the centre and especially Chris Farrell and Mistie Brown.

If you learned beneficial skills here today, don’t forget to mention that when you complete your feedback forms at the end of the Summer Company program. Give lots of kudos to Rob and the rest of the Great Team at the Waterloo Region Small Business Centre !

Our Thanks To You


http://www.waterlooregionsmallbusiness.com/events





