social media for real businesses
DESCRIPTION
How real companies use social media - based on research carried out in aerospace supply chain. Covers principles of networking and how social media can helpTRANSCRIPT
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2010
How to use social media inreal businesses
Dr Alan Rae – Managing Partnerwww.howtodobusiness.com
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2010
You need to know how
much activity at each stage is needed to get the sales
you want
Marketing and Salesis a process
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2006
Copyright Dr Alan Rae
Marketing1. It’s about generating opportunities.2. You need a strong story that connects you to
your customers.3. You have limited time for sales and marketing
– 12 hours on average for a small business.4. You need to use the internet to prospect for
you – to generate warm leads. If you’re clever you can get a 40% boost in leads.
5. We can help you achieve this
What’s your story?
• You need a narrative that connects you to the customer and motivates them to work with you.
• It needs to be– Compelling– Relates you emotionally to the listener– Phrased in their language– Addresses their pain and spurs them into action
• And is absolutely crystal clear and unambiguous about what you do and why.
• All our research shows that people give or refer business to people that they know what they do
Getting your story right
One exercise that I find useful is to compare our needs and values with those of the clientThis can give us a framework in which we can develop compelling narratives.This is all about values and how people think
Copyright Dr Alan Rae 2010www.synergy-global.com
How do I tell it?• You can tell it in writing, face to face or
online• For most businesses the actual sale will
involve face to face activity – the action of the play.
• The scenery is the online / written collateral
• The next slide shows your options
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2009
Approaches to Market
Examples from our own businesses
• Plants4presents.co.uk - Route A– transactional – b2c – depends on web-site, pay per click and PR /
offers. – National, Scalable.
• FletchingGlasshouses.co.uk - Route C – business to business – reputation and certification driven– on farmers market fresh/local/unsprayed trumps organic– Local – non scalable – depends entirely on face to face reputation
• Ai Consultants / How to do Business Route B– Specialised non scalable – international – business to business– Depends on reputation for high quality specialist work– Uses social media and networking extensively to promote – face to
face activity to close
• .Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2009
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2006
Criteria for spending much time online
• Am I a national or a local player?• Is my business scalable?• Is it transactional – or relational• Do I have a reason to go on line?• How much time do I need to spend sales
and marketing • What is the balance between on line and
offline?• How much do I believe in chance and
random connections?
On line networks work thesame as face to face ones
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2007
• People have to like you and trust you before they follow and recommend you.
• You need to get to know people first before you sell to them in a face to face relational sales process
• Doing small favours helps.• The online world works in the same way –
but you have much greater reach
How networks operateNetworks are lumpy and uneven. This map of the internet that Lucent produced in the 90s shows there are some really dense nodes that have many connections – while most have very few.
Sales agents know lots of people and use their connections to do deals and generate money.
It’s the same on-line – some people are much more known and connected than others. We find the same patterns occurring in networks, markets and anywhere that people make a free-ish choice about what they do, read or whom they associate with.It follows a power law.
The second player in a market has half the market share of the number 1 player, the third has a third, the quarter has a quarter etc. If the leader has a 40% share then the number 2 has 20%, the number 3 has 16% and the number 4 has 10%. As an example here are the top 6 UK networkers on Ecademy (July 2008)Name Network size Thomas Power 18728 Jim Tuffin 10560 Geoff Cox, 6436 Denis Kondopoulos 3485 r i c h a r d p e r r y 3451 Andrew Widgery 3433
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2006
Our task is to getnoticed by influencers
• Find out what networking organisations they belong to and join them
• Work conventional membership organisations• Back it up with PR and in a technical market – by line
articles in the trade press• Understand what motivates the influencers, money,
prestige whatever• If we need to go on-line we can se linked-in, blogs
and follow them on Twitter• BE CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU DO - AND WHY IT’S
IMPORTANT TO THEM
Developing Trust• People trust people• That are clear about what
they do• That have a good
reputation – Know their stuff– Do what they say– Are likeable or easy to
work with• That get back to them
quickly• That practice “givers
gain”
• So Listen• Spend time in one to
ones understanding the other persons needs
• Do small favours• Understand who’s
important in your network• Find ways to come to
their attention.
Exercise – who is important to me
Market 1 Market 2Name How you will meet Name How you will meet
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2006
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2004-2009
What to do with your 12 hours
• Find a home group to network with• Be crystal clear about what you do• Get back to people quickly• Practice Givers Gain• If you need to build an online presence
– You can write one blog article and keep a presence on one and a half social networks per week
– Focus on Linked-in then Ecademy which combines on line and offline
• Conventional face to face activity with a bit of PR and adwords spend is what people actually do.
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2007
You can be referred or you can be found
• Being found on line means understanding what people are looking for and using those phrases – called keywords – to tag online objects.
• Simply you have to research these – you could do that by running a Google ad-words campaign
• And then you need to put them in certain specific places in web sites, in blogs, on photos and videos etc.
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2007
When they notice you they check you out
• You need something for them to find• Stories about you – PR• Profiles on social media• 10 things people really ought to know about your
area of expertise• White papers to demonstrate thought leadership• Case studies and examples of your work• Testimonials
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2007
• In today’s business world people believe their peers – not the experts - ebay/amazon ratings
• And certainly not the marketers• So make it easy for people to say good things
about you• Why what you did was worthwhile• And hand out a few of your own to people you
genuinely rate• It really does pay to be thoughtful about this
Particularly Testimonials
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2007
Many industries are small and traditional
• You need to be known• You need to have a good reputation• Your face has to fit• You need others to speak for you
• This is traditional old boy networking
• Online new girl networking is just the same
But you can use SocialMedia to speed it all up
• Social media are online networks• The same rules apply as in face to face
networks– Reciprocity– Listen before you talk– Be polite– Be helpful– Be clear about what you do and what you want
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2009
The web runs on words
• So you need to know how the keywords and tags operate
• And how to find them and deploy them• And how it all connects together• We call this “Punch above your weight”
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2009
How you do it• First turn your story into keywords• Test them using Google ad-words• When you’ve got them put them into
– anchor text • Small Business Marketing course sits over• www.1manbrand.co.uk
– Headlines, page title, keywords metatags– Tags for any online materials you create
• Create additional places you can link from– Blogs, Social network sites, other people’s sites
Use them as Meta-tags
• Description Tag is key –it’s the description of your page within the search engine report. If you don’t have it Google will cobble together some tosh from the page that you can’t control
• Use most important keywords to make a strong 60 character title tag
• Have the most relevant keywords for the page in the keywords tag
• And make sure each page is different and relevant
Now you’ve got them – what do you do with them?
• Put them in the anchor text of inbound links from partners – you may have to negotiate individually but it’s worth it
• Set up an affiliate link programme• Put them into your email auto signature• Build them into your auto signature when you’re
blogging or posting where Google will see it• Use them for brand consistency with your off line
messages• Use them to Tag your Blogs• Create your own environments
In many supply chain industries your freedom to use these tools is limited
But you need to understandhow it hangs together
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2010
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2006
Copyright Dr Alan Rae
Your online toolkit. You can create structures like this
to get noticed by influencers
Social Media – Summary
Ecademy Facebook Linked-In
Connection MechanismLook at profile - ask
to connect Ask to connect
Ask to connect if you know them. Get
introduced if you don't
Can you see profile of someone you're not connected with Yes No Yes
Primary Use Business + Social Social Business
Typical User Small Business Individual Corporate
Connection Style Random Amongst Friends Deliberate
Groups and Clubs yes yes Yes
Rich Media Friendly A bit Yes No
Source MediaBlogs, Ecademy, YouTube
• Ecademy• Ecademy is a smaller networking site but it’s a good place to start –
the subscription is £10 per month. You can network online and offline with 100,000 other members worldwide. It also lets you– Create blogs– Advertise in the Market Place– Form special interest clubs– Take part in discussions, seek advice from other members or give
advice in response to the posts of others– If you devote time to learning to use it – it really is a school of online
marketing.• 2 unique features make Ecademy important:• It runs face to face meetings as well as online networking.• Google looks at it every day and anything you post there, if you use
keywords properly will deliver a search engine linking bonus. • It definitely has a pivotal role in an online marketing strategy. You
can contact all of your connections once a month.
Source MediaBlogs, Ecademy, YouTube
• Blogs• We standardized on Wordpress because
– It’s easy to use– It integrates with your own site– You can create extra pages so it works as a
mini-site– It’s customizable– The tagging is foolproof– You can link to other sites via your blog roll.
• There are 2 flavours, .com and .org. The .com version is hosted by Wordpress, has everything in it you need and you can just set up.
• The .org version is downloadable - you have host it yourself or you can buy a site already set up via GoDaddy
• It’s very easy to set up and use and will be a main building block of your on-line activity.
• A Blog can be an ideal business tool as long as you can generate 300 - 400 words of well written copy every 7-10 days. If you put a Blog on the front page of Ecademy every week you’ll be in the top 100 Bloggers.
Source MediaBlogs, Ecademy, YouTube
• You-Tube• YouTube lets you upload short videos.
These can be embedded in web sites or blog pages or online profiles to make them more interesting.
• If you embed them in a page you get a lot of marketing data about who’s watching it.
• On our Turkish Villa site I’ve embedded a video about Bodrum http://www.seaviewturkey.co.uk/gallery_v.html
• We can get Google analytics data on the video but also the demographics about who’s looking at it. So we can retag the video with the best keywords and boost the rankings.
• For business you can create your own channel about your own offers.
Carrier MediaTwitter, RSS
• You need to know about twitter –• Its pure permission marketing. People follow you if what you
say is useful. If you bore them – they’ll abandon you.• You’ve 140 characters to make your point. You can link to
something you want to signpost – a Blog, an event, an offer.• Be interesting and converse - don’t broadcast• Tweetdeck helps you sort the conversations out• Tweetlater can automate your “business” posts. Chat with
colleagues, re-tweet items of interest and use it to inform and entertain. No more than 15% promotion
• Twitterfeed helps you feed material to it.• Route blogs and other posts via twitter to end user
destinations in Facebook and linked-in.
Sink MediaLinked-In, Facebook
• FaceBook• I’ts allows 3rd party applications and is
good at easily importing pictures and videos
• It blurs boundaries between ‘professional’ and ‘social’ worlds. Fine if you live blamelessly.
• Special interest groups can be created such as ‘Facebook for Business’ or indeed “How to do Business” which has acquired 600 members with very little energy being applied.
• RSS feeds can pull in content from your blog or other source – Wordpress widgets or twitter feed.
• Facebook Flyers can be accessed from the ‘advertisers’ section at the bottom of your profile page. If you want to reach people from Generation Y as employees or customers it may be worth reviewing.
Sink MediaLinked-In, Facebook
• LINKED IN• Most transactional network • You can only connect directly if you
already know them via a first circle of people that you are directly connected to, a 2nd circle of their connections and a 3rd circle of their connections. You have access to these people only by invitation.
• To connect to a specific individual I can search for “Google vice president” I found one who’s a senior programmer in Krakow. 14 people who know me know someone who knows him. To contact him I can get a referral
• Good for recruiting or structured selling particularly into corporates.
• Groups (IOD, CIM, ProMarketing Forum) help you get known by asking and answering questions
Sink media are where people check you out
• Ex Military people keep in touch via FaceBook• Corporate people use linked-In• For real businesses, linked-In is the main tool
– It has groups you can join and participate in based on professional bodies, Alumni organisations etc
– You can get your thought leadership collateral onto your profile – via slideshare, blogs etc
– Find prospects, get introductions and understand the structure of your industry better – who knows who etc
– Be connected and seen as a thought leader
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2010
People Google you before or after they meet you
• Chances are they’ll find your profile – linkedIn, FaceBook, Ecademy
• You want what they find to have good, current stuff from a blog or a slide set plus some testimonials from other people to jack up your credibility.
• As we said before it’s the scenery not the play – but it can be powerful scenery!
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2010
Marketing to do list• List 50 people you need to meet and how
– They can find you– You can get introduced to them– You can collide with them
• Use social media to create the scenery– join linkedIn
• Build profile join groups contribute– Use PR– Build Collateral library - 7 things you should know – white papers etc– Create a form for people to sign up for these so you can email them– Build Social media profiles– Connect it all together – so that when people check you out they find
your stuff.
Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2009
Once you have an order the real business starts
• Brand is about performance
• To be successful everything you do must add value to the customer
• Otherwise it’s waste
• This is called Lean.Our Business is Making Your Business Grow
Copyright Dr Alan Rae2009
What next• Visit www.howtodobusiness.com for details on the
services we provide.• If you are interested in Market planning try our free
teleclass http://marketingbasics.eventbrite.com• If you are interested in Business planning try our free
teleclass http://basicbusiness.eventbrite.com• Or consider buying one of our e-books at
http://www.howtodobusiness.com/howtodobusiness-e-books.htm
• More information from Alan Rae on 0845 094 0407 [email protected]