What is Social Media ?•What is Social Media?

•What can Social Media can do for your company?

•Case Study- ‘the power of Twitter’

•What are the first steps to get my company involved?

What is Social Media ?

“the online technologies and practices that people use to share content, opinions, insights, experiences, perspectives, and media themselves”( Wikipedia)

Social media tools can include:

social networks communities

forums social bookmarks

podcasts message boards

video sharing sites photo sharing sites

bookmarks wikis

Blogs microblogs

How Relevant is Social Media

• 100,000,000 videos on YouTube• 200,000,000 Blogs• 73% of active online users have used a blog• 57% have joined a social network• 83% have uploaded videos• 55% have uploaded photos

What has changed?

Interruption Based Permission Based

Telesales SEODirect mail BloggingEmail Blasts Social MediaPrinted Ads RSS FeedsTV Free Trails/ToolsRadio Viral Videos

It Looks to Complicated to Understand?

"Getting up to speed on social media is like learning to ride a bike; it's difficult and intimidating at first, but once you get the hang of it you can get where you want to go quickly - and even enjoy the ride."  

- Columnist Steve McKee, 

Business Week Magazine, Jan. '09in "Why Social Media is Worth Small

Business Owners' Time."

So How does Social Media Work?

See it as a ‘business networking’

Meet people-start conversations

Answer questions – help others

Ask Questions – trust others advice

Social Media is ‘engagement’

• Social Media helps people engage in conversation about a product/service, identify research, reviews( trip advisor).

• It is an open forum whereby people engage differently.

Companies ignore this phenomena at their peril!

How can Social Media help my Company?

• Generate qualified leads• Increase subscribers to newsletter• Generate exposure to your product/services• Improved ranking in Search Engines• Build new business partnerships• Use what your customers are saying to improve your

product/services

Can Your product/Service be Found?

• When a potential customer is researching about your product/service, can they find you on:

• Discussion Sites ( Blogs etc)• Photo sharing site ( Flickr etc)• Video Sharing Sites (Youtube etc)• Article Sharing Sites (Digg etc)• Social/Business networking sites(Facebook, etc)

Case Study – The Shower Guys

• Used ‘twitter’ campaign to drive traffic to their blog• Daily added a different picture of a part of a shower

being held, to their blog• Asked for people to ‘identify’ the name of the part• Targeted small/medium size businesses in area

following them on twitter.( and reciprocal)• Correct answer receives a prize

RESULT: increased company name awareness leading to new orders & requests for seminars in ‘how to use Social Media’

Companies that have engaged and benefited from client’s opinions:

• Starbucks• Lego• Butlins• Proctor & Gamble

See: “The Future of Competion-Co-creating Unique value with Customers” by Prahalad & Ramaswamy

How do I Start?If you have a brand name or company name( or major keyword) that is

important, register it with as many sites as possibleStart by creating profiles/business page on:

www.facebook.com i.e. http://companies.to/wsi-internet-consultants/

www.youtube.com i.e www.youtube.com/farmercopleys

www.flickr.com i.e. www.flickr.com/farmercopleys

www.wordpress.com i.e.www.wordpress.com/farmercopleys

join www.linkedin.com

Thank You for Listening• For more information on:

• How to create a Facebook ‘business page’

• How to create a blog

• Future articles( How to set up ‘Flickr/YouTube’ etc)

go to : http://companies.to/wsi-internet-consultants