Capitalizing on Social Media Channels for Business Growth

Capitalizing on
Social Media
Choose the channel(s) best suited for your
communities and business
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

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Presented by: @krcraft & @gdiver62

Housekeeping / Q&A
Connect with us:

LinkedIn:
Kelly Craft
Twitter:
@krcraft

© 2013 Aptisense

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LinkedIn:
Gordon Diver
Twitter:
@gdiver62

10.3 BILLION searches
are conducted on
Google every month
Will
you,
they
It’s
© 2013 Aptisense

your customers find
when, where and how
want?
all in the message.

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4

Raise your hand if you’re already on
Social Media?

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Why Do We Do Social?

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

Social Media is Pervasive. You need a
plan.
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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
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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.

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Cornerstones of a Social Strategy

Defined
Objectives

Channel and
Content
Maps

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Brand Profile

Measurement
and Analytics


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Social Channels In a nutshell.

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Stalking rebranded.

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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.

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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

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The right questions
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.

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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
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Why Customers follow Brands

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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.

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How do you do it right?

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

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

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Human engagement
Don’t overlook the key factor of being human.

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Customer Journey
From “A” to “D” Awareness to Advocacy
ATTRACT

CONVERT

Visitors

Prospects

CLOSE

Leads

DELIGHT

Customers

Promoters

Blog

Forms

Email

Events

Keywords

Calls-to-Action

Social Media

Social Media

Social Media

Landing Pages

Workflows

Smart Content

Source: HubSpot

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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:

Narrative

Integration

Planning

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

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Facebook

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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/pagesb
estpractices Where this photo came from.

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Facebook Terminology

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

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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)

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

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

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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
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Inspire a theme

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

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Show your human side

Used sparingly and appropriately,
can be very powerful and show
your personality.
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Source: Buddy Media

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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.

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Twitter

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Visibility
Visibility filters exist across all social channels.

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Get to Know People

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Social Dashboards

Discover them for yourself,
both Free to try!

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Twitter Success Stories

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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.
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Marketing Mentors List

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LinkedIn

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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.

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Personal Profile

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

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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.
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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

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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.

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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

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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.

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62% of all buying decisions
are influenced by social
circles and family
- 2011 Mobile Youth Report

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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.

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INSTAGRAM:
Use imagery to illustrate your
corporate culture, building
community; help in recruitment
efforts and brand recognition.

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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

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

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Integrate with Email
• 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.

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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 …

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So… to recap.

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

© 2013 Aptisense

Brand

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Content

Consistent


Relevant

Monitor

Manage

Measure

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Our Thanks To You
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 !

© 2013 Aptisense

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Capitalizing on Social Media Channels for Business Growth

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