A social media 101 deck for people just getting started.

1. SOCIAL MEDIA 101: A
QUICK START GUIDE TO
SOCIAL MEDIA
Matthew Knell

2. THINGS TO CONSIDER

4. Social media is more than
Facebook and Twitter
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Anywhere where people congregate on line to
discuss content should be considered “social
media”.
This includes social networks, blogs, site
comments, forums and more.
Some types of audiences and some types of
content just do not perform well on one
network versus the other.

5. The bad news


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Social media is not FREE and doesn‟t “just
happen”.
Social media traffic takes time to grow and
nurture.
Even then, most of your followers won‟t click
on your social posts or even bother to read
them.
Your future social audiences don‟t know you
exist: You need to them and bring them to find
you.

6. The good news


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Social media can be a strong and reliable
source of traffic to your sites.
Once you‟ve built an audience, most of them
stick around, and continue to grow your traffic
over time if you keep them entertained.
The ones who really care about you and your
content will recommend you to their friends.

7. The 5 W‟s of Social Content
Distribution

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Who is your audience?
What kinds of content are you sharing?
Where are you sharing your content?
When are you sharing it?
Why are you using this in the first place?

8. Who is your audience?

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Who are the people most likely to be
interested in your content?
Is there a particular demographic (age,
location, income level, experience) that you
think would like your content?
Ideally, you will select and share content on
social media based on the audience you‟re
hoping to attract.

9. What kinds of content are you
sharing?

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Text
Photos
Videos
Blog posts
How will you choose to tell the story of your
content? Each social post is like a microstory –
and should be told as a complete package all
it‟s own.

10. Where are you sharing your
content?

Different networks = different audiences

Facebook = works for most everything consumer
Twitter = needs lots of real-time edge / snarky edge – most tweets
are pretty much gone from consciousness in 45 seconds, unfiltered
and requires a LOT of posts to snag lurkers
Google+ = great for SEO, hangouts, tough for engagement
Pinterest = best for style, travel, health/fitness and food, gaining
traffic strength in other categories
Tumblr = best when you can pair strong visuals with simple text
(think of it like Twitter+)
Vine, Instagram = really great for brand building / photos short
videos – no traffic impact yet (no clickthroughs)
Stumbleupon = evergreen content when submitted does well here
LinkedIn = great for job search, finance, money and other B2B
content
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11. Don‟t forget answer sites /
communities

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If you have a lot of reference content, don‟t forget
communities where people discuss particular topics
and provide advice – they may already be sharing
your content there.
All = Yahoo! Answers, Quora
Travel = TripAdvisor
Technology = Stack Overlow
Crafts = Ravalry
Books = Goodreads
Joining these communities and being a helpful
member can allow you to contribute to the
conversation around the content.

12. When are you sharing it?

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Time of day matters.
Most people are active on social media during
leisure / down times – breakfast, lunch, dinner,
primetime, late night, weekends.
Posting content during these windows will
increase the chance that your content will be
seen and engaged with.
If you have a global audience, post at these
times around the world (i.e. lunch in NY is
primetime in the UK).

13. Why are you doing this in the first
place?

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Traffic to your site
Customer service
Offers and deals
Starting conversation / relationship building
If you have set goals in mind, you‟ll be better
able to plan your content ahead of time.
If you don‟t have set goals in mind, it makes it
much harder to be successful.

14. GETTING PEOPLE TO
NOTICE!

15. People are everything

Key question: Who should people care about you or
your content and why should they care?

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If you can‟t answer this question, your content isn‟t
working.
You have to “sell” your content to inspire interest and build
incentive, and ultimately shares and retweets.
Their shares are what help to grow the reach of your
content and audience size.
Social media distribution is based on the fickleness of
human beings – meeting their emotional and
information needs inspires loyalty.
Remember, you’re talking to people, not robots or
algorithms.

16. How to make friends and influence
Tweeple…
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Twitter is really great for having relationships with
people who you share interests with.
Trade follows and trade content - when you share
other people‟s content, they are more likely to
share it back.
Think of Twitter as a giant party – you want to
start conversations with some people, and not
with others, and vice versa.
Use Twitter search as a starting point to find
people similar to you.
Other great tools for searching for likeminded
people: Topsy, WeFollow, SocialMention.

17. Owned media


Got a newsletter? Postcard? A website?
Business card? Signature file?
Anything you “own” that you can include your
social channels on is a good opportunity for
you to make some new friends!

18. Making friends in the real world


As lo-fi as it sounds, making friends in the realworld and telling them about your social
channels is still really effective.
Conferences, meetups, other gatherings are
still a great place to spread the word about the
great work you‟re doing on social media.

19. “What‟s your one thing?”

When you ask someone to follow your social
accounts:
What is the one thing that makes you special?
 If someone followed your social content, what
would *they* say you‟re about?


Making yourself unique and special helps to
make you stick out.

20. How will your social channels “be
human”?

Invent a persona - create a real person with
demographic characteristics.
Who would it hang out with?
 What clothes would it wear?
 What kind of music would it listen to?

This helps you to find out what kind of brand
voice you‟re looking to represent.
 In some cases, this will be you.


21. “Create a channel plan”
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Each social channel has a best use case.
Develop a content calendar.
Think of your social channels as “TV Networks” or
radio networks where you‟re playing the DJ.
Decide what kinds of content will go where and
how often.
Think of things users might be thinking about
when you post content (i.e. if it‟s 8pm, they may be
watching TV) and try to post content that relates to
that.

22. A content audit

Is there a logical business need for using this platform?

Consider curation and copyright concerns.

How do you want to tell your story?

What are you already doing on other social platforms?
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What device do you want your users to find you on?
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Who on your team will manage these accounts?

How can this fit within your existing content calendar?

23. QUICK NETWORK
OVERVIEWS

24. Facebook by the numbers

More than 1 billion monthly active users*
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More than 61% of active users log on any given day*

Half-life of a Facebook link is 3.2 hours***

On average, 16% of page/user posts get seen by
fans/friends****
* Facebook corporate stats (http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts)
** Facebook Q4 2012 investor deck (http://www.scribd.com/doc/123034877/Facebook-Q4-2012-Investor-Slide-Deck)
*** bit.ly blog, Sep 2011 (http://blog.bitly.com/post/9887686919/you-just-shared-a-link-how-long-will-people-pay)
**** Facebook Explains How Often Your Posts Actually Get Seen (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/29/facebookposts_n_1311330.html)

25. Facebook page

26. Personal profile

27. Post insights

28. Facebook algorithm factors

Whether you interacted with an author‟s posts before: If you Like
every post by a Page that Facebook shows you, it will show you
more from that Page.

Other people‟s reactions to a specific post: If everyone on Facebook
that‟s shown a post ignores it or complains, it‟s less likely to show
you that post.

Your interaction with posts of the same type in the past: If you
always Like photos, there‟s a better chance you‟ll see a photo
posted by a Page.

Complaints: If a specific post has received complaints by other users
who have seen it, or the Page that posted it has received lots
complaints in the past, you‟ll be less likely to see that post.

29. Link posts
Reach: Moderate
Engagement: Lower, unless content is
controversial
Clicks: High

30. Photo posts
Reach: Moderate to High
Engagement: High
Clicks: Low

31. Status posts
Reach: Very high (and as real-time as
Facebook gets)
Engagement: Depends on content
Clicks: Can be every high if you include a link

32. Facebook best practices

Select your posts based on the likelihood to start
conversations
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3-5 posts per day if you have content for them. Mix
status posts, photos posts and link posts for varied
impact.

Keep your Likers engaged.
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Ask questions and inspire responses in your post copy.

Tag your social links with bit.ly

Schedule content to run after business hours and during
times when your audience is likely to be idle.

33. Use the native Facebook Scheduler
Click the clock on
Facebook page
you have admin
rights over to get
the scheduler

34. Positive post engagement

Like - The simplest social interaction, just requires a
click to register your approval, typically equivalent to a
visceral reaction
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Comment – people leaving comments on your content
(now includes photos)

Share - possibly the most valuable interaction –
someone values what you‟ve done enough to show it to
their friends

Tagging - Placing individuals or entities within a post via
„@‟ tagging (only available in Native scheduler)

35. Negative post engagement
Hide - Someone didn‟t like what you posted
and have hidden THAT post you from their
timeline.
 Hide all (soon unfollow) - Someone has
decided to hide ALL of your page post – worse
than an unlike, they become a content zombie
 Mark as spam – contributes to your spam
score for all posts, results in less frequent
visibility for your posts


36. Cover photos as good visuals

37. Twitter

200 million active users*

40% of active users don‟t tweet, read other tweets*

92.4% of the retweets happen within the first hour**

Half-life of a Twitter link is 2.8 hours***

Tweets are on screens for probably around 45 seconds
and after that gone forever.
* Twitter internal stats, (https://business.twitter.com/basics/what-is-twitter/)
*** bit.ly blog, Sep 2011 (http://blog.bitly.com/post/9887686919/you-just-shared-a-link-how-long-will-people-pay)

38. Twitter lingo
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Tweet – 140 character maximum message that shows up in your
followers feed
Follow – To subscribe to updates from a Twitter account
Handle / username – How you are known on the Twitter service
(prefixed with a @ sign – i.e. @matthewknell)
Profile – Where people can follow you and read your public updates
Reply – When a Twitter user writes a tweet directly at your Twitter
handle or you‟d like to do the same to them
Mention(@) – When a Twitter user mentions your Twitter name in a
tweet that is not directed to you.

Retweet – When a Twitter user shares your tweet with their followers

Favorite – Becoming similar to a Facebook „Like” - when a Twitter user

39. A reply
• The username has to be the FIRST thing in a Tweet

40. A mention
• Mention a username ANYWHERE in the Tweet

41. Retweets
Old style
New style

42. Modified tweets

When a rewrite of a tweet is necessary to share
and exemplify a point, or fit within 140 characters,
tweet will often start with “MT” to indicate you‟re
paraphrasing.
Original
tweet
Modified
tweet

43. About sourcing content
If the content isn‟t created by you, it‟s
appropriate and polite to cite the
username of your Twitter source (adding
their Twitter name to the tweet also makes
them aware that you‟re using their
content)
 If you can‟t RT or MT as per the previous
slides, add a “via” at the end of your
tweet.


44. Using photos in tweets
As a default,
Twitter will
preview an
image you
publish when you
upload directly
Twitter.
 Early studies
have shown this
helps
engagement.


45. About the hashtag

Tweets will often contain
words that start with a #
(hash sign)
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There is no official way to
“register” a hashtag – they
can be used once or forever.

Most major media will share
their hashtag (conferences,
TV shows, live events) to
facilitate it‟s use.

46. Hashtags vs accounts
• When referencing a permanent entity (a
person/brand), use a mention.
• When contributing to the existing temporary
conversation around an topic, use a hashtag.

47. Twitter publisher tool

Not available to everyone, but allows you to
schedule Tweets through Twitter.com itself
Log in with Twitter username at http://analytics.twitter.com

48. Twitter publisher tool
Click blue
square

49. Twitter publisher tool
Click
“Scheduling”
tab

50. Twitter best practices

Sweet spot for most accounts is between 10-15 tweets per day
(not including replies), but as long as you don‟t post in big
clumps, you can post as much as you are able to do so.

If people reach out to you via reply, answer them.

Use hashtags sparingly, but definitely when you want your tweet
to be part of a larger conversation.

Create compelling copy. Think witty tweets that will capture
attention.

Tag other Twitter accounts in your tweets.

Be clear in your intent. The reader should know and trust what
they‟re clicking on if it‟s a link

51. Google+ profile

52. Google+ Authorship
Adding a photo
on the SERP
pages can help
to increase
clickthroughs
on your content.
Tip: Make sure you have a clear, bright photo that makes it easy to tell
you are a human being! (Google can tell ;) ). Having no photo at all isn‟t

53. Google+ brand page

54. Google+ Knowledge Graph

55. Google+ Best Practices

Photos get considerably more engagement than other kinds of
content on Google+.

Post content around things that are likely to be trending / getting
high search volume – you will get traffic from SEO in addition to
on page.

Use hashtags – it helps Google to identify what the content is
about and index it more appropriately.

Don‟t worry if you don‟t get much on-page engagement – it‟s
very challenging.

56. Tip: Establish a content calendar
Inclusive of all platforms, you should establish
a “Content Calendar”, a list of what content you
will post on which social channel and when.
 Helps you to make sure the content you‟re
sharing is well written, thought out and meets
the needs of your community.
 How often you communicate depends on the
demands of your community, the nature of your
content and the role of the platform.


57. When should you respond to people who
interact with you?

Short answer - ALWAYS

Long answer -- when you can help

Can you provide an answer within an expected period of
time?

Is their expectation realistic?

Is their question a valid one? Or is it just banter /
ranting?

Social influence SHOULDN‟T matter.

Remember you‟re speaking to people.

58. VISUAL SOCIAL
NETWORKS

60. Pinterest

61. Tumblr

62. Instagram

63. Statigram

64. Vine

65. Medium
http://www.medium.com

66. CHEAP SOCIAL PUBLISHING
TOOLS

67. Tweetdeck - FREE

68. Hootsuite - FREE / $9 PRO

69. Sprout Social - $39 PRO

70. Buffer – Free (10 posts per account) / $10
awesome plan

71. Q&A