This is a bespoke workshop presentation I prepared and delivered to the management team of an executive search firm in 2011. The audience were not active and fairly skeptical about social media marketing

1. Social media
What is it and why should I care?

2. Technology-enabled dialogue

3. 5 Good Reasons
1. Boosts BIE Group brand: exposure, SEO, awareness
2. Personal branding – visibility, recognition, showcase
expertise, signal connections, evidence of knowledge
3. Search is increasingly about ‘social presence’ –
inactivity demotes sites in search rankings
4. Generation Y estimated soon to be 75% of the global
workforce
5. Others are joining in: 55+ age group fastest growing
users of Facebook (source for 4 and 5: Booz & Co)

4. ….and 5 more
6. Begin and grow relationships with people you haven’t
yet met
7. Increased recommendations and referrals
8. FTSE 100: 61 have Twitter accounts, 1m ‘followers’,
71% rise in six months
9. 39 have Facebook pages. 14m ‘fans’, 25% rise in six
months (source for 8 and 9: The Group)
10. “Engage More” BIE Group 2012 marketing theme – not
just a slogan!

5. What channels do people trust
most?

9. “My customers don’t use Twitter!”

18. “Useful for finding people and
showing off your CV!”
…..but also about Discussions,
Questions and Groups

32. “Quora? Never heard of it!”

41. “An electronic pin board for curating,
sharing and showcasing ‘shiny new
things’. Not for B2B, though.”

44. Blogs: where you show
expertise, POVs, share ideas,
make connections

51. Crispin will now speak!

52. Challenges
• Keeping up to date; constant, rapid change
• Inexperience / Confidence
• Making time
• Creating a ‘monster’ – must be fed, and often
• Perseverance – quick wins rare
• Seen as ‘a marketing thing’ and not my concern
• Desire for immediate gratification
• Measuring ROI: in £££s and time
• Others?

53. The only question that
matters:
“Is it worth doing?”

54. What can you do?
• Start monitoring, improve audience
insight, spot opportunities and gauge the
scale
• Focus: a few things done really well
• Invite volunteers: run pilots to experiment,
learn and improve
• Incentivise participation
• Show leadership; here’s a thought……..

56. What’s coming next?
• In five years the smartest companies will build
social networking into strategy and operations
• Aim being to spur innovation, accelerate sales,
and vault past competitors (source: Booz & Co, ft.com)
• Technology to analyse internal discussions and
create automated knowledge repositories for
employees’ later use (via Yammer, et al)

57. What’s coming next?
• Latest IBM study of 1,709 global CEOs
found only 16% using social media
• …..but forecast is 57% in 5 years
• Read what IBM has to say about social
business