Sponsored by the Ladysmith Downtown Business Association, this free seminar from Paul Mycroft Design presented an overview of social media and reputation building for business on the web. Paul emphasized skills for managing the potential "online conversations" which exists for every business and business owner, taking into account real world time limitations.

1. Ladysmith Downtown Business Association
presents
Using Social Media
to E ectively Grow
Your Business
December 2nd, 2009
By Paul Mycroft Design

2. Questionnaire results
Taken from 17 questionnaire results at LDBA membership meeting
1. How does your business earn money?
5%3%
Referrals 9% 29%
Other: repeat, print, contracts etc.
Storefront walkins
Repeat custom
25%
Local events
eCommerce
29%

3. Questionnaire results
2. How do you generate new customers?
Word of mouth
4%4%
Print advertising! 7% 24%
Website 7%
Local business network
Social media 8%
Banner ads
19%
Email marketing 13%
Pay-per-click 15%
Other

4. Questionnaire results
3. What is the first tool you use to find a local service?
4%4%
Google 7%
Yellow Pages
11%
Website bookmark 48%
Other
Non-Google search engine
Social media 26%

5. Questionnaire results
4. What is the first tool you use to find a regional service?
5% 5%
11%
Google
Yellow Pages
Social media
Non-Google search engine
79%

6. Questionnaire results
5. Do you have a website?
18%
Yes No
82%

7. Questionnaire results
6. Is it listed in Google Local?
38%
Yes No
62%

8. Questionnaire results
7. Do you use a non-branded email? (e.g. businessname@shaw.ca)
45%
Yes No
55%

9. Questionnaire results
8. Do you host a blog on your website?
23%
No Yes
77%

10. Questionnaire results
9. Do you use social media?
5% 5%
Facebook
Blog 14%
LinkedIn 42%
Twitter
YoUTube 14%
Other
19%

11. Questionnaire results
10. Do you allocate a marketing budget to grow your business?
13%
Yes No
87%

12. Spreading the word
How news about this seminar was spread
1. Paul Mycroft Design website.
2. Facebook Business Fan page announcement.
3. Facebook Business Fan event.
4. Facebook Personal.
5. Friends shared it on Facebook.
6. Twitter (using the automatic Facebook feed).
7. LDBA article and combined RSS email.
8. Direct email invitations.
9. Word of mouth 6 months ago, generated a buzz.
10. LDBA membership meeting.
11. Chamber of Commerce email blast.
12. Recent word of mouth.

13. Unique visitor increase
Yearly change in unique visitors since 11/08:
1. chicagotribune.com: -5% (3M) 5,100 referrers: google.com, yahoo.com, facebook.com
2. yahoo.com: +7% (135M)
3. theglobeandmail.com: +8% (549,000)
4. latimes.com: 9% (7M) 7,700 referrers
5. nytimes.com: +13% (17M) 25,800 referrers
6. google.com: +13% (146M)
7. paypal.com: +26% (29M)
8. blogger.com: +27% (31M)
9. youtube.com: +34% (84M)
10. linkedin: +89% (15M)
11. facebook.com: +188% (128M)
12. twitter: +577% (23M)
source: www.siteanalytics.compete.com

14. Google v Facebook v Yahoo!
A new leader is emerging
source: www.siteanalytics.compete.com

15. What is the point?
The low down on this whole conundrum
1. Connect to your customers in their online environment.
2. Listen to them.
3. Start the online conversation.
4. Deal with customer concerns in real-time.
5. Promote information about you and your business.
6. Don't just talk about yourself, give useful advice, news or tips.
7. Drive tra c to your website from more sources.
8. Gives you a chance to improve your website.
9. Generate a following, enhance customer loyalty.
10. Increase your online exposure.
11. Saturate the search engine results pages.
12. Have fun.

16. Hot o the press!
December 1, 2009
1. Replace regional networks with an ability to set content to be
available to only your friends, friends of your friends, or everyone.
2. Add the ability to control who sees each individual piece of
content you create or upload.
3. Privacy settings update.
4. ...21,061 comments!
5. www.facebook.com/Google (397,051 fans)
6. Oct 21: “Bing Adds Twitter and Facebook Posts to Search Results.”
7. Nov 27: MyPublicServices in place with National Health Service
(UK): "the rising influence of social media such as Facebook,
Twitter and other discussion sites was likely to force big changes in
the running of [public] programmes."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8382252.stm

17. Facebook
1. More than 300 million active users.
2. 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day.
3. The fastest growing demographic is 35 years and older.
4. Average user has 130 friends on the site.
5. More than 10 million users become fans of Pages each day.
6. About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States.
7. There are more than 65 million active users currently accessing
Facebook through their mobile devices.
8. Don’t use your personal profile for your business.
source: www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics

18. Facebook
1. Personal Profiles
2. Groups - Useful for discussion-type organizations.
3. Business Fan Pages
- Unlike groups, Fan pages are visible to unregistered people and
are thus indexed by the search engines.
- The business “speaks”, not the person.
- Give someone else in your business the ability to update.
- Use Facebook Insights to see your Fans’ demographics.
- Get a vanity address (e.g. facebook.com/BusinessName)
- Use 100s of free applications to enhance your Page.
- Use Marketplace to sell your products.
source: www.facebook.com/advertising/?pages

19. 15-minute workout
Business Fan Page
1. Using a web page link (if applicable), update your status, work tip,
interesting web reference, project update, special o er, recent or
upcoming event.
2. Review Discussions and start new topic.
3. Review your Fans to see if some important ones are missing.
4. Check Insights statistics.
5. Add upcoming event (if applicable).
6. Add photos (if applicable).
7. Review news feeds and comment if applicable.
8. Acknowledge birthdays.
9. Review featured applications.
10. Share your update in your Personal profile with your friends.

20. LinkedIn
1. LinkedIn has over 50 million members in over 200 countries and
territories around the world.
2. A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and
about half of their members are outside the United States.
3. Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.
source: press.linkedin.com

21. LinkedIn
1. Build an exceptional profile that will create interest. Join lots of groups
in your area and profession.
2. Use their Address Book tool to see who in your address books are
already on LinkedIn.
3. Link with as many people and companies as possible who complement
your services or are of interest.
4. Introduce and recommend friends and colleagues.
5. Create meeting opportunities (breakfast, lunch, etc).
6. Build a network for a specific purpose (finding a job, looking for
contractor). Use LinkedIn to connect with people you meet at
meetings, do research on new clients or contractors.
7. Add a link to your profile in email signatures, website and Facebook.

22. YouTube
1. Focus on something fun or informative, something that people
will want to share with friends.
2. Clearly demonstrate the product you're marketing.
3. Keep it under 10 minutes.
4. Make sure the video is real; no tricks, no "smoke and mirrors".
5. Encourage viewer participation and support.
6. Take advantage of YouTube “keyword” tags.
7. Post on your business website using the “embed” code.
8. User base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between
males and females, and spanning all geographies.
9. 51% percent of users go to YouTube weekly or more often.
10. 52 percent of 18-34 year-olds share videos often with friends
and colleagues.

23. Twitter
October 21, 2009
1. “[Google] has reached an agreement with Twitter to include their
updates in [Google’s] search results.”
source: www.macworld.com/article/140254/2009/05/twitterdos.html

24. Twitter
1. Create a branded profile business page; don’t use the default one.
2. Build up “followers”: customers, friends, colleagues.
3. “Follow” people or companies for news, o ers, advice, tips.
4. Post messages of 140 characters or less plus a web page address.
5. “Re-Tweet” interesting or useful posts.
6. Be worth following. Don’t just talk about yourself.
7. Why 140 characters? SMS (i.e., texting on your phone) limits each
message to 160 characters. Twitter takes that limit and reserves 20
characters for your username, leaving you 140 characters to use.
8. Share information with people interested in your company.
9. Gather real-time market intelligence and feedback.
10. Build relationships with customers and partners.
source: www.macworld.com/article/140254/2009/05/twitterdos.html

25. Blogging
1. Put the blog on your domain name, don't use blogger.com.
2. Write at regular intervals about what your customers want.
3. If you write about someone else, let them know in an email so they
can either link to your website or write something about you.
4. Use your web tra c stats to tell you what keywords are being used
to find your site then use them in your next post.
5. Blogs will increase the number of pages in the search engines'
indices, Google especially LOVES WordPress.
6. WordPress is a free download that can be installed on your web
server to become part of your domain name
(e.g. www.website.com/blog/). The advantage is that any pages
linked to are given credit by Google. Therefore, your domain name
also benefits from that credit and rises in Google’s results.

26. paulmycroft.com stats
A peek under the hood
1. Last 3 months: 16/198 visits (8%) are to the blog section.
2. Last 3 months: 391 of 3,341 (12%) total pageviews are to the blog pages.
3. Time on site: 1 minute regular vs 1:25 social media.
4. New visits: 88% regular vs 68% social media.
5. Bounce rate: 58% regular vs 37% social media.
6. 71% of tra c comes from the search engines.
7. 118 Facebook friends of Paul Mycroft.
8. 34 Facebook fans of “Paul Mycroft Design”.
9. 80 Twitter followers of “Paul Mycroft Design”.
10. 83 LinkedIn contacts of Paul Mycroft.
11. “professional web design”: #9 out of 89,000,000 results in Google.

27. Page 1 on Google
Search results for “paul mycroft design”

28. Tracking & Tips
1. Include your social media links in your automatic email signature.
2. Stop using a non-branded email address (e.g. business@shaw.ca).
3. Start using your domain name-branded email address (e.g. sales@domain.ca).
4. Get listed and location in Google Local (free Google account required).
5. Website tracking: Google Analytics.
6. Facebook Insights.
7. Website Grader: www.websitegrader.com
8. Facebook Grader: facebook.grader.com
9. Twitter Grader: twitter.grader.com
10. YouTube view stats.
11. kikin: Firefox add-on that brings social media websites’ results right next
to regular search results on Google, Bing or Yahoo! It adds a tabbed
panel at the top from where you can quickly check out related results on
Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and YouTube.

29. Resources 1.0
Useful website links and entry points:
• www.hubspot.com - Internet marketing tips and software.
• blog.hubspot.com/marketing-podcast/tabid/74768/ (and iTunes) -
Watch free 20-minute marketing videos.
• www.facebook.com - People.
• www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2361831622&b - Groups.
• www.facebook.com/pages/create.php - Business.
• www.linkedin.com - Professional business networking tool.
• www.youtube.com - Video marketing.
• twitter.com/signup - Share quick information with customers.
• www.compete.com - Compare websites’ performance.

30. Resources 2.0
Let’s get together
• www.paulmycroft.com
• www.facebook.com/PaulMycroft
• www.facebook.com/PaulMycroftDesign
• www.linkedin.com/in/paulmycroft
• twitter.com/PaulMycroft
• www.google.com/profiles/pmycroft
• www.paulmycroft.com/newsletter/ - Sign up to receive our email news.
• Paul Mycroft in Google Local
• Email us at creative@paulmycroft.com
• Call us on (250) 245-8777.
• Stop by the new o ce at 622 1st Avenue, #201, Ladysmith.
• Talk to us on the street or at the next business meeting.

31. What’s your first step
going to be?

32. That’s all, folks!
Talk to you online.