2 hour beginners guide to using social media to promote your business.

1. Social Media / Buzz Marketing / Web 2.0
- How Social Media can help your business
Robert Masson
Managing Director
Marketing Interactive UK Ltd
robert.masson@miuk.com
01284 777444
13th July 2009
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

2. Agenda
 Who are mi?
 Brief overview of social networking sites
 What is social networking?
 Where has social networking come from?
 How you can benefit from social networking
 How to get started
 Tips to help you on your way
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

3. mi background
 Award winning ebusiness  ebusiness consultancy
consultancy  Web development
 13 person team  Ecommerce systems
 Launched June 1998  Database integration
 Broad UK and international  Content management
client base of over 200 clients  Integrated ebusiness systems
 Corporate and SME  Hosting
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

4. Social networking sites, brief overview
 Facebook (100+m users pm, mainly 18+)
 3 in 10 Internet users visit every month
 Visited by 47% of UK net users
 MySpace (60+m users pm, mainly teens)
 Bebo (Mainly teens)
 LinkedIn (40+m mainly professional business)
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

5. Blogging / micro blogging / RSS feeds
 Twitter (20m+ users pm, mainly 18+)
 Blogger
 Wordpress
 YouTube (video/podcasts)
 Flickr (Photos)
 Slideshare (presentations)
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

6. Social bookmarking & tagging
 del.icio.us
 digg.com
 Stumbleupon.com
 AddThis.com
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

7. Where has social networking come from?
 Internet time-spent-viewing soon to over take TV
 Majority of purchases now researched online first
 Customers now way more knowledgeable than at
any time before
 Social Networking 4th in web usage terms (Nielsen)
 But growing twice as fast as other sectors
 1 in every 6 minutes spent on social networks in UK
 2m in UK access via their mobile
 But Facebook is not the top site in all EU countries
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

8. Benefits of using social media
 Enables direct customer engagement
 Ability to influence opinion of your followers
 Improve and manage your reputation
 Support your brand & its values
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

9. You can use social media to…
 Disseminate information about your products/brand
 Publicise product updates, promotions & news
 Gain direct feedback on the market’s expectations
 Direct followers to your website & blog updates
 Create goodwill among customers
 Follow industry thought leaders
 Research social trends
 Monitor your company / brands
 Respond publicly to negative statements
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

10. Revenue generation most likely when used for
 Mass communication
 Barack Obama - Twitter
 Rapid dissemination of news / offers
 ASOS - Facebook
 Promote discounted stock
 Dell - Twitter
 Community building
 Facebook forest
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

11. Questions to ask yourself before starting:
 What do I want to talk to people about?
 What would my customers be interested in?
 Who is doing this well and what can I learn from
them?
 How can I link this back to my website?
 How do I promote myself without using social media
purely as a sales channel?
 How do I position this internally so people get it?
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

12. First steps
 Add a bookmarking facility
 Become a follower of some Tweets (especially your
products/brands)
 Setup TweetDeck to monitor keywords and filter
incoming tweets
 Create a LinkedIn account and connect with your
contact list
 Create a blog (using Blogger/Wordpress) and link to
LinkedIn profile
 Start tweeting links to your Blog/Site
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

13. First steps
 Create a Facebook page and link to your Blog/Site/
News/Promotions
 Add a "Find us on Facebook" button to your website
 Add a "Follow us on Twitter" button
 Create a Facebook username (fast!)
 Search for, join and post *relevant* wall posts to
Facebook groups
 If you sell, create reviews facility & shareable wish
lists
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

14. A few tips to help you on your way...
 Use TinyURLs to get most from your 140 characters
 Install TweetDeck for easier tweet management
 Use Mr Tweet to identify useful contacts
 Follow everyone in your industry
 Including potential customers
 Send a direct welcome tweet (with your URL) to all
new followers
 Use Twitter search / TweetDeck to monitor brand
conversations
 or use a monitoring service (£££)
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

15. A few tips to help you on your way...
 Retweet (RT) interesting posts that you have
discovered
 Respond to negative comments about you and your
brand
 But only where necessary and appropriate
 Reinforce positive comments
 Try to recruit advocates and brand champions
 Always check your direct messages and replies,
and respond when necessary
 Make your tweets interesting – don't just sell, inform
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com

16. Thank you for coming!
ebusiness solutions
Social Networking – How it can help your business www.miuk.com