A talk I gave for the Baltimore Chapter of NACE- The National Association of Catering Executives

1. NACE
April 20, 2009

2. AGENDA
• Discuss and understand social networking behavior
(how people make decisions)
• Understand how a new set of behaviors has emerged
over the Web
» Scale and efficiency
» Empowered communities
» Limitless storage
» Engagement (buying engine not selling engine)
» “Database of intentions” - John Battelle
• Review of social media tools and how they are best used
• Why your companies need to do this

3. SOCIAL MEDIA DEFINED
• Social media can be defined as the platforms and tools that
make social networking behavior scalable and efficient
• Information and advice about what products to buy is now being
given, peer to peer, on a huge scale
• That’s a little scary if you don’t understand it

4. HOW DID SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGE THE GAME?
• Allowed for communities to form - forums, message boards
• Access to opinion leaders/experts – open comments
• Social behavior subverts hierarchy - transparency
• Gave enormous scale and efficiency- distribution
• Search (anonymous researcher)
• The Web is a buying engine and not a selling engine

5. TOOL FAMILY: SOCIAL NETWORKING
Social Networking
Related Tools:
Description:
• Web sites where friends (or colleagues) can build profiles, share information,
and post updates.
• “Facebook helps you connect and share with the people in your life.”
• This is an entirely new way to connect and will eventually replace email if it
hasn’t started to already.

6. TOOL FAMILY: BLOGS
Blogs
Related Tools:
Description:
» Articles are published in reverse chronological order.
» Posts are organized by categories and tags allow for greater context.
» The ability to comment gives blogs their social character.

7. TOOL FAMILY: SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
Social Bookmarking
Related Tools:
Description:
» Social Bookmarking is the practice of storing, searching, and managing
bookmarks on the Web.
» Instead or saving bookmarks using folders, we use tags to organize them
and share them out in the open.

8. TOOL FAMILY: MICROBLOGS
Microblogs
Related Tools:
Description:
» Microblogging is a form of publishing that allows people to write short posts,
i.e, Twitter’s 140 characters.

9. TOOL FAMILY: VIDEO SHARING
Video Sharing
Related Tools:
Description:
» There are several types of online video.
» Time shifted videos that are found on YouTube and live streaming video
that we see on Ustream.TV and QIK.
» These services allow you to broadcast live from anywhere that has an
Internet connection.

10. TOOL FAMILY: WIDGETS
Widgets
Related Tools:
Description:
» Widgets are chunks of code that are embedded into Web sites allowing
for live and interactive content such as polls and slideshows.
» They are popular with blogs and social networking Web sites because
they are portable, social, and easily shared throughout the network.

11. Why Should We Care?
Why we should care about Social Media?
1. Communities have formed on the Web where your products and
services are discussed.
2. The outcome of this is that opinion leaders have emerged who
hold influence over the community.
3. Their thoughts and opinions are amplified over the Web, where
4. They are easily indexed by search engines *and* act as source
material for the main stream media.
5. Companies that do not embrace this concept will lose market
share.

12. What Are You Going To Do About It?
What Are You Going To Do About It?
1. Your marketing team has asked for this
2. They have goals that you have been asked to enable
3. These are long term initiatives that are not going away
4. Work with them on these goals

13. QUESTIONS
Questions?

14. THANK YOU
Page Sands
Director of Social Media
psands@r2integrated.com
410-327-0007 x 1240