How can small businesses use Social Media to their advantage?

by Fardad AmirsaeediSocial Media | Website Design| Online Popularity

www.icewire.co.uk07985 723856

Overview

• The story so far…

• Social Media Benefits & Landscape

• Social Media adoption ladder

• Basic Social Media structure

• 4 Steps to get started

• Performance in action

The story so far...

• Adults spend 15+ hours per week on the internet

• 35% of global workforce will be mobile by 2013

• 2-3 Twitter accounts are activated every second

• Twitter averages 50 million Tweets per day

• Average online viewer watches 12.2 hours of online video per month

• YouTube is the 2nd most popular search engine online after Google

• Facebook has over 811 million active daily users and increasing by 40% every 6 months.

• Average Facebook user spends 55 minutes per day using it.

• 83% of businesses have a Facebook fan page.

• 1 Million new Linkedin account signups every 12 days

• 68% of Linkedin users are over the age of 35

Source: Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, InfoCareITS, digitalbuzzblog, Mashable, TechCrunch

The only thing that counts is:

Performance

• To stand and out from the crowd

• Improve organic search engine rankings

• Increase brand awareness

• Be seen as an authority on your topic

• Build business partnerships

• Compete with larger businesses

Benefits of Social Media

• Create value based subscribers

• Reduce marketing expenses

• Gain market knowledge

• Gauge the temperature

• Generate leads/ improvesales

• Increase traffic

Social Media Landscape

Social Media

Publish

Share

Discuss

Social Network

Micro Blogs

Life stream

Livecast

Virtual worlds

Social Games

Map by Fred Cavazza

Social Media adoption ladder

Consumer

User

Practitioner

Leader

ICEWIRE model

Basic Social Media Structure

Website

Blog

Facebook

Linkedin

Twitter

• A Typical structure for most start-up and small to medium sized businesses.

Facebook

YouTubeYouTube

4 Steps to get started

Stay in touch

Collect information about your audience

Deliver quality content that is relevant and of value

Be targeted and identify interested people

October.co.uk – October website social structure

Prominent Social media links (follow us)

Featured projects

Brand identity to meet consumer expectations

Blog/ downloads

Call to action

2. Social media links

1. Contact us

5. Download brochure

3. Need help

6. Instant quote

4. Blog

1

43

5

2

6

Call to action

1. Instant quote

2. Need help

3. Contact us

4. Request a brochure

5. Blog

6. Social media links

4

52

3

6

1

Performance stats

Organic (links)

A modest but consistent effort can provide the results but it has to be of quality

FacebookBlogTwitter

Sell ideas

Useful tabs to motivate and inform the audience.

Hyperlink to specific pages in your website/ special offers/ purchase pages

Promote your most desirable service or product

Facebook Business Pages

• Facebook.comNeed a personal page before building a business page.

• Create a Page that is Publicly available

• Select your organisation type

• Fill it with your business profile details

• Post information:

– of interest to your audience and encourage them to participate.

– Relevant to your niche/ topic

– Have fun with it

• Promote to raise in awareness of the messages and updates posted in other media e.g. Linkedin and Twitter.

Twitter for business

• Twitter.com– Announce your achievements, events,

services, activities etc..

– Link to your website/ blogs/ Facebook when you have added something

– Be regular/ consistent in your Tweets (2 per day)

– Mix it with your views on your topic of interest

– Re-tweet other peoples messages if you find it interesting but not too often

– Keep to your niche

– Personally thank followers where you can.

– Bring your personality into it.

– If more than one person is using one account then add your name at the end of your messages

Linkedin for professionals

• Linkedin.com– For professional individuals

– Company profiles

– Event announcement

– Niche group participation

– Setup own special interest groups

– Manage recruitment

– Get business intelligence

– Build a credible professional profile

– Make qualified business connections

– Targeted networking.

Blogs for business

• Blogging tips

– Services examples:Wordpress.com, Typepad.com, Blogger.com

– Be seen as an authority on your topic

– Make your site content rich

– Share knowledge with your desired audience

– Become found on Search engines

– Drive more traffic to your service pages

– Highlight own services through article referrals.

– Allow syndication of your feed

YouTube business channel

• YouTube.comAdd to multiple networks in one step including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, Ping, Wordpress etc.

• Free to setup own account/Channel

• Upload unlimited videos easily

• Easily share interesting videos in your own social networks

• Allow other to share your videos

• Powerful for communicating complex ideas

• Can encourage subscriptions to your feeds

Free Tool to help you manage it

• Hootsuite.comupdate multiple networks in one step including Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace, Ping, Wordpress etc. Get performance reports and track visitors. Free for 5 accounts.

Free Tool to help you manage it

• Ping.fmis a simple and FREE service that makes updating your social networks easy.

Free Tools to help you manage it

• Gist (social CRM)View all your social media contacts activities in one place. Free

• Can add Contacts/feed from:

• Facebook

• Twitter

• RSS Feeds

• CVS – Excel sheet uploads

• Company related News/ articles

• PR about the person or company (external source)

• Linked (imported contacts file)

• Aggregated contact and view contact content streams in one account window.

Free Tools to help you manage it

• WiseStamp.comSocialize your email signature

Thank You

“If you’re not sure where you’re going you’ll probably end up somewhere else”

Fardad Amirsaeedi

fardad@icewire.co.ukwww.icewire.co.uk