30-Minute Social Media Marketing

How to Build Your Brand & Business–FAST & FREE!

By Susan Guneliuswww.KeySplashCreative.com

Social Media Marketing Works

• Every additional minute you spend on social media activities can help your brand and business.

• Every minute you’re not on the social web is a missed opportunity.

The Proof

With a multi-million dollar budget to spend as she pleased, Cindy Gordon of Universal Orlando Resort instead told just 7 people about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

And within just 24 hours 350 million people around the world heard the news.

All by telling just 7 people.

Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv

Gary Vaynerchuk grew his father’s local wine store in Springfield, New Jersey to a $50 million per year business with HALF of those sales coming from the Web.

How did he do it?

Through the power of the social Web.

Gary’s passionate and informative video blog posts on WineLibrary.tv quickly drew audiences from around the world as word spread about his contagious content.

Today, Gary is a sought after social media speaker, makes frequent appearances on television, and recently signed a multi-million dollar book deal where he will share his knowledge and experience of using social media tools to grow a small business.

And it all started with a blog.

Keys to Social Media Success

• Brand consistency in message and image.

• Set and meet customer expectations based on the brand promise.

• Let the audience take control.

3 Cs of Social Media Marketing

WRONG (FAILURE) RIGHT (SUCCESS)

CONVERSATION Stop it. Let it flow.

CONTENTCopyright-protect it, or put up a barrier to access it.

Share it.

CONTROL Hold it tightly. Give it up.

Example: Harry Potter

• The Harry Potter brand was originally built by consumers not marketers.

• Consumers shared it, experienced it and lived it, particularly on the social web.– Fan sites, blogs, forums, fan fiction,

fan art, music, videos, podcasts, and more

• J.K. Rowling and the publisher originally sent cease & desist letters but quickly learned letting fans take control of the brand on the social web was far more powerful.

Dell’s Big Mistake

1,730 Diggs, 422,032 views, & 77 pages of

comments

3,672 Diggs, 149,963

views, and 142 pages of comments

• Don’t try to control the conversation.

• Admit your mistakes.

• Be transparent.

But What if They Say Something BAD?

You have three choices:Use the 3 Fs of Social Media Reputation Management

FLIGHT

Ignore it.FLIGHT

Ignore it. FIGHT

Join it.

FIGHT

Join it.

FLOOD

Bury it.

FLOOD

Bury it.

Social Media Is More than Twitter

• Blogs (Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, MoveableType, etc.)

• Microblogging (Twitter, Jaiku, Plurk, Tumblr, etc.)

• Social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, etc.)

• Social bookmarking (Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, etc.)

• Podcasting (iTunes, BlogTalkRadio, etc.)

• Photo sharing (Flickr, Picasa, etc.)

• Video sharing (YouTube, TubeMogul, Viddler, etc.)

• Online chats and telephone (Skype, Google Voice, etc.)

• Mobile (foursquare, apps, etc.)

• And many, many more

Let Employees Get Involved

MarketingCreate Content• Blogs• Twitter• YouTube• Digg• StumbleUpon• Facebook• MySpace• You name it!

Customer ServiceDirect Dialogue• Blogs• Twitter• YouTube

Public RelationsCommenting• Blogs• Twitter• YouTube• Digg• StumbleUpon• Delicious• Other social bookmarking sites• Review sites like Yelp and Epinions

ExecutiveThought Leadership• Blogs• Twitter

Human ResourcesNetworking• Facebook• LinkedIn• MySpace• Bebo• Niche networking sites• Blogs• Twitter• YouTube

Social Media Employee Participation Tips

• Employees crave involvement and ownership.

• Allow employees to take control.

• Offer flexibility and leniency within specific guidelines.

• Make it easy and non-threatening to participate.

• Create a 360-degree loop of information sharing.

• Be accessible.

• One sentence of corporate rhetoric ruins everything!

Social Media Policy examples: http://bit.ly/AboutBloggingSocialMediaPolicies

If Zappos Can Do It, You Can Do It

Zappos Twitter policy:

“Be real and use your best judgment.”

Build internal brand advocates and give them the freedom to advocate your brand through their own social media activities.

Step 1: Find Your Best Audience

• The social web gets more crowded everyday.

• Your efforts are for naught if you’re not spending time in the right places.

• Take time to find the people you want to communicate with and then join the conversation.

Build Your Band of Brand Advocates across the Web

• Network with your target audience and professionals with connections to your target audience across the Web for maximum exposure.

• Build relationships which lead to loyalty.

• Loyal followers will talk about you and your brand. They’ll advocate your brand, guard it, and promote it for you.

Bottom-line to social media success – active participation, relationship building, creating

amazing content and engaging other people who then become your band of brand advocates.

Example: Roger Smith Hotel

• Effort to connect and engage with online influencers• Special Twitter discounts• Twitter kiosk in hotel• Special hotel welcome to guests who come from social Web

Step 2: Content is Key

• What you say is the most important key to success on the social web.

• Be human, be honest, be transparent, be you! Personality is important to engaging with others in social media.

• Give something extra or exclusive.

• Leave jargon and corporate rhetoric out!

Establish Your Core Branded Online Destination

BlogFacebook LinkedIn

YouTube

TwitterFlickr

SlideShare

ExecTweets

Page

YourGroup

Ads

OtherGroups

YourGroup

OtherGroups

Answers

Twellow

Profile

Sample Business Social Media Presence

ALL Businesses Can Benefit from Social Media

• How do you and most of the people you know find information about business, products, and services?

• A key benefit to building your brand online through social media is the enormous SEO boost your business website can get.

It’s about Entry Points!

1. Each new blog post is a new entry point to your website. If you published 1 blog post each day for a year, that’s 365 MORE entry points to your blog than your traditional website provides.

2. Google includes blog posts and Twitter updates in its search algorithm.

3. Your great social media content could get linked to by other social Web users through blogs, Twitter, and so on, which means even MORE entry points to your blog.

4. The more time you spend creating great content and building relationships with other people on the social Web, the more people will get to know you, trust your content, and link to it or share it.

5. All of that content creation, linking, and sharing means more entry points to your blog and website, which also boosts your site’s search engine rankings. And more traffic = more opportunities to build your brand and your business!

You can’t buy that kind of

access!

Example: NakedPizza

• Twitter profile offers discounts and leads to direct sales.

• 68% of single-day sales at NakedPizza have come from Twitter.

• Twitter integrated into point-of-sale system.

• Twitter kiosks set up in stores.

• Previous direct mail newsletter content is now fed into Twitter.

“Direct mail is sent to a single address but there are multiple

people in those houses. We want to maximize and extend our marketing reach, and Twitter helps us do this

in leaps and bounds.”

-- Jeff Roach, NakedPizza co-founder

Step 3: Research, Research, Research!

• Check out what your competitors are doing.

• Find companies that are doing great things and copy them (no sense in reinventing the wheel).

• Find out what your target audience is looking for, what engages them, what keeps them coming back for more, and then give them more of it.

• Listen!

Example: Cakes for Occasions

• Publish pictures of customers’ cakes on Facebook

• Get customer testimonials from Facebook

• Publish “free cookie” and other real-time promotions

• Tweet cake of the week picture (often picked up by Boston media)

• Business grew 25% and saved $10,000 in marketing expenditures in 2010 thanks to social media

Step 4: Give More than You Receive

• Don’t just publicize company news. Give more by creating interesting, useful and valuable content that can’t be found on a traditional Web site.

• Be shareworthy.

• Answer questions, ask questions, be engaging and real.

No One Cares about You

• Define who you want to talk to.

• Find them and get involved.

• Learn what they want to talk about.

• Produce valuable content that they want to hear and share.

• Share their content, too.

• Be accessible and human.

• Absolutely no corporate rhetoric.

Think of It This Way …

• If your social media participation is 100% self-promotional, then you’ll fail.

Imagine you’re in a conversation with a person and all he does is talk about himself. Imagine that he

never gives you a chance to speak throughout the conversation.

Is this someone you’d want to continue speaking with now or in the future?

Chances are you’d want to run away as far and fast as you can.

The same holds true for social media participation.

The 80-20 Rule

For every 20% of self-promotional content you produce,

create 80% that is not self-promotional.

Engage 80%

Me, Me, Me!20%

Example: Michael Sinkin, D.D.S.

• Blog with behind-the-scenes info and “banter from the chair”

• Blog linked to Twitter and Facebook accounts

• Uses tools like Monitter to find people in his area talking about teeth – reaches out with a tweet to answer questions

• No selling – ever!

Step 5: Don’t Put All Your Eggs in One Basket

• Diversify your social media presence to connect with a broader audience and build your network.

• Just be sure to remain active in all your social media ventures.

• Quality trumps quantity.

• All roads lead back to your core branded online destination.

Example: Golden Tee Golf

• YouTube Channel connected to game – upload hole in one shots• Facebook page – answer questions, engage, user status updates – where

they’re playing the game at anytime• Google Alerts and TweetDeck to join real time conversations

Secrets to Social Media Marketing Success

• Forget everything you know about marketing.

• Think like a publisher, not a marketer.

• If you build it, they won’t necessarily come. You have to give them a reason.

• It’s not about you.

• Let the audience take control.

• It’s a long-term strategy. Be patient and persistent.

10 Next Steps to Build Your Brand and Your Business

1. Identify your goal for your brand and its ultimate position in the minds of consumers and against the competition.

2. Determine the word or phrase your brand should own in the minds of consumers. That is the heart of your brand promise.

3. Create messages, experiences, and images that consistently communicate that brand promise.

4. Find your best audience (or audiences).

5. Communicate your brand promise through integrated marketing tactics.

6. Join the online conversation across the social Web and build your band of followers and brand advocates.

7. Allow them to take control of their brand experiences and the online conversation.

8. Be real, be honest, be accessible, be engaging, and be true to your brand promise.

9. Test, analyze results, and try again.

10. Be consistent and persistent while exercising restraint.

Sample 30-Minute Plan #1

CONTENT CREATION15 MINUTES Write a blog post.

CONTENT SHARING5 MINUTES Read and retweet Twitter posts.

Add the Facebook Like button to your website and blog.

CONNECTIONS5 MINUTES

COMMUNITY BUILDING5 MINUTES

Respond to comments on your blog.

Sample 30-Minute Plan #2

CONTENT CREATION10 MINUTES

Publish tweets to announce a special discount.

CONTENT SHARING5 MINUTES

Request your followers to share your discount with others to earn a bigger discount.

Answer questions using LinkedIn Answers.

CONNECTIONS10 MINUTES

COMMUNITY BUILDING5 MINUTES

Publish comments in discussions on a forum where your audience spends time.

Most Important

JUST GET STARTED!

Get Started

For More Information

“…an easy, thoughtful, and strategic manual for your social media marketing success plan. Avoid reading this social media marketing guide at your own peril.”

– Dan Schawbel, bestselling author of Me 2.0.

I’m reading 30-Minute Social Media Marketing by

@susangunelius http://amzn.to/30minsmm

#30minutesmm

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