Social Media 101Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter

Scott K. Wilder

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Introductions

Scott K. Wilder – SVP – Social Media Architect, Edelman Digital

Currently SVP/Social Media Architect at Edelman – Digital. Founded and managed Intuit’s Small Business Online Community and Social Programs. Before Intuit, Scott was the VP of Marketing and Product Development at Kbtoys / eToys, the founder and director of Borders.com, and held senior positions at Apple, AOL, and American Express. Scott is also a founding Board member of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. He received graduate degrees from New York University, The Johns Hopkins University and Georgetown University

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Overview

What we will cover:

This will be a good webinar if….you’ve gained insight into how to optimize your presence on the Big 3 Social Networks

This will be a good webinar if….you’ve gained insight into how to optimize your presence on the Big 3 Social Networks

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A Three Ring Circus

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Why should you care?

You are your own media company

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The obvious – but the Big 3 dominate

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Lets take a look at Facebook

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Facebook – Starting out

So much here

The Wall

Updates

Activities

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Facebook – The obvious and the not so obvious

• More than 400 million active users

• 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day

• More than 35 million users update their status each day

• More than 60 million status updates posted each day

• More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month

• More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week

• More than 3.5 million events created each month

• More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook

Source: Facebook

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Facebook

Average User Figures

• Average user has 130 friends on the site

• Average user sends 8 friend requests per month

• Average user spends more than 55 minutes per day on Facebook

• Average user clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month

• Average user writes 25 comments on

Source: Facebook

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Facebook: Content Matters

• Your URL -- Name of page: www.facebook.com/scottwilder

> Can't be changed

> Need to have a 100 fans

> Impact of other URLs

• Profile Info can impact search results

> Fill out all information

> Photos should have captions, events with descriptions.. maybe even discussion forum, important cause all pages are indexable (also important to get users to comment and like your content

> Use ‘info’ tab for keywords – help with Google too.

> Photos should have captions, events with descriptions.. maybe even discussion forum, important cause all pages are indexable (also important to get users to comment and like your content)

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Facebook: Fan Page vs. Group Page debate

Source: http://www.allfacebook.com

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Facebook: Fan Page• Plan out your approach – and the intention of keeping some items locked in and some

evolving

• Choose a name for your Fan Page and don’t change it

• FB will disable generic names (Kleenex)

• Leverage the ‘About’ text box – with key words / phrases

• Photos should have captions, events with descriptions – “text is key”

• Discussion forums create ‘Search engine juice’ cause all pages are indexable (also important to get users to comment and like your content)

• Google Juice and Facebook Frappe:

> Link from your home page to your FB page (reputation management -- links like Google) - Inbound links important

> Profile Page searched by Google.

> Make sure as much content is open/available to everyone

> Set Privacy settings to Public (at least double check)

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Facebook – Successful Marketing Tactics

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Lets take a look at Twitter

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Twitter

• Growth:

• November 1, 2008: 1 million Tweets

• November 1, 2009: 5 million Tweets

• March 4, 2010: 10 million Tweets

• Check out the Gigatweet.com counter

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Twitter - What’s the Business Strategy?• Twitter is a huge community but the format is quite limited.

• Companies engage with Twitter in a number of different ways:

> Evangelistic Engagement

> Customer Support

> Brand Management

> Crisis Management

> Marketing

• As will all social networks, search is a secondary mechanism after network building – but your goals will impact how you choose to optimize for search.

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Twitter• Real-Time Publisher

• Items that could negatively impact your placement on Search Results page

> Repeatedly posting duplicate or near-duplicate content (links or tweets)

> Abusing trending topics or hashtags (topic words with a # sign)

> Sending automated tweets or replies

> Using bots or applications to post similar messages based on keywords

> Posting similar messages over multiple accounts

> Aggressively following and un-following people

• Some challenges:

> Finding your Tweet from the past

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Twitter – Need to Tweet!• Goal: Optimizing Your

Search Presence

• Getting your results to the top: Retweet

• Search is very primitive – creating a recency ordered list with NO relevancy ranking at all

• Popular Hashtags can get swamped from a search perspective

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Twitter - Strategy• Goal: Optimizing Your Search

Presence: Marketing

• Strategy

> Go after the mid-tail. Results on secondary terms can often persist for quite some time.

> The core words for SEO may be totally inappropriate since they are too popular and will be quickly swamped.

> Test timing carefully – since recency is key.

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Twitter - Strategy• Goal: Optimizing Your Search

Presence: Marketing

• Strategy

> You can’t own the long tail with your marketing or evangelical teams – but your product teams might be able to…

> These tweets can last for quite a long time.

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Lets now take a look at LinkedIn

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Why use LinkedIn• Known as the social network for business

> Remember few other companies have had success in this area

• Build your reputation and your brand’s reputation

• Build your network

• Great learning platform (via Groups, Answers, etc.)

• Create Google Juice for SEO

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LinkedIn - What’s the Business Strategy?• LinkedIn is professional networking site – one of it’s main functions is personal

job search. This makes it a double-edged sword for businesses.

• Because LinkedIn is a professional network – participants are generally comfortable getting and distributing business information – it doesn’t have the “content conflicts” that Facebook may.

• Likely Business Strategy:

> Optimize access to your public-facing people

> Optimize job-seeking capabilities

> Use Groups for professional marketing

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The Power of ‘Groups’

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LinkedIn – Power of Groups

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Building Influence via Answers

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Keeping Track Of Your Network

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LinkedIn: Leveraging Search

Types of Search

> People Search

> Jobs Search

> News Search

> Forum Search

> Group Search

> Company Search

> Reference Search

> Address book Search

> Answers Search

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LinkedIn - Search• Goal: Optimize Access to

your Public Facing people

• Basics:

> People Search on LinkedIn is the default option and almost certainly dominates all search on the system

> Search is keyword based and faceted. It searches all entered fields. Advanced options allow for numerous facets.

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LinkedIn - Social Advantage• Goal: Optimize Access to

your Public Facing people

• Social Advantage

> LinkedIn suggestions are based on your existing network – so people and companies are surfaced first if you are closely connected.

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LinkedIn - Strategy• Goal: Optimize Access to your Public Facing people

• Strategy

> Create a standard for all public-facing sales/marketing/communications employees. Make sure that key fields are filled out (company, website, company info, industry) in a standard fashion and that strategic keywords are used in basic profiles.

> Make sure your company profile is accurate and has appropriate keywords.

> Make sure that employees join key groups.

> Encourage broad networks for the appropriate people.

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LinkedIn - Basic Facts• Goal: Optimize Job-Seeking

Capabilities

• Basics:

> Linked-In Job Search is keyword based.

> Listing are posted for 30 days and are not sorted (by default) by listing.

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LinkedIn - Advantage• Goal: Optimize Job Seeking

• Social Advantage

> Nearly all LinkedIn Members are open to job postings. You can use your employee networks to get qualified eyeballs on your postings.

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LinkedIn - Strategy• Goal: Optimize Job-Seeking

• Strategy

> Keyword Stuff your posts. The search algorithm is basic and rewards heavy density of keywords. Notice that very few listings are shown and since date isn’t the key sort a keyword dense listing will pull many more eyeballs.

> By default, LinkedIn populates the search with the searchers zip code (assuming they are logged-in). Make sure your job listing is targeted to the area from which you expect the best pull.

> Make sure you have a corporate image uploaded – it really adds visual snap to the listing.

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LinkedIn - Basic Facts• Goal: Using Groups for

Marketing

• Basics:

> User Groups are Keyword matched but not sorted by keyword relevance or user group communications.

> The default sort is by Group Size.

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LinkedIn - Social Advantage• Goal: Using Groups for Marketing

• Social Advantage

> Most group sign-ups are social based – so search is definitely a fall-back tool.

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LinkedIn - Strategy• Goal: Using Groups for Marketing

• Strategy

> Target secondary core words if there are already large groups in your field.

> Since this is a “rich-get-richer” search system, aggressive recruitment is definitely rewarded.

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LinkedIn – External Search• External search engines such as Google love LinkedIn (note: Facebook and

Twitter are quickly getting the love!)

• Keyword strategy important:

> Search will be done in all profile text including summaries, job descriptions, school names, job titles, 

> Fill in all fields

> Consider carefully job titles, descriptions, etc.

• Links into your page / links externally

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Influence on Google

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Summary:

1. Fish where the fish swim – the Big 3 becoming increasingly important

2. Consider the Big 3 as part of your lead generation strategy (and direct sales in some cases)

3. Remember – Google, Bing, etc. are starting to integrate these into their search results

4. Remember—Neither of these platforms do a great job in helping you find old content/posts

5. Plan on Facebook being a walled in experience – where it might not be necessary to visit other sites

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It’s an overused cartoon now, but it still applies…

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Thank You.. Questions?

• Scott K. Wilder

> scott@wildervoices.com

> scott.wilder@edelman.com

Send me suggestions for future webinar topics