There’s no better time to immerse yourself in social media than right now. Even if you think “the facebook” is a frivolous waste of time, you don’t have the slightest clue what “a twitter” is, and you don’t know

what it means to “link-in”… Fear not! Once your business takes the plunge

into social media you will be amazed at the ideas, insights, and new connections you will gain. By merely engaging in the three basic social media levers covered in

this magazine you will see results with little monetary investment. Beyond covering

Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn this magazine is full of tips and ideas for your best social

media marketing plan. However, social media does take time, so take the time to do it right.

Get started today, this magazine will lead the way.

“Social media is engaging with the masses. It's about creating excitement and buzz around your product. It's about acknowledging and listening to your awesome fans. It's about

being active, involved, personable, and connected... And it's fun!

Social media is also incredibly valuable. It can expose your brand to new audiences, funnel

online discussions into a medium you can control, and get results faster and in a more

measurable way than with traditional media.” -Katy Lynch, Social Katy LLC

Chicago-based Social Media Strategist

11

So long to the days of big

ad marketing campaigns.

Now instead of marketing

to your customers,

businesses and consumers will

interact with one another.

Social media is transforming

marketing from a message into a conversation. Be sure to send

your message, but also take time to listen to consumers’

responses.

Regardless if your company has individual employees

fulfilling each of these functions or you single-handedly

maintain them yourself—this building is a essentially

map describing how each function should think within

the social media world. After you learn the basics

don’t be afraid to try out the less familiar venues. Graphic from oneupweb.com 13

It’s

not

too

late

to

“Social media is hot.

And for businesses it

represents a marketing

opportunity that

transcends the

traditional middleman

and connects

companies directly

with customers.

This is why nearly

every business on the

planet – from

giants like

Starbucks

and IBM–

to the local

ice cream

shop are

exploring

social

media

marketing

initiatives.” -Michael A. Stelzner

Founder, SocialMediaExaminer.com

you

can

do it

yourself!

Source: SocialMediaExaminer.com via

Take

the time

to make

an impact

returns

can

be

huge!

15

WHERE ARE

YOUR

CUSTOMERS?

Social Media is like

any other marketing

plan—defining your

target market and

how to reach them

is key. These

demographics will

help you define which

social media venues

will be most valuable

to your business.

From there defining

your business’s social

media plan of attack

will be much easier.

In this magazine we

will cover the sites

that are most popular

overall. But don’t

let that deter you

from diving into

the others!

17

The Hard Facts

Social Media Type: The Social Network

Active Users: 500 million worldwide

Launched: 2004

Viral Value:

Facebook is the #1 place people spend time on the web

The shear number of people and the frequency with which they are on Facebook is astounding.

How will your business connect?

Why Users Engage with Companies on Facebook

40% to receive discounts and promotions

39% to show my support for the company to others

36% to get a “freebie”

34% to stay informed about the activities of the company

33% to get updates on future products

30% to get updates on upcoming sales

29% for fun or entertainment

25% to get access to exclusive content

22% someone recommended it to me

21% to learn more about the company

13% for education about company topics

A Fan page builds your reputation and expands your network within minutes. By having lots of fans visiting your page, you are able to make money by putting more advertisements and promotions on your page. So, start designing one today!

19

Facebook Insights User Insights

Total page likes, or a number of fans, daily active users, new likes/unlikes, like sources, demographics, page views and unique page views, tab views, external referrers, media consumption

Interactions Insights

Daily story feedback (post likes, post comments, per post impressions), daily page activity (mentions, discussions, reviews, wall posts, video posts)

What will you Measure? There is a lot of data offered, but you want to sort through it and identify what

information is meaningful and will help you make decisions about your engagement and content strategy. You will want to document monthly growth and activity, and identify spikes in user activity and what may have caused them. Here are a few simple metrics:

Monthly fan size growth: Record the number of fans (or “likers”) you have on the first of every month to see what your growth looks like. The average number of likes/comments: This is your best measure of fan engagement. Increase the number of

posts around the topic your fans are more engaged with and decrease the number of posts around topics they are not interested in. Unlikes and attrition rate: Loss of fans is inevitable, watch for spikes in the unlike numbers. You want to try and correlate these spikes with the activity on your page and understand why people are leaving your page.

Tab views: This metric will tell you which tab gets what percentage of traffic. This will help you prioritize content on your page.

Referrers: This metric specifies where the traffic to your page comes from. You want to increase exposure to your page on the sites that bring you the most traffic.

Demographics: No matter what your objectives are, you can always find the demographics data useful: the gender of your fans, their ages, and where they are from.

Page views: This will help you identify the number of returned fans. If you take the number of page views and subtract the number of unique page views, you will have a measure of your returning fan base.

Mentions: This is the number of times someone tagged you in their post. This metric is important because it is the easiest way for your fans’ friends to click through to your page. Every time someone tags you, the name of your page appears as a link. Users are more likely to click on that link than to search for your page manually. Increasing mentions should be a main goal for your page.

Don’t Forget Your Facebook Page Facebook fans expect consistent activity on your page. If you neglect your page, it will die. Furthermore, monitoring the metrics specified here will help you understanding how to get the most out of your page. This can seem like a lot of work, but if you keep up with these metrics, or even a few you find particularly important, you will be able to adjust your strategy to maintain traffic growth. Having a successful Facebook page is your window to overall social media success. By measuring your metrics and remaining engaged with your fans you will manage the greatest impact on your business’s bottom line overall.

Adapted from “A Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Insights,”

Mashable/Business, September 2010.

23

The Hard Facts

Social Media Type:

Micro-Blogging

Active Users:

190 million accounts

Launched:

2006

Viral Potential:

Real-time information

sharing with people

interested in your

products and services.

Gather real-time

market intelligence

and feedback, and

build relationships

with customers,

partners and

influential people *taken from Twitter.com

“About: Twitter for Businesses”

How to Tweet

Think about Twitter as a place to build relationships

Use a casual, friendly tone in your messages.

Don’t feel compelled to follow everyone who follows you, but

do respond promptly to

concerns, offer customer service, and thank people for praise.

Filter for tweets that mention your company, brand, service and/or products. Check out third party applications like TweetDeck or HootSuite to get started.

Retweet cool stuff—this will

show others you are reading their tweets and people will appreciate amplification of their ideas.

Post links to articles, sites, and photos you think folks would

find interesting—even if they’re not your sites or about your company.

Make sure your tweets provide some real value. Here are a few examples:

Offer Twitter exclusive coupons or deals

Facilitate an engaging contest

Take people behind the scenes of your company—Post pictures from your offices, stores, warehouses, etc.

Share sneak peeks of projects or events in development

Use personality to let followers know there is a human behind the tweets

Adapted from Twitter 101 for Business, “Best Practices” twitter.com 25

Only 12% of marketer

tweets represent active

dialogue with consumers.

Meaning most companies are not harnessing

Twitter’s full potential.

Statistics from 360i Digital Marketing Agency, July 2010.

-Katy Lynch, socialkaty.com

-Customize! Use a personalized background, add a bio and a profile photo, provide your main website link

-Post Twitter updates daily: Links, jokes, insights, photos, or even opinions on current happenings—it shouldn’t always be about you!

-No spam! Every tweet should be unique.

-Integrate your social networks: Use Twitter to direct followers to your other social media levers

-Remember to keep it fun!

Keep in mind Twitter is a consumer dominated medium

More than 90% of tweets are from consumers

Never force topics, go with the flow and engage with your followers about what they are interested in.

27

Online social media

destinations arranged by popularity!

Social media is about returns over

time. You must engage with

consumers consistently to keep

current customers involved and also

attract new fans and followers. Be

sure to switch up how you are

approaching fans. Promotional

offers, product updates,

announcements concerning future

plans, photos, and videos are all

great ways to keep your fans

interested. Switch up the content

and utilize your different social

media levers to maximize your

influence and prevalence in the

social media realm.

followers can connect with,

comment on, and share with friends.

Furthermore, be sure to react to the

moves of your fan base. The game is

about both acting boldly and

reacting confidently. With social

media there are very few rules, dead

ends, or standards about how

Interactions begin, sustain, or end.

Just keep playing the game and you

will continue to see returns.

The Game Plan

Remember to Play Nice

Like in a board game, each move will

b e c o u n t e r a c t e d b y t h e

opposing player. Be sure to plan your

moves both in reaction to

others and as bold new strides on

your own terms. Put new material

into the socialsphere, make sure they

are topics fans and

This graphic illustrates the interactions between businesses and consumers through social media. If engagement falters on one side, so will the overall flow of content and brand development.

Why you need to be part

of the LinkedIn network

Calling into a company?

-you can find an

individual and brush up

on their history, you

might have something

in common

Selling a product?

-search for new contacts

in your target market

-find buyers/customers

Looking for an employee?

-find recommendations

-browse candidates that

aren’t actively seeking

work at the time

The Hard facts

Social Media Type: Social Network for Professionals

Active Users: 85 million worldwide

Launched: 2003

Viral Potential: Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is strictly for networking. Most useful in B2B interactions: increase your company’s exposure, broaden and maintain your personal network.

31

How to Join In

Keep it Professional

-Make a profile that

resembles your resume

Catch Everyone’s Attention

-Update your status at

least once a week

Make Connecting Easy

-Post your contact

information

LinkedIn Groups

-Engage with new people

-Demonstrate expertise

-Find new clients

Create Discussion

-Post questions, answer

existing posts

Make if Valuable

Exchange Information

-Be an expert

-Find an expert when

you need one

Take Connections Offline

-Find an introduction, make

an offer to connect and foster

real, offline relationships

LinkedIn provides

connections never before available,

so take advantage of the network at

your fingertips!

Photo sharing

Video sharing

Write a blog to keep

customers up to date

on your business. It

is a way for your

customers to connect

personally with the

business, and opens a

venue for their

comment as well

Viral potential: placing

the delicious icon on your

site will allow users to

share the site’s

bookmark with friends

Use Yelp to read reviews from your real customers—

use the complements and criticism to evaluate and

adjust your business practices

Allow users to add your site to

their RSS feed—the feed will

automatically post updates

from your site to users’

personal news feeds

Keep up with

today’s hot

topics

according to

the public, not

the media Add personality to your site by

linking company video and

photo links. Add media from

company events, about new

products and services,

commentary from employees,

the possibilities are endless! 33

35

Crowdsourcing is harnessing the

power found in a community to

solve problems or facilitate

processes that normally require

great specialization. Jeff Howe

who coined

the term

describes the

p h e n o m e -

non as “outsourcing on steroids.”

The trend is possible because of the

connections facilitated by social

media and the internet. These

mediums provide a space to form

communities around problems and

processes. A better solution that

possible with a select team is usu-

ally discovered within the masses.

As specified by Howe, “the crowd

will almost always outperform any

number of employees.” It is possible

that crowdsourcing will change

business and specifically the creative

process, forever. It is important as a

business owner you understand

where it is being used and why it

works. The driving force of crowd-

sourcing lies in the merit of partici-

pation for the big-thinkers and has

changed the game for them and

businesses alike. Designers and big-

thinkers are given the opportunity

to participate in real life challenges

and businesses are given a breadth

of fresh ideas for their most pressing

and most tedious developments.

“outsourcing

on steroids”

What is it? Why is it Important?

CrowdSPRING is a crowdsourcing

website for design. Projects include

logo design, web design, product

name, company name, and packag-

ing design. As stated by

crowdSPRING founders the site is

“helping buyers reach countless

creatives across the globe, we're

c h a n g i n g

the game for

the little

guy.” In-

deed they

are, crowd-

sourcing provides small businesses

the ability to hone talent for even

projects of the smallest scale. Give

it a whirl for your next creative

“changing

the game for

the little guy”

project, statistics show

the results are over-

whelmingly positive.

110 entries per project,

on average

100% satisfaction

guaranteed on every

single project

96% of buyers would

recommend

crowdSPRING

78,039 designers and

writers ready to create for

your project

37

thecloud Cloud Computing #thecloud the growing phenomenon of users who can access their data from anywhere rather than being tied to a particular machine.

crowdsourcing Jeff Howe taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent and outsourcing it to an undefined @lotsofpeople in the form of an open call #jeff_howe

hashtag Twitter Tool @twitter community-driven convention for adding additional context & #metadata to tweets. add by prefixing a word with hash symbol

MetaData Web 2.0 Tool information about information — including titles, descriptions, #tags and captions — that describes a media item such as a video, photo or blog post

RSS Really Simple Syndication

aggregated delivery of content — blog entries, news stories, headlines, images, video — into one feed, eliminates browsing from site to site

SEO Search Engine Optimization the process of arranging your website to give it the best chance of appearing near the top of search engine rankings

Social Media Glossary

SocialBookmarking Organizational Tool

@delicious a method by which users locate, store, organize, share and manage

bookmarks of web pages without being tied to a particular machine: example of

#thecloud

socialmedia Social Media media + social interaction, highly accessible & scalable publishing techniques - web-based tech turns communication into interactive dialogue

Tags Web 2.0 Tool keywords added to a blog post, photo or video to help users find related topics or media, when browsing on the site or using search engines relevant #metadata

TheFutureNow Web 2.0

2nd generation of the Web, enables people with no specialized tech knowledge to create their own websites, create/upload media & share info

UGC User Generated Content an industry term that refers to all forms of user-created materials—part of

#thefuture— such as #blogposts, reviews, podcasts, videos, comments and more

Widget Mini Web-Application

small block of content, typically displayed in a small box, w/a specific purpose, such as weather forecasts or news, that constantly updates itself

wiki Collaborative Creation

collaborative website that can be directly edited by anyone with access to it—best example @Wikipedia , can be used for #crowdsourcing

39