Developing Your Social Media Strategy S OCIAL M EDIA E SSENTIALS

G INNY K RONSTED  Small Business Ownership Background  Marketing and Sales Training Consultant  Online Marketing Director  Business Solution Provider

 International Results and Success  Top Level Providers  Providers to Match your Vision and Budget  Combine Educational Tools with Outsourced Resources

W HY USE LOCAL SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA  Yellow Pages are in steady decline  Directory Ads (Print) are not working – poor response and not measurable  Newspapers are in trouble across the country  Television / Radio is not cost effective for many businesses  marketing has seen a drop in response rates due to the pure volume of “noise

 73% of activity online is in one way or another “related to local content”  For every one dollar U.S. consumers spend online, another five or six are going to offline purchases that are influenced by online research  97% of Internet users in the U.S. gather shopping information online, and of those consumers 51% explicitly characterize their behavior as “Shop Online, Purchase Offline”  70% of online searchers will use local search to find offline businesses. W HY L OCAL SEO I S I MPORTANT

Social Media Can Drive Leads and Customers Photo Credit: PhotoDu.dePhotoDu.de

Y OUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY  Leverage LinkedIn Groups to Become Thought Leader  Use Blog Comment Sections to Foster Relationships  Integrate Video into Your Social Media Marketing Mix  Leverage Mobile to Drive Business  Use Facebook Groups to Find Your Best Customers

Y OUR SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGY  Integrate Search Engine Optimization Into Your Social Strategy  Create High Performance PPC Campaigns  Tie-In Your Marketing With Your Social Presence  Use Strategic PR to Increase Visibility  Localize Your Presence

T OP FOUR SITES  FACEBOOK  TWITTER  LINKEDIN  YOU TUBE

“Facebook is a social network that connects people personally and professionally through connections, messages, photos, & videos.” Photo Credit: Marvin KuoMarvin Kuo

FACEBOOK  As the largest social network in the world, it has more than 500 million active users, half of whom log in on a daily basis.  Users accumulate more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month.  People share more than 30 billion pieces of content every month, including links, news stories, blog posts, photo albums, and notes.

FACEBOOK  Join groups that your best customers and competitors are in  Create your own Facebook Fan Page with a unique name  Use Facebook as a Fan Page and interact with similar pages. You will build your reputation among like minded or interested individuals  Use your featured favorites to cross promote your partners recommend they do the same  Use your top five photos to promote your message, product, philosophy etc  Create a landing page Great examples are Vizio, Vitamin Water and Starbucks

“Twitter is like a Text Message with a BCC: To The World”

TWITTER  The power of Twitter is not who follows you but who searches for you and finds you  Tweets are indexed and available for real time searches  Third-party conversations lend credibility and confidence  Use Twitter to Build Relationships, Increase Visibility, Connect with Customers.

TWITTER  Use Twitter Search to find quality customers by searching for conversations on key topics join the conversation  Promote contests and useful links  Use appropriate keywords as often as possible  Stay interesting not pitchy

“Social Media is Like a Cocktail Party: Listen Then Respond” Photo Credit: The Dana Files The Dana Files

L INKED IN  LinkedIn is the social network for professionals and is changing the way people find and do business.  Although LinkedIn is often discussed as a powerful social networking tool, what is not discussed as frequently is the site’s ability to simply drive traffic to your site. In some ways, LinkedIn traffic may even be more valuable than traffic from other social networks and sites. This is simply due to the generally professional nature of LinkedIn itself.

L INKED IN  Join relevant groups  Actively participate  Post unique insights  Answer questions  Set yourself apart as an expert or leader in your field.

“Social Media Marketing: Enables Others to Advocate for Your Business Through Compelling Content” Image credit: Ian Sane

Y OU T UBE  # 2 Search Engine on the Web  3 Billion Views Per Day  35 Million Searches per day on “ How To” videos  Videos can provide compelling measurable call to action  Personalize the person behind the business  72% of marketers use video to educate viewers about products and services

Y OU TUBE  Use purpose driven videos with strong content that will resonate and engage viewers  Integrate your video campaign with your social networks across all your online sites  Use your keywords in your title of the video  Drive viewers to take the next step

D RIVE BUSINESS W / LOCAL MARKETING CAMPAIGNS

A REAS T O A DDRESS  Website  Make sure it is heavy on keyword rich text  Make sure it has a form to capture visitors information. Consider offering a report of some kind as a give-away  SEO  Decide whether you are going to outsource or do the work yourself. Expect to pay $400 - $2000 a mos. depending on your market.  Check that your website is visible in Google today  Build targeted pages of content about each product/service you offer  Linking – expect to build a few hundred links a month initially to get successful.  Create a baseline – monitor where you are today  Use Excel to track where you are on a bi-weekly basis

 Social Media  Create a LinkedIn/YouTube account for your business  Create a Facebook Fan page and Twitter Account  Create/Add a Blog to your website  If possible, add 1-2 articles per week  Consider having a “custom” Facebook/Twitter site created ($ in eachl). This will enhance your results in both of those platforms  You can outsource the creation of the custom sites, and even the content depending on your goals A REAS T O A DDRESS

Optimize website with geographic slant (city name(s), keyword phrases) Claim Google Places listing for your business Claim Yahoo Local listing for your business Claim Bing Local listing for your business Do a baseline analysis to determine where you are today List your business in dozens of directory and review sites Setup online lead capture mechanisms (forms) on your website Get you listed in all local search directories Begin building targeted links to your business website. Do this monthly! Work with your customers to solicit real reviews – more is good! Track results of your progress R OADMAP FOR Y OUR B USINESS

U P AND C OMING T RENDS  Mobile Site Marketing and Applications  QR Codes  Daily Deals  Geo Fencing  Facebook Feeds  Many, Many More!