1. Chapter 10 – Social Media April Kemp Southeastern Louisiana University

2. What is Social Media?  Social media=electronic media where participants can produce, publish, control, critique, rank, and interact with online content.  Social network=a web-based community designed to promote interaction, discussion, and sharing of content among its users.  Social Media becomes the vehicle for connecting marketers with connectors and, more important for connectors to hook up with each other and spread their opinions to the larger community.  Goal is to create outstanding content and fostering a community.  With sites like Facebook, we can share, listen, respond and educate.

3. Creating Your Own Social Network  Can be used for:  Raise awareness  Connect events with attendees  Inspire and educate  Share insight and provide support  Share tricks of the trade  Create community for customers

4. Wonderful World of Wikis  Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia that anybody can edit; it is responsible for the creation of the term wiki  Wiki=a repository for content of any sort that can be edited, added to, or updated by the community of those interested in the subject

5. Blogs Big and Small  Ben McDonnell, Church of the Customer, on why all businesses should blog:  Blogs fan the flames of customer evangelism. It humanizes you.  They function as an instant feedback mechanism.  They compel you to share your knowledge more often.  Blogs facilitate the spread of buzz.  They allow you to have more simultaneous conversations than would ever be possible in person.  Most blog service providers offer good-looking templates to use.  They help position you as a knowledgeable expert in your industry.

6. Blogs (continued)  Gretel Going at partner Channel V Media in New York offers the following tips for a blog:  Identify your editorial platform and underlying message.  Don’t simply talk about yourself.  Be prepared to give away what was once considered proprietary information.  Identify your buyers’ personas and make sure your message caters to their needs.  Make friends with likeminded bloggers.  Update regularly.  Respond to comments to build a community of active readers.  Check your tracking and your key words regularly.  Make sure your homepage is accessible from your blog.

7. Blogosphere & Micro-blogging  Blogosphere=a collective term encompassing all blogs and their interconnections. It is the perception that blogs exist together as a connected community (or as a collection of connected communities) or as a social network.  Micro-blog=a status update application that logs entries to a common Web site or a multi-user blog with restrictions on entry length.  Tweet=an entry onto the micro-blog Twitter

8. Video Sharing and Podcasts  To be MPR, the use of videos and podcasts must be a clear effort to provide information to an audience without an overt sales pitch.  Need to be interesting and provocative enough to get passed from consumer to consumer, in other words, go viral.  To do this Mark Rogers of Dolcinemia.com suggests:  Make your campaign creative, consistent, and cohesive with the brand’s image.  Commit to being part of an online conversation and cultivate your network.  Create content that can be easily shared and downloaded.  Find the hook that will make your message resonate with the target audience. (hook=a creative ploy to garner attention or interest in a subject)

9. User-generated Content: Bookmark, Review, Rate and Co-Create  Bookmarking-allows members to submit their favorite sites to the larger community  Ranking & Reviews-online ratings and reviews  Co-Create=web content resulting from a collaboration of a firm and one or more consumers

10. Connecting the Dots of Social Media  Social Media creates a unique opportunity  Must reach the right audience, through the right channel, at the right time and keep up with the changing social media habits of your target consumers.