Marketing Your Business with Social Media Tools

Chris BrownMay 5, 2010

I spent the first 17 years of my career as Brand Manager and Marketing Communications Director at 3 Fortune 500 companies with big multi-national brands

In 1998 I founded a full service marketing agency in Northeast Ohio to help other companies to

• Build awareness• Reach potential customers• Offer branding resources• Improve marketing efforts• Increase sales results

HitWise

Top SocialNetworking

Sites by visits

May 2009

April 2010• Facebook leads the

social networking sites

• Twitter still only 1% of social media

• LinkedIn is #14 of social media sites

Possible Goals and Strategies

• Humanize the company and the brand. • Get immediate and actionable market

research.• Provide clear information, perspective, history

and accurate product, service and company information

• Create a mechanism to enable us to respond to the target market, consumers, customers and clients.

• Engage them

Social Media Tools

How to Use LinkedIn

As an Individual 1.Add a Headline to your Profile2.Write your Summary in 1st person3.Add contacts after an event4.Use new Tagging Feature5.Answer questions in your area of

expertise

Thomas Register

• Functioned as the Yellow Pages for business to business

• Now much of the search has been replaced by Google search

How to Use LinkedIn

As a Business• Used ADVANCED in the search• Develop a COMPANY site for your

Business• Search inside your GROUPS: Post on

Discussions and News. • Answer questions about your

company’s type of services/products

Best Connecting Feature

• Join GROUPS: geographic and industry

• Can send a message directly without connecting

Rolodex

• When someone was let go from a company, what was the one thing that they wanted to take with them?

• That was the first thing to disappear from their office?

Invented in the late 1950s.

Best Sales Tracking Tool

New Tagging Feature• Allows you to sort – CRM feature• Tag your contacts as clients, potential

clients, vendor, friend etc.

Advanced People Search

Why Answer Questions?

I jumped in to the Answers forum and originally spent way more time that I should have, but over time it began to pay off as I was 'recognized' as someone with value (based on number of 'best answer' ratings) in a wide variety of topics.

As I matured on LI, 'strategy' became more apparent and I focused only on questions that had to do with areas of my business like Planning, Business Management, Organizational Development.

LinkedIn Experts

• For business: Crystal Clear Buzz – Crystal Thies

• For job seekers: Jason Alba

Social Media Tools

Fastest Growing Medium

• 400 million users

• Prime time – every hour• Super bowl – every minute

Ways to Use Facebook

• Engagement Ads: • Events • Gifting• Polling• Fanning• Sampling• Commenting

• Marketing Tools:• Pages• Events• Connect• Applications• Share

Why Facebook?

• You can use your Facebook Page to not only share your company information, but you can also use it to post photos, videos, applications and messages.

• Any activity that you perform on your Facebook Page is then broadcast into the mini-feeds of your followers.

• AND to their followers as well, depending on the settings

Most Successful Situations

• Consumer focused – Retail Business– Facebook Fan Page– Existing customers “Like”– Their friends see Page activity– 5 Examples of Fantastic Fan Pages– Consumer Ads on Facebook– Targeted by age, gender, interest– Pay per click

Jury is Still Out

• Business to Business– My own 2009 test: zero clicks– Early in the “biz” cycle

• “Easy” to test: – Start a Facebook Ad test here– Pay only for those who use your ad– Select by zip code, age, title, interests

Facebook Cheat Sheet

Facebook for Business Expert

• Mari Smith

Social Media Tools

The Negatives People Will Throw At You

• Twitter takes up time. • Twitter takes you away from other productive work. • Without a strategy, it’s just typing. • There are other ways to do this. • As Frank hears often, Twitter doesn’t replace customer service

(Frank is @comcastcares and is a superhero for what he’s started.)

• Twitter is buggy and not enterprise-ready. • Twitter is just for technonerds. • Twitter’s only a few million people. (only) • Twitter doesn’t replace direct email marketing. • Twitter opens the company up to more criticism and griping.

Chris Brogan: 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business

6 Ways Brands Use Twitter

• Customer Relations• Product promotions and sales• Event activation• Crisis management• Corporate reputation management• Issue Advocacy

From Ogivly Public Relations WorldWide: Twitter for Business: 6 Ways Brands Use Twitter

Find Prospects

• Twitter can be used as a means to find potential customers or clients online.

• Do a search for keywords related to your product on Twitter Search and then follow users.

• Tweet about topics parallel to your product and close prospects away from public channels by using direct messages or offline communications.

Important Considerations

• What is your Company’s social media policy?

• If you don’t have on maybe you start with this one and customize it for your business

Read my Branding & Marketing blog:

www.BrandandMarket.com

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Become a FAN of my company on Facebook: www.Facebook.com/MarketingResults

Social Media Connections