Make your business social media savvy

Chris Snider | twitter.com/chrissnider

About meBaltimore Sun, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Editor of Juice magazine, 2005-2007

Digital editor of Des Moines Register, 2007-2010

Instructor of journalism at Drake University, 2010-present

Teach social media, multimedia and web design

About me

Today’s planSocial Media basics (what I’ve learned)

Questions

How to get more out of Facebook

Questions

More questions

About you

What is your business?

What social networks do you use?

Anything in particular you want to get today?

You already know how to do

social media well

If you learn one thing today, be a good

member of your community.

6 steps to being more social media savvy

1. Listen firstSearch your name and topics important to you.

Use Hootsuite

Why listen?

In case you have to respond to something – positive or negative

To know what people are saying about you

To understand the norms of that particular social network

To get ideas for what you should be posting

But what if it’s negative?

2. The name of the game is “Engagement”

Don’t talk about you. Talk about them.

Why this is importantIdeas spread not because people sharing the message are influential (i.e. because you have 100,000 followers)

Ideas spread because people receiving the message are influenceable

A positive past experience with a brand increases our ability to be influenced

Also, ideas spread better in small circles

Once you build these brand advocates...

Be a conversation starter on Facebook

Give kudos.

(Do this in real life too.)

Celebs don’t need you

The person sitting next to you might.@chrisbrogan says “Devote 20 minutes a day (maybe more) to

sharing up-and-coming people’s interesting posts.”

Twitter search for @justinbieber ... it’s just noise.

Stop obsessing about number of followers.

Start engaging with the ones that you have.

3. Magic to more followers

@sree is Sree Sreenivasan - Dean of Columbia Journalism School

Yes, you should talk about what you’re up to, what

you’ve accomplished, how awesome you are, but you

also need to be a pointer to and curator of awesome

content! Try to have a ratio of 1:4 or something

- @sree

Clickable

Linkable

Shareable

Embeddable

Commentable

4. Make your site “able”

addthis.com

sharethis.com

5. Measure how you’re doing

And how your competition is doing

Facebook Insights

Facebook Insights for websites

Google Analytics

Track your linksThrough a service such as bit.ly

monitor.wildfireapp.com

Crowdbooster

6. Keep an eye on up-and-coming social networks

Google+

LinkedIn

Foursquare

Pinterest

Instagram

Vine

Tumblr

Pheed

Trends to watch

Mobile

Video

Geolocation

Questions?