getsocialmedia.net grow your business using social media – a step by step guide – JuLY 2009 BY PhiLiP van ZYL Copyright 2009, Philip van Zyl, GetSocialMedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 2 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net letter from the author…… Welcome. If you are a business owner, this guide is written for you. It is also for those who work in new media teams or marketing departments, and for individuals who are their own brand. The principles and step by step process in this guide will help you to use the power of social media to grow your business. It does not matter if you live in Barcelona, Tokyo, Boston, Rio, Brisbane, Moscow, London, Canterbury, Dublin, Singapore or Cape Town. Or anywhere else for that matter. This step-by-step guide will shepherd you along the quick and proven path to successful social media engagement, customised for you and your business needs. I have cut straight to the good stuff. You’ll find links to the software I use, as well as to a bunch of excellent alternative sites, platforms and software. Almost all of these are free. There are tips in here that you won’t find anywhere else in one place. If you received this guide from a friend or colleague and you would like to pass it on, please pass on this link to the original guide and an area where you can sign up for further information & resources. http://www.getsocialmedia.net/guide The ten steps in this guide will give you the solid foundation you need. From there you can weave your unique magic and express your creativity as the individual you are. After all, it’s your business. I suggest you don’t skip any parts of the guide. Every part links to the others and forms one road map. Here’s to your social media success! Philip van Zyl Social Media explorer and navigator Follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/philipvanzyl Copyright Statement: All content © 2009 by Philip van Zyl - Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative Commons License, Attribution – Noncommercial - No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported, http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ (This means you can share it freely with your friends, but not resell it). Please refer colleagues and friends to this link to download the report for themselves: http://getsocialmedia.net/guide. retweet this Click here to post this on twitter getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 3 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl table of contents executive summary 4 about this guide 5 mindset 6 part 1 - understanding social media 7 what is social media really? are all social media the same? part 2 – social media and my business 9 how can my business benefit from social media? how do I align my social media goals with my business goals? why is my website optimisation so important for social media? the ten steps to social media success 12 step 1 – define your company goal. step 2 – define your website goal and specific call to action. step 3 – listen to what individuals are saying and where they are saying it. step 4 – map and list how it is being said and who the influencers are . step 5 – decide on your social media presence and register accounts online. step 6 – select your posting and tracking platforms. step 7 – define all metrics – clearly, and measurably. step 8 – listen, engage and grow your network. step 9 - use diverse social marketing strategies. step 10 – measure, adjust, listen, engage. part 3 – your social future 28 outsourcing. advertising on social media. think laterally. my social media roadmap 30 resources 40 getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 4 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl executive summary This free guide contains the principles and processes for business owners, marketing departments and media teams to build their brand and to grow their businesses, using the power of social media. The focus of the guide is on understanding social media and getting started efficiently and effectively, and then streamlining your online activity into those areas where you are most effective. More than just a theoretical look at the social media landscape, it offers the practical step by step process to get a social media strategy in place right away, and monitor its ongoing success. Most people are aware of social media tools like Facebook and Twitter, but aren’t sure how to use them in a business environment. This guide explores the relative merits of many different social media sites – and explains how to use them for business benefit. It defines social media for non-experts and includes a step-by-step guide to successful social media engagement, including a list of helpful resources, software and sites. Engaging with social media successfully requires a shift in some key principles of selling and marketing online. It requires businesses to embrace the concept of entering a two-way conversation with customers through multiple channels, rather than one-way communication through traditional marketing tools such as advertising. Social media doesn’t need to be hard work. This is a guide to engaging customers and stakeholders online in a rewarding, productive and enjoyable way. It explains how businesses can benefit from a carefully considered social media strategy – beginning with the recognition that companies and their products are already being discussed online. The guide shows how you can start to listen to and participate in these discussions, and build trust with your existing and prospective customers. The ten practical steps in the second half of this guide are a step by step roadmap to social media success for businesses and brands. They include tips on defining a company’s social media goals and linking them to other business goals. These ten steps are used in conjunction with the “social media roadmap” document at the end of the guide, where the guide user’s actual strategy is mapped, recorded and designed by them. The majority of social media strategies are built around a “main” website or blog. The importance of optimising this “main” site is emphasised and the process explained. This optimisation is done for both social media links as well as Google and other search engine ranking success. The report also explains what you want your prospective customers to do once they get to your site. It includes tips for the most effective way to post new content online, and to monitor content posted online by others – including a guide to selecting the most relevant material from the huge volume added to the internet every day. Should you or your company be a blogger? This guide will help you decide. And if you do decide to enter the blogosphere, it gives you some excellent tips on how to be successful. The whole social media environment is changing fast. The biggest and the most successful businesses in the world are getting involved. Isn’t it time you found out what it could do for you and your business? getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 5 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl about this report Engaging social media successfully requires a few basic and yet fundamental shifts in the practice of selling and marketing online. Start by reading the next section called “Mindset”. The sustainability of your social media engagement depends upon it. If you read this report and complete each of the ten steps as they are detailed here, you will lay a solid foundation for success in using social media to grow your business. You will also be engaging meaningfully in the community that keeps you in business, and your business will grow. If you skip any of the steps or don’t complete them your chances of success are slim. Very slim. (But at least you’ll have found your twice removed cousins who live in Spain, and have seen all of their christening photos on Facebook). One of the greatest enablers of success in social media for your business is ACTION. Start small and think big. Do that today and you’ll see the benefits stack up before your eyes, day by day. Everything you need to get started is contained in this report or linked to in the References section. You ready to get going? Everything in this report is informed by three assumptions. They are the big picture “keys” to unlock the doors to your success. the three keys to social media success 1. If you do not have clear goals for your business, nothing you do offline, online or any-other- line is going to help you realise them. It is essential to have clear and measurable business goals. 2. If you do not have clear goals and a clear call to action on your “main” website, you will be diluting your social media efforts before you start. Your “main” site could be your blog or an HTML-type site. The “main” site action may be to take a free 30-day trial, sign up for a newsletter, or actually buy a product online right there. 3. Your social media sites will act largely as “feeder” sites and – collectively – as a feeder network for your main site. Remember this and engage in social media with this in mind. getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 6 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl mindset Your mindset about Social media will inform your attitude towards social media even before you begin. the old way Let’s think of the old way of getting your message about your company products and services out there. Newspaper advertising, for example. A few thousand bucks for a big newspaper advert. Pay a few thousand bucks. Hmm, fun. Next hire a research company to nd out whether those few thousand bucks were well spent and what your customers and prospective customers thought of it. Pay a few more thousand bucks. Now we’re having fun. Rinse, repeat, and try to run your business at the same time. the new way Listen to your customers from the comfort of your desk, through multiple channels, mostly at no cost. You are part of a big focus group of people that actually use your products or products in your market. They are speaking about their wants, frustrations, loves, pains, desires (as we speak)…all of which you can engage in and influence. Did I mention that the focus group is free? By engaging with some of the influencers in your community you’ll have access to top information on your marketplace, trends and insights. How about social bookmarking? By having one (start with delicious.com) you are not just trying to get more links to your website to schmooze Google (not exclusively anyway), you are easily finding top-notch information on your competitors, articles about your market and posts about your products. It’s like an online library put together specifically for you to use. And it is a free way for you to bookmark all the articles, posts, reports, videos, interviews etc. that you find online, using tags rather than the confusing “Bookmark” facility in your browser. I could go on, but my point is that social media does not have to be a slog. And the more you find ways to benefit as an individual and as a business owner or worker, the more you will enjoy yourself. Could that be the reason we’re all here in the first place? And when it comes to sustaining your social media strategy to grow your business, which of these two options do you think will last? Social media is a painful mission and I am going to drag myself through it each day because 1. there may be a benefit to the company somewhere. Social media is an exciting opportunity for me to engage people online and spread messages 2. virally, to learn from my peers and my customers, and to stay on top of my game in my field. Moving right along… getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 7 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl part 1 - understanding social media The secret of social media is that it is not about you, your product or your story. It’s about creating value for the communities that happen to include you. If you want to make a positive impact, forget about what you can get from social media, and start thinking about what you can contribute. Funnily enough, the more value you create for the community, the more value they will create for you. Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media. what is social media? Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the park for the last few years - without anyone to talk to and without an internet connection - you’ve probably heard of Facebook. It’s a key example of social media. A quick definition. Social media is a phrase that describes the platforms and other tools that connect people into social networks (of their choosing) online. Some of the household social media names worldwide (other than Facebook) are MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube. There are many, many more, and we’ll look at some of them in detail in this report. The individuals that make up these online networks, use social media to organise themselves according to (1) their interests and (2) their preference for the way they choose to share, store and deliver information within their community (or “network”). Individuals have made it clear they wish to connect with other individuals that they choose to, in the way that they choose to, and around topics and for reasons that they choose to. The individual is at the centre of the social media revolution. And this is changing the way business is done. Hint: kiss goodbye the idea of solely hiding behind the company PR department door and sending out anonymous press releases “in the name of the company”. Delete delete. are all social media the same? No they aren’t. Most sites are a combination of four elements - text, images, video, and audio. Many sites focus on just one of these elements. Youtube, Viddler and UStream.tv are examples of video sites. They also allow text descriptions, images (e.g. a photo of contributor) and audio. Despite these peripheral elements, they are still known as “Video sites” and video is their core offering. There are also photo sites, such as Flickr, SmugMug and many others. See the diagram that follows here for a comprehensive view of the key categories with examples. Brian Solis is one of the “godfathers” of social media and was jointly responsible for constructing the following diagram that details the main social media categories and some of the main players in each category. Look for the link to Brian Solis’s blog in the resources section. “ ” getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 8 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl http://www.briansolis.com/ getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 9 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl part 2 – social media and my business Here’s a quick revision of the three keys to social media success described in the “About this Report” section earlier. key 1 – If you are not clear on your core business goal(s), nothing you do will help you realise them (including social media). Get clear on your business goal(s) right now. Set goals that are measurable. key 2 – If your “main” website is not optimised to get every visitor to your site to take the action that you want them to, you simply have to sort that out. Optimise your main site, and keep it optimised in a way that directly supports your company goals. key 3 – Your engagement in social media will open new paths to your main website door. Social media sites will act as “feeder” sites to your “main” site. Bear this in mind as you engage. Before we begin the ten step plan to get those three keys into action, here are some final thoughts and details to smooth our way. How can your business benefit from social media? How do you align your social media goals with your business goals? Why is your website optimisation so important? how can my business benefit from social media? The individuals that buy and use your products and services are having conversations within their social networks right now. Some of them are discussing your products and their experiences of using these products and services, returning them, breaking them, loving them… Some of them are discussing your competitor’s products and services and what they love and loathe about them. Others are discussing your market place, what they really want, what they will pay good money for. By engaging and participating in conversations in your business’ social network you are going to add value, show that you care, handle specific issues that come up, and in that way build your credibility and reputation as a caring and in-touch company/brand. People will begin to like and trust you. When you then share details of a special offer some people will click through to look and some will buy. When someone tweets about the shocking service they experienced trying to return your product, someone will reply with their positive experience. By listening, you will find out how you can best package your product, deliver it, support it, charge for it etc. Your network will tell you and you will be able to listen in while two or more members in the community discuss it publicly. Once you have become an engaging and contributing member of this particular network, you can then introduce new topics, and begin to co-create information that the community engages with. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet… getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 10 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl how do I align my social media goals with my business goals? In a nutshell, you are going do this by knowing what your company goals are right now. You’ll be driving increasing numbers of people to your “main” website so it will need to have a clear call to action and be optimised for your chosen keywords. If you want to raise brand awareness, then have useful information and cool things about your offering at your website. If you want to increase sales of a product then feature that product on your website prominently and have a clear call to action (in this case – click here to buy). Because much of the social media you will be engaging in will serve as “feeder” sites to your “main” site, you may only have one shot at converting a visitor into a prospect, or a customer into a repeat customer. Social media will get visitors there, so pre-sell them as much as possible. Social media will help you here in two ways. It will spread links and good vibes about your main site and people will click directly from articles and tweets and posts to your website. The second way it will help you is that all of the incoming links to your site - that have spread around the internet - will increase your ranking on Google and the other search engines. To locate your social media strategy properly within the context of your business, try sketching it out freehand if you don’t want to use software to do this. Here is a diagram I recently sketched for a client to map the flow of people to their main site - and through their sales and retention process as well. The more integrated the diagram is into your complete business flow, the better. It includes social media as well as all other avenues for this specific business. [...]... activist groups that get discussed) Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 16 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net 5 step 5 – decide on your social media presence and register the accounts online Stake your social media real estate claim now Make sure you understand the difference between your company name and your username, as detailed below register... views, links and bookmarks Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 23 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net step 8 – listen, engage and grow your network This is where you jump in and start listening through your own social media accounts, and begin growing your network Now you begin to actively listen to what is going on in your community, and start... the most recent version of the guide) http://www.getsocialmedia.net/guide A slightly more fun way to invite a few people at a time is to do it here (and get a free immediate gift in exchange) http://www.getsocialmedia.net/friends Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 29 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net my social media roadmap company/brand name... it/them? step 2 – define your website goal and specific call to action If you do not have a website that is the online “home” of your company it is going to be a lot more difficult to leverage your social media engagement You may still benefit from a social media campaign without a website or blog, but we’ll focus here on having one Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net... load it onto YouTube by saving a copy from Jing onto your harddrive and loading it from there to YouTube http://www.jingproject.com/ Step 10 – Measure, Adjust, Listen, Engage Follow your roadmap, make adjustments and keep measuring Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net 10 Page 27 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net part 3 – your social future Ok, this... up with a purely business focus To use MySpace effectively you need to include details about yourself, what your interests are and make your business a part of this (not the other way round.) Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 18 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net http://signups.myspace.com Lots more detail to help you along your way here: http://hubpages.com/hub/How-To-Promote -Your- Business- On-MySpace-In-7-Easy-Steps... decision as to how relevant your website is to the term being searched for – and as a result, whether to put you on page one or page 101 of the results for that word/phrase Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 11 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net the ten steps to get you there Ok, let’s get cracking with your social media path (roadmap) to success... is offered as an option by the comment software, it adds character Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 26 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net video Get started with Video marketing by registering an account on YouTube Make a screen capture video using Jing (free), publish it to Screencast.com (free) and put the link up on your blog Load it up onto... Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 35 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl 5 getsocialmedia.net 6 step 6 – select posting and tracking software I signed up for I signed up for They are linked and working (if you signed up for more than one) I have successfully posted to each of my social media sites using the above... them) Grow Your Business Using Social Media (A Guide) 2009 www.getsocialmedia.net Page 15 of 40 ©2009 Philip van Zyl getsocialmedia.net http://www.google.com/reader It’s worth seeing your keywords and keyword phrases from a few different angles to add some depth There are new tools coming to market literally every day, each with a slightly different search angle The key categories of social media . getsocialmedia.net grow your business using social media – a step by step guide – JuLY 2009 BY PhiLiP van ZYL Copyright 2009, Philip van Zyl, GetSocialMedia.net Grow Your Business Using. section. “ ” getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 8 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl http://www.briansolis.com/ getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business. along… getsocialmedia.net Grow Your Business Using Page 7 of 40 Social Media (A Guide) 2009. www.getsocialmedia.net ©2009 Philip van Zyl part 1 - understanding social media The secret of social media