[think] social media

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[think]

social media

don’t be afraid to dip your toes in the water

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Introduction

Helping your brand to grow through social media.

We have created this document to share some of our knowledge and experience in harnessing the power of social media to help you open up your brand.

In today’s landscape it is vitally important that your company understands the power social media holds and how to use that power to shape your company’s immediate future. I’ve used the word immediate because almost everything about social media can have an immediate impact, from posting a blog through to commenting on Facebook, people see this happening and can respond straight away.

Social media offers you the opportunity of two-way engagement with your customers. Giving you tools that can help you to understand how to best serve them – because they have told you what they want.

You might have noticed more and more companies are using social media as a tool to reach out to their customers, with Twitter and blogs being the most used tools. These are vital tools for companies to keep in touch with their customers. They will keep people updated with what is taking place in the company whilst offering an opportunity for feedback. Encouraging the debate is vital and by using the right social media tools you are

more likely to grow the conversation.

It is our opinion that you should experience all the key social media tools and networks available to see what’s most relevant for you. But ultimately, you want to create your own, fully branded social media environment serving as the hub for your online presence on the web.

Providing you with the interfaces to all common social media tools and networks: from your own branded social media website to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, etc. Through this document you will learn how to aggregate all the tools and how to best engage with your community.

Getting involved in social media can only help your brand grow and assist you in creating a stronger bond between you and your customers or members.

Marc Campman Marketing Director Webjam marc.campman@webjam-ltd.com

ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA

Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures and audio. { think social media } 2

You wouldn’t walk into an empty restaurant.

Would you?

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One sec...

Don’t be deceived by all the hype. There is more to social media than meets the eye.

Before venturing out into the social media landscape it’s good to break it down into bitesize chunks. These are the things we think you should know and take into account – the elements for brands to consider in the way they react and interact with each other and their customers. There’s a lot to get to grips with, much of which is vital to the success of your social media campaign.

There are many social media tools and networks available at your fingertips that can enhance your corporate reputation. On this page are some to whet your appetite.

Life Streaming An online record of daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos is a great way to constantly feed people what you are doing without being overly intrusive on their routine.

Viral Videos A viral video is a video clip that gains widespread popularity through the

9 Bringing it to life 10 Top tips

Start a blog. Get creative with words and wax lyrical about your brand, what you are doing and how you aim to achieve it.

start a blog

And get a response from those folk you are preaching too – let them respond to you. By setting up a forum you can create a hub of activity.

A place where people can contribute to the debate, channel their ideas and interact with their peers.

5 Social Media Networks This is important for getting started with social media, but if you are already confident then we suggest skipping to page 8 8 Getting going

First things first

Having a blog gives you a direct voice to your customers – you instantly become more personable and easier to reach. A blog is ‘for the people’ it’s your brand’s way of saying “we are here for you.”

Contents

11 Keeping it alive 12 Where to find Webjam 13 Social media FAQ 14 Recommended sites 15 Sources

process of Internet sharing, through email or Instant messaging, blogs and other media sharing websites.

With quality, easy to master, editing tools available more readily, companies are turning to these more often to promote their offering. By creating a top quality viral you can reach a huge audience in very little time.

Then start thinking about your social media campaign, how and who will run it and what it might involve.

NB: all sources throughout the guide are referenced on page 15

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created by Webjam Marketing marc.campman@webjam-ltd.com marketing@webjam.com

For more community interaction, tips and to find out about our social media solutions please visit www.webjam.com

Social media networks There is an overload of social media networks available on the web, but where should you start?

There are the leading social media networks out there like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - over the next few pages we offer a brief introduction to these. Secondly, there is your own branded community network that you can create with Webjam which helps bring together all your activities from the public social media networks.

Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.

Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. You can use Twitter to promote your business, blog or just to connect with people around the world.

How to utilise Twitter for your business Use Twitter to quickly: • Share information with people: Once you have set your Twitter account up you can start to send your blogs to your Twitter feed, as well as relevant company links and information.

• Gather real time feedback about your brand using Twitter’s search component and through hashtagging.

Gather up to the minute relevant information about news within your field and share it with your followers.

Ways to make the most out of Twitter Listen and react to what is being said, not just about your brand.

Contribute to discussions that are taking place within your industry and build trust amongst your peers.

Integrate your Twitter feed into your company website. It is also useful to add a ‘follow us on Twitter’ icon.

Use #hashtags to flag important things to assist in searching Twitter.

Make sure that your brand shines through onto your Twitter page.

Colours, logo and so on.

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80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter.com, people update anywhere, anytime… imagine how fast poor customer service can spread

Facebook

other social networks are available. Myspace, Hives, Hi5 etc

Facebook is a global social networking service where people can search and interact with their friends by inviting them to events, set up groups and share photos and videos. Facebook can also be used for brand representation by setting up branded fan pages which can be used for outreach to millions.

The fan page on Facebook allows you to create a site for people to easily connect and interact around your brand. It offers analytics, and an opportunity to promote your brand through people’s walls. You can integrate your fan page onto your Webjam network without any fuss.

Companies use Facebook to specifically target their audience. As everyone who subscribes shares their data with Facebook it is easy to create campaigns in which the audience is targeted to match your brand’s audience criteria – age, gender, location etc.

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Facebook Facts

Has more than 350 million active users

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2.5 billion photos uploaded each month More than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts etc) are shared each week

Facebook fan widget

65 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile device

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LinkedIn LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.

According to their website, LinkedIn says, “Your professional network of trusted contacts gives you an advantage in your career, and is one of your most valuable assets. LinkedIn exists to help you make better use of your professional network and help the people you trust in return. Our mission is to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. We believe that in a global connected economy, your success as a professional and your competitiveness as a company depends upon faster access to insight and resources you can trust.”

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80% of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees

YouTube YouTube is a video sharing site where you can upload your videos and tag them accordingly. Visitors to the site are able to view, rate and comment on your videos.

Recently YouTube has created the option for users to create their own channel in which other users can subscribe to be kept up to date with the latest news and videos.

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The amount of video uploaded to YouTube every minute is 13 hours and it would take around 412 years and counting to view every one of those videos.

The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube

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Getting going

Whether you are creating a world wide network for your clients or a simple 20 person intranet, there has never been a time or opportunity like today, where businesses can stimulate engagement and make a real difference to their communications, both internally and externally.

Making it happen Internal interaction between employees can unleash ideas for growing sales and new revenue streams, launch initiatives that improve processes and also spark ideas.

Check that to-do list. Think about what you are trying to achieve and start to put things into practice.

Sign up to Twitter, Facebook and the rest but also think about the big picture. If your Twitter page has nowhere to link to then what’s the point of it? Are you purely telling people what you had for lunch – that would be a waste of time.

First – as we have mentioned, set up a blog. You want to engage with your clients. Think about ways to communicate your business practices to others around you: communication with your customers is key to your business’ success. For companies who are trying to create intranets, a thoughtful internal blog is a great way to build a knowledge base of projects, products and company profiles.

Think of best practices for this. Think about the fact that communities are generally built around one leader – a person that will bring coherence to everything that is happening.

They enhance the engagement by responding to comments and forum posts, increasing content whilst increasing the desire to engage.

The glossary or wiki is great for internal networking too and allows a development of live documents and assists in the sharing of ideas.

That micro-blogging service that you set up when you started should now foster an inclusive environment within your organisation. People can instantly connect with each other.

Bringing it together You have the blog, you have a Twitter account, a Facebook fan page and have started uploading videos onto YouTube. What next? Everything is scattered here, there and everywhere – Webjam can bring it all together.

Webjam is a hub for all things social media, seamlessly integrate all of your social media networks in one place, not just for your benefit but for your clients benefit too.

Then think about taking it to the next level, integrate glossaries, forums and more. { think social media } 8

Use it to spark debate externally or to communicate with customers.

Various companies are using Twitter as a means for contacting and assisting customers with problems.

Make sure you are continuously fuelling the debate. By encouraging a natural base for everything you also encourage a free flowing community.

“Activity is the new content.”

Bringing it to life Listen, understand, create, engage and measure.

Getting your social media project off the ground is an exciting prospect and it is critical that you take everything into consideration. If you plan meticulously and stick to your plan you will be onto a winner.

We’ve created four steps to creating the perfect social media strategy.

2. Create

The second phase is where we develop and seed content. Feeding the tribes with relevant and interesting objects.

This can be tools, widgets, apps, videos, photos, ideas, assets or any other content, as long as it is relevant to various communities.

Basic levels of content will be created but the essence of social media is that we enable the various communities to generate their own content (User Generated Content). This will be of particular use in the next phase.

1. Scope In the first phase we define the key stakeholders in the community and listen to what they are saying and what tools they are using. What are their conversations about, what do they need, who are the leaders and who are the followers? We will segment these stakeholders using their level of social media involvement.

Once we have identified the key players and grouped them in ”tribes”, we give them something they belong to. Something they can join. In social media terms this is called joining a community.

4. Measure By offering the community the right social media platform with the right social media tools , content will be shared, will be replicated and will ultimately drive the creation of new content, communities and forums.

This is the engine of your social media outreach. We call this the social media centrifuge. Good content will lead to new activities which will lead to new content.

3. Act

This is one of the most important phases in the social media engagement. Mingling with the tribes.

Play their games, have conversations and connected experiences, using their preferred tools (blogs, video, photo, micro blogging, email etc.).

It’s about enabling, encouragement and optimisation for sharing content.

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This is where you measure the effectiveness of your social media outreach. Whether you achieve the anticipated results. In Webjam we do this in three levels of sophistication.

From traffic analysis to community engagement and brand sentiment analysis. This data can then be used as input to fine-tune the strategy and improve the creation of new communities and content.

Keeping it alive

Making sure you are consistent in updating your social media tools as well as monitoring your progress.

Once you are all set up on the social media bandwagon how can you tell if you are running a successful campaign?

The number of followers and the amount of friends you have, to the outsider are both signs of how you are progressing, but remember how important engagement is. It will take time, don’t expect results overnight.

Traffic is an obvious way of measuring social media. You should measure your site visitors each week and note whether the campaign is making a difference to visitors to your site. Using software such as Google Analytics you are able to monitor where the visitors are coming from - for example if you put a link at the end of a blog you are able to see the visits from that link to your site.

You are able to use various analytics websites to measure how specific links effect your traffic.

Bit.ly allows users to shorten their URL and to measure how many clicks the corresponding link has received, where the click was made and at what time they clicked. Perfect for measuring the success of a particular link or style of post.

Interactions on your site are a valuable indication of how well your social media campaign is going. It reflects the traffic you are gaining from your campaign; activity is a major part of the content on your site. Engaging customers

are increasingly valuable to you – they show that your campaign is working – and you should keep your eyes peeled for interaction of any sort across all social media.

You are able to track what is being said about your brand on Twitter using the Twitter search engine – this tracks who has mentioned your brand over a period of time.

This is valuable for starting conversations with potential clients.

But how does this translate to sales and leads?

Let’s take the example of Dell, who are one of the most visible companies actively using social media. Dell have announced that they have generated revenue of $6.5million from their Twitter presence (a small percentage of the company’s overall revenue of $60 billion) – they have around 3 million connections across social media and almost 1.5 million followers on @DellOutlet. The revenue marks a huge growth in revenue via social media.

These days it’s easy for consumers to switch from one brand to another. By being engaged with your customers both online and offline, through your website, blog or through social networking sites those customers will feel an allegiance to your company. It’s essential to use all the tools at your disposal, customer engagement is imperative to improved satisfaction and loyalty. Through listening and engaging, not only is service improved, but customers will feel a sense of belonging which eventually will lead to recommendations and increased revenue.

Being engaged with these users assists in customer retention too. It’s a bit like a restaurant’s reputation. Think about the decision you take when visiting a restaurant - if it’s empty do you venture in on the off-chance? People are more likely to be drawn to your product or service if there is a high level of conversation taking place on the site.

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Where to find Webjam Webjam is using social media in various ways.

Here is how we are leveraging it to our benefit.

Webjam is using various social Webjam on Twitter media channels as a way of @webjamdotcom enhancing customer satisfaction and to keep updated with what is Webjam is using Twitter as a base for our social media presence. We happening in the 2.0 world.

Webjam on Webjam www.webjam.com

Webjam is the ideal place for creating and managing your online community. It’s possible to aggregate the best social media tools available on the web into one place.

“Webjam offers customers the ability to create and tailor a social media solution to their organisation’s needs.”

The Webjam platform offers customers the ability to create and tailor a social media solution to their organisation’s needs. From large company intranets to multi-language inter-linked sites around a global event, through to fan sites for actors & musicians.

use Twitter to interact, learn and communicate with our followers.

A dedicated team update our status on a daily basis answering questions asked by our users and offering useful content to our followers. We Retweet what people we are following have said and offering their relevant links to our followers.

We follow people who hold relevance to our industry such as @ GuardianTech, @Techcrunch and @ Mashable, all of whom can offer us up to the minute information about our industry.

Webjam has automatic feeds straight from our blog. We use Twitterfeed for this function. It not only saves time but also lets people know when you have updated your blog.

By using Bit.ly we are able to monitor our tweets. What is a successful post or link? We can see click rates and the area that the click was made – all in real time. { think social media } 11

Webjam on LinkedIn

www.linkedin.com/companies/ webjam Webjam has created a company profile on LinkedIn. It is easy for users to see people who work for the company and find ways to get in contact. The LinkedIn profile allows people to see key statistics and information about the company.

Webjam on Facebook

The way we use Facebook differs slightly from Twitter. It’s used by more people and a slightly different type of user too. Where Twitter is filled with many 2.0 heads, Facebook has millions of regular Joes using the platform to interact with friends.

Webjam has created a fan page on Facebook which offers a different reach. We can upload photo, video and more as well as link through to blog posts using Twitterfeed.

Using the different platforms to reach different crowds is a classic way to utilise social media. Some information is repeated on both with other info staying specifically for one targeted audience.

Top tips

Be careful who you listen to on the web. It’s not all true and the so called ‘social media experts’ can get you into more trouble than it’s worth. Here are our top tips for using social media.

Follow the 80/20 rule (at least) - Social media isn’t 80/20 rule 100% about marketing so it’s vital that you have conversations and engage with your customers. When using Twitter or Facebook, always refer to the 80/20 rule where 20% of your posts can be self promotion and the other 80% should be external. Retweet what people have to say, link to other blogs, videos and so on.

always follow the

Be confident about your subject - You want to be seen in your subject as a leader in the field so make sure that you know what you are talking about. Be confident and speak with authority on the subject.

confidence

Post frequently - Keep a sense of continuity on your blog. Try often and well and post once a week and always respond to comments posted.

blog

here are our top social media tips

Engage - Answer questions and show a willingness to with your users interact with posters. The key to creating quality social media is to be engaging, part of this is creating conversations. It must be two way.

engage

Be insightful - Share your knowledge with your customers/readers. If you have something of value to them they will appreciate you sharing these insights. Tips and tricks are so valuable, and if you are knowledgeable on the subject then sharing will put you in a good light and leave people wanting to come back for more.

share your valuable

insights

Listen - Take on board any suggestions made, be reactionary – it inspires confidence in people and a willingness to interact thus assisting in the two way conversations.

listen and be

reactionary

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Social media FAQ

Still want more? Here are some of the questions that we get asked most frequently. Oh, and the answers too.

How do I get people to comment on my blog?

Unless you are Barack Obama this won’t happen overnight. Start by telling your friends and colleagues.

If your posts are good then you will see more people visiting your blog. However, only 1% of people visiting your site will post comments - voyeurism is rife on the internet so don’t despair if it doesn’t happen straight away. Spread the word, give it time and be patient.

Why is Twitter important?

Twitter brings new visitors to your site and can advertise your brand to a new audience. It’s a great way to quickly interact with potential new business.

How much should I share?

Sharing and interacting is vital to building your profile throughout the web, but how much should you share with your community? Webjam offers various privacy settings where you can decide who sees what, from photos to comments. As a brand it is important to get the biggest reach which also means allowing everyone to see the things you update.

reactionary to what people are saying and offer up insights and answers to some of the questions being posed.

How often should I post?

Post when you have something valuable to talk about. Try and make it once a week as a minimum. On the various platforms you should attempt to comment and post updates more frequently. Make sure you are doing more than self promotion. People want to see varied, valuable content that they can relay to others.

If we open up to comments, won’t people criticise us?

What is the difference between Lots of companies fear joining social social media and word-of-mouth? networks as they are worried about being bad mouthed by competitors and other people who use their product or service. But social media actually offers a great way to interact and protect your product. You can be

‘Social media’ is a collection of online web sites, where communities interact with each other, such as Twitter. Word-of-mouth is a reference to the passing of information from person to person.

The people { think social media } 13

involved may not be friends, or even know each other, but it’s certainly a very powerful thing to harness. The combined power is even stronger.

Social media is like word of mouth on steroids.

How many social media sites should I use?

There is such an abundance of social media sites and it can be hard to know which ones and how many to use. Generally using up to 5 sites is recommended, any more and you may struggle to manage them. You will be able to master these and keep on top of happenings within the sites.

Part of being successful at social media is the ability to build profiles and a reputation on each site you are a member of. Being on 100 sites makes this a difficult task.

Recommended sites

As you have learnt social media is more than simply Twitter or a blog. Here are some other social media tools on offer.

Delicious www.delicious.com

Issuu www.issuu.com

Tumblr www.tumblr.com

Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

Issuu is a free online tool that you can use to make your PDF pages turn like a book or magazine.

Digg www.digg.com

Posterous www.posterous.com

Digg is a social news website made for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Internet, by submitting links and stories, and voting and commenting on submitted links and stories. Voting stories up and down is the site’s cornerstone function, respectively called digging and burying.

Posterous is a simple micro-blogging platform that boasts integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes.

Tumblr is a blogging platform that allows users to post text, images, video, links, quotes, and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog.

Users are able to “follow” other users and see their posts together on their dashboard. Users can like or reblog other blogs on the site. The service emphasises customisability and ease of use.

Flickr www.flickr.com A community of photographers who want to share their work with people around the world. People can download images and use them in varying ways depending on their copyright status.

Friend Feed www.friendfeed.com FriendFeed is a real-time feed aggregator that consolidates the updates from social media and social networking websites, social bookmarking websites, blogs and micro-blogging updates, as well as any other type of RSS feed.

StumbleUpon www.stumbleupon.com StumbleUpon is an Internet community that allows its users to discover and rate web pages, photos, and videos. It is a personalised recommendation engine which uses peer and social-networking principles.

Scribd www.scribd.com Scribd is a document-sharing website which allows users to post documents of various formats, and embed them into a web page using its iPaper format. Scribd currently has 50,000 documents uploaded daily.

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Wikipedia www.wikipedia.com Wikipedia is a free web-based collaborative encyclopedia project.

It contains over 14 million articles all of which have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world.

Wuffoo www.wuffoo.com Wufoo is an Internet application that helps anybody build online forms.

Sources

We didn’t make up the facts in this document. That’s part of the joy of social media - it’s all there for people to share.

Page 5 - 80% of Twitter usage is outside of Twitter… people update anywhere, anytime… imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?

Images taken from Flickr.com under the creative commons licence.

Social Media Revolution video

Page 2 - Helter Skelter by Angelina www.flickr.com/photos/angelinawb

Page 6 - Facebook facts taken from www.facebook.com/ press/info

Page 11 - Santa Monica Pier by Szeke www.flickr.com/photos/pedrosz

Page 7 - % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%

Page 12 - Coogee Beach www.flickr.com/photos/powerhouse_museum

Jobvite Social Recruitment Survey

page 13 English Beach by mauve.simian www.flickr.com/photos/mauvesimian

Page 7 - The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube.

TGDaily / Cone, Business in Social Media Study, 2008 Page 11 - Dell information taken from Mashable.com

Page 14 - Blyth beach huts byfreefotouk www.flickr.com/photos/freefoto Page 15 - Red by Cadj www.flickr.com/photos/8262646@N06

Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the content of this document is copyright © Webjam. All rights expressly reserved.

Webjam can not be held liable for the content of this document and for the accuracy of the links given and for the content of the websites which can be reached through them.

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open up your brand

Interested in finding out more about what Webjam can do for you?

Contact our Business Development team at bizdev@webjam.com

www.webjam.com