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Social Media Made Easy 2.0 Take the necessary steps to grow your business. 2 | Made Easy 2.0 - Table of Contents

Table of Contents Introduction 3 4 11 19 + 23 LinkedIn 26 32 Yelp 37 40 Living Social 44 In Closing 48 3 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Introduction

Introduction

Does this sound familiar? “ don’t do facebook.” “It seems like a complete waste of time.” “Why would care what I had for dinner?” “I don’t want people all up in my business.” These are the words of friends, co-workers, and family members. These are the words of people that either do not want to get engaged or maybe are just a little confused about how to. This guide has been developed for those that are interested in participating, but may be confused with all of the options, terminology, and ins and outs of the various social networking sites. Despite what some may think, social networking is not new. Social networks have been around for far longer than we have been online. We’ve all belonged to social networks, and we still participate in social networks whether we realize it or not. More importantly, social media use has skyrocketed in the last , with a 356% increase in the U.S. alone. This social networking guide will help understand some of the most popular social networking sites - both for businesses and individuals. Have you ever met someone at a social gathering and found that you didn’t have much to talk about until you found out you both went to the same college? Suddenly, you have plenty to talk about. Social networking online is not much different. At first, you may find yourself alone, but as you partici- pate, your list will grow. And, like life, the more you participate, the more you will get out of it. Social networking is about engagement and building relationships. We hope this guide will help get you started and give you the confidence you need to get off the fence. 4 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Facebook

Facebook

What is Facebook? Facebook is a social networking service and . Facebook has more than 900 million , who may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Facebook users must register before using the site. Additionally, users may join common-interest groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics.

Why Your Business Should Join Facebook If you have a business, and you’re not on Facebook, you’re passing up a fantastic opportunity to grow your business and connect with potential customers. Facebook is one of the most powerful tools for new businesses building a presence online. If you’re not making the most of the possibilities it offers, you are not doing everything you can to attract new business. Social media sites, like Facebook, are revolutionizing the way businesses connect with customers. Your business should be a part of that.

Facebook Basics for Your Business

Facebook Pages Profiles exist for individuals who use Facebook, and pages exist for businesses, causes and organizations (referred to as “business” from here on out for simplicity). The page needs to be associated with an e-mail address for the person in charge of the entity. You start the process by providing contact information, adding an image (company or a picture identifying your company), notifying your fans, assigning administrators (the people who will have control and access to the page for posting and managing), and promoting the page.

Facebook Groups While a page is created by the business and associated with someone who runs the page, groups are supposed to be created by those outside the business who want to talk about the business. The best analogy for a Facebook group is that it is like a that the business itself does not sponsor or participate in.

Facebook Ads Facebook ads allow you to promote your business to the 900 million users of the site. You can hone in on demographics to be associated with your ad such as location and age and pay only when the ad is clicked upon. This is a great tool to use once you have the Facebook page up and running and want to draw more attention (in the form of potential customers) to it. Facebook ads are not very expensive and you can easily experiment with them. 5 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Facebook

Facebook Places Facebook Places is an application that lets users “check-in” to businesses and locations on their , so friends know where they’re hanging out and what they’re doing. If a business has their address updated on their Facebook page, the check-in application will recognize the user’s location and will update the check-in through the business page. If the location is not reconized, users can “create a place”. The user can add a title and details to this “place” and save it to Facebook’s database.

Businesses can claim these places by searching for their name in the Facebook search bar. When they find Places that users created for the business, they simply “claim” the page through a verification of ownership process. Once the Place is claimed by the business, users can check-in directly to the business with the check-in application.

Define Your Goal for Your Business on Facebook You will need to ensure that you create your social networking strategy on Facebook, as well as build a professional and appealing page on Facebook.

Find Quality Business Connections on Facebook You can find quality business connections on Facebook by doing a direct search in your niche through the Facebook search bar. Search for businesses that appeal to your business, demonstrate similar interests or personalities, and are somehow related to your business, but are not direct competitors. Give them a “Like” by clicking the “Like” button at the top of their page, and chances are they will return the favor.

Create a Company Blog and Link to Your Facebook Business Page Create articles based on your niche on Facebook that will import from your blog or website. You should also create videos based on your niche on Facebook.

How Your Business Can Use Facebook Effectively

How Often Should You Post on Facebook? Writing once a day is great. If you are writing every half hour or every hour, it would definitely be too much. With that said, you may have times when you want to update your status on Facebook more often than once a day, depending on how much you need to communicate and how much is going on in your business. Always ensure that you post content that your readers find interesting and relevant. The more useful the information, the more often they will return to your website or Facebook page.

Think Content The most effective way to drive interactions on your Facebook page is by creating fresh and unique content. Your followers can start a discussion when they have an interesting topic to tackle. Don’t blast your network with promotional materials, but post content valuable to the community. Rest assured they will want to share that further. 6 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Facebook

Stay in Touch Constantly Respond to fans and people who “like” your company as many times as possible. If they have a question or a request, spend the time to address these. Though this takes time, it helps strengthen your and drive happy reviews.

Graphics Matter Using images and photos on Facebook is critical to attracting people’s attention. messages present an effective channel that more companies can now leverage. Even a simple step like letting people tag your photos can turn into a great opportunity. Not only do graphic images create higher levels of engagement with fans, but when you allow people to tag themselves (and their friends), it will generate more exposure for your company over this vast social media platform.

Don’t be -ey Publishing your own content on Facebook depends on the frequency and character of your . If you have an active blog that is not product-oriented, but provides resources your fans will find educational, share these links. Same goes for your new videos and presentations.

Become an Industry Resource Though Facebook seems like a great marketing channel for business-to-customer companies like and Coca-Cola, it is also successfully used by many business-to-business companies. B2B companies can use Facebook to “become an industry resource.”

Facebook Timeline Facebook Timeline is the newest layout available for personal and business pages. This unique layout divides your profile into two main columns, with a line down the middle representing the passage of time. The very top of your page lists your notifications, new likes, page insights, private messages, and even page tips. Fans can every post, photo, video, and status update from your business, since the inception of the Facebook page. In addition to uploading a profile picture, you are able to create a unique cover photo to showcase your brand.

Distribute Power Social media for business should be distributed among several team members. That gives you the opportunity to experiment with different communication styles and add a richer set of content ideas and engagement tactics. It is important that everyone on your team is on the same page for when to post, what to post, and how to respond to critism and feedback. Too many people getting involved can make it tricky for your business to stay organized and put forth a unified voice for the company. 7 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Facebook

Facebook Tools for Your Business The engineers at Facebook have been busy fine-tuning and adding new features lately, prompting the following primer on what’s new and - more important - what these developments mean for your business. Included among the additions and changes, there’s now a “Send” button for , “Deals” on Facebook, and its “Questions” function is live. Further, Facebook has added page insights for Business Page Administrators, and enhanced its Comment Box plug-in for websites.

Send Button Once installed on your website, Facebook’s “Send” button makes it possible for visitors to privately share your website content with their individual Facebook friends and groups. Unlike the “Like” button, which when clicked posts a Like notification on the Facebook user’s own Wall and Feed, the “Send” button enables one-to-one peer sharing of your content using Facebook’s Message platform. This is important for your business because visitors to your website can now share your content with only the peers or groups they want as opposed to all of their Facebook friends in a public setting via the “Like” button.

Deals Facebook deals give businesses the opportunity to reward customers when they check-in on Facebook, and this helps generate awareness, encourage in-store traffic, and build customer loyalty. There are four types of deals: Individual, Loyalty, Friend, and Charity Deals. Individual deals allow a business to offer fans a one-time deal, such as “Get 20% off your entire purchase” when you check-in. Loyalty deals require fans to check-in to a business a specified number of times (declared by the business) before they can receive the special offer (such as free appetizer with your 5th check-in). Friend deals encourage fans to bring in more customers to a particular business to get a special deal. For , a business can offer a deal for free T-shirts if a fan checks-in and tags 5 of their friends. Charity deals show people that you care about more than just the bottom line. You can create a charity deal to make a donation in the amount of your choice, to the charity of your choice, each time someone claims your deal. With each of these deals, the business decides the type, amount, dates/ times, and restrictions.

Questions Tapping into our collective , “Questions” allow users to poll friends on any number of issues. With “Questions”, Facebook users receive meaningful answers from the people they know and trust. “Questions” provides yet another way for your business to engage customers and gain access to critical insights that help drive product and service innovation.

Page Insights Facebook added a great tool for administrators of a Business Page that gives statistical of pertinent information for the business. This tool tracks the total amount of likes, friends of fans, people talking about the business, and the weekly total reach of the posts that are made each day. With this tool, businesses can track when people are talking about them, what types of posts fans are engag- ing with, and how many peole are to their posts. This tool has become so evolved that 8 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Facebook businesses can track every individual post to find the total reach, number of engaged users, amount of people talking about it, and the percentage of virality of the post.

Enhanced Comments Once installed on your website or blog, Facebook’s Comment Box plug-in allows users visiting your site to comment on your content and, if they choose, have their comments shared via Facebook. The enhanced feature here brings social relevance to the mix, allowing Facebook users to see comments from their friends and friends of friends before those from people they’re unfamiliar with. Deploying Facebook’s Comment Box plug-in increases the likelihood that you’ll experience higher levels of engagement and improve the quality of comments on your site.

What to Post Now that you’ve setup a Facebook Page you’re probably wondering what you should post. What you post really depends on a few things: What type of business are you? What’s your personality? What are your goals?

Three Places to Find Great Content Even for professional writers, creating great content on a regular basis can be a real struggle. And while not every blog, Twitter, or Facebook post needs to be mind-blowing or all-inclusive (spread long content over time), you do want to deliver something of value to your customers, members, investors, and prospects every time they see your organization’s name. So how do you make life easy for yourself? 1. Don’t think too hard. Obviously being thoughtful is really important and you want to show the world how smart you are. But you don’t actually need to think hard to provide people with something of value.

Remember: No one knows your business better than you do and people are probably coming to your page because they already see you as an authority figure. Proactively providing answers to questions they might have, summarizing industry articles or books you have read, and sharing insightful videos with some key take- aways can all get you moving in the right direction. 2. Capture your own conversations. Creating content is about telling , and you have stories in your life every day. One of the best sources of social content is to play back interesting conversations that you’re having with your friends, family, or customers relating to your business. Share a customers’ success story or how you might be doing something different, relay a discussion about a product that you recently had, or key takeaways from an event you attended. Your life is full of great stories that your readers could find interesting. 9 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Facebook

3. Know your audience. Every organization is different and every audience has its own set of needs and goals and preferences. Whether formally (a survey) or informally (casual conversations) you need to find out what people are looking for from you via your social networks. Are they looking for coupons? For inside information? Advice? Short tips? Long articles? All of those insights can help narrow down the number of options you might have and tell your stories in the most appropriate way.

One-Size-Fits-All Posting Guidelines

How Often Should You Post? The key is consistency. If you post every hour, every day for a month, and then go radio silent for a week, it will throw your fans off. Find a frequency that works for your schedule, and your audience, and stick to it.

Should You Take Down Comments or Posts? First, consider creating company or organization guidelines for appropriate Facebook content. It’s important to show your fans that you’re a transparent, authentic organization, so resist the urge to delete a negative comment, unless it’s in clear violation of your policy. Instead, use a negative comment as an opportunity to showcase your customer service and empathy, and as a learning opportunity for what you can improve.

How Much (or How Little) Should You Respond to Comments? You want to give your fans some room to form your brand community with you. That means be responsive to their questions and post content to spark interaction, but let fans talk to each other without you at the center. Finding this balance can be a challenge, but when you do, it gives you a chance to listen, and your fans the chance to develop a deeper relationship with your brand.

Facebook is About Individual People Connecting We know this is probably obvious, but we’ll say it anyway: Facebook is about individual people connecting. So when you’re putting content on your page, think about what they’ll like as people, not just as potential customers. The great thing about Facebook is that it lets you humanize your brand, so people really get to have a relationship with it. This means you can be a little more conversational with your customers, but you should still be sure you’re posting things that fit with what your brand’s all about. Don’t forget that your brand stands for something, and what works for you might not work for other businesses. For example, a toothpaste brand could post about hygiene and funky tooth facts, but a laundry detergent brand might post about stain removal, or maybe even fashion. 10 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Facebook

Be Smart The best way to get noticed and to develop a following is to become an industry resource. How do you let people know you’re smart? Post links to blog posts about your industry, or even highlight the good work of your competitors when it makes sense.

Be Friendly • Share company traditions, photos of your staff, and updates on internal events and celebrations. Showing that you’re human will help you stand out in the crowd. • Let your customers know they’re on your mind. • Wish them Happy Birthday, highlight one of their achievements, or share a photo of them from a past event.

Nonprofit Content

Spread Your Mission Facebook is a great place for Nonprofits to connect supporters with their mission. Here’s what you should keep in mind when promoting your nonprofit on Facebook: • People on Facebook love to talk about issues they care about, and this is good news for nonprofits. Share photos of the rainforest you preserved, the people you fed, or the puppies you saved. The best part of a nonprofit page is that people really like to “Like” you and share their causes with friends. • Don’t expect Facebook to drive direct donations–but do use it to help people get to know your mission and the great things you do. That way, when you run your donor campaigns, they already know you and they’ll want to support you.

Get Your Supporters Involved As a Nonprofit some of your main goals are probably to raise awareness, inspire action, and collect donations. Luckily Facebook has a way to help you reach each of these goals. • Add the Causes App to take donations and raise awareness. Visit http://www.facebook.com/causes to install the app. • Just like B2C, get close to your supporters. Wish them Happy Birthday, highlight one of their achievements, or show photos of them getting involved. 11 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter

Twitter

What is Twitter? Twitter is a platform for posting very short messages (also called “tweets”) of 140 characters or less. There are many websites and applications you can use to post to and read. You only receive tweets from people you choose to follow.

Twitter Basics

Tweet A post (also known as a status update) to Twitter are commonly called tweets to differentiate them from Facebook status updates or blog posts. Tweeting interesting links others would find helpful is a sure way to gain more followers.

Followers, Following, and Friends The beauty of Twitter is you can craft your own Twitter sphere by choosing to follow certain people. To do this, navigate to that user’s Twitter homepage and click on the “Follow” button. You will now see that user’s tweets when you’re logged in to Twitter.

@username To reply to or reference another Twitter user, put the @ symbol in front of their username. Twitter will automatically link the @username text to the user’s Twitter home page.

# By placing a in front of a keyword in your tweet, Twitter can categorize tweets to show easily in Twitter Search. People can click on the hashtagged word in any message and it will show all of the Tweets in that category. If your account is public, anyone who does a search for that hashtag may find your Tweet.

RT or “retweet” To “retweet” means to post someone else’s tweet and crediting them with it. The convention for retweeting is to put “RT @username” in front of the tweet you are retweeting. It’s polite to leave the original tweet as unedited as possible, though it’s acceptable to edit the tweet for length or clarity.

DM or “direct message” These are private tweets that can only be seen by the recipient. You can only send direct messages to people who are following you, so you can’t use DMs for . 12 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter

Twitter Clients, Apps and Tools Twitter’s decision to have a wide-open API (letting developers access all the same public data available to itself) is critical for their success. It is because of this API that Twitter has become more of a platform than a service. A lot of websites, iPhone apps, desktop programs, and other Twitter clients have sprung up to make it easier for you to interact with Twitter. Some Twitter apps use the available data for statistics. For example, you can use Twitter Counter to track the number of followers you have over time. You don’t need to install one of these 3rd-party clients to use Twitter. You can always use the basics of tweeting from the Twitter website or via SMS text messages.

How Your Business Can Use Twitter Effectively

How Often You Should Tweet It probably isn’t a great idea or even necessary for a business to tweet more than 10 times per day. Most users are far more likely to tolerate a high level of tweets from an individual than they are from a business, so it is important to keep your tweet levels in line with their expectations. Just remember that quality is better than quantity.

Keep Out There Tweet often enough that your name stays in front of your audience. Take into consideration that your followers are probably following hundreds, if not thousands, of others. Many of those people are tweeting at the same time you are and distracting your audience from your tweets. Don’t get lost in the mix. Utilizing Twitter as a marketing tool allows for interactive marketing. Interactive marketing is critical to building a business relationship. Since Twitter is a tool through which its users can reach their audiences in real-time, you have the opportunity to build relationships with your followers in real-time. If someone sends a reply to one of your tweets, try to respond right away. Building conversations is one way to make friends. If you have a lot of followers, don’t ignore them; reply to their tweets as well.

Let Your Followers Get to Know You Take time to get to know your audience and give them a chance to get to know you. Once you have begun to build a relationship with your followers, you will have the opportunity to present your marketing offers. They will be much better received that way. By then they will know your personality, your business, and you have been up to. They will trust you and your tweets will translate into sales.

Maintain a Complete and Current Bio You have 160 characters to make your case on a Twitter bio. Make them count. Create an engaging, personal, and informative description of what you and your business is about, and make it interesting to potential new followers. Maximize your use of what little real estate Twitter gives you, and remember to embed your profile with associated keywords so that those searching profiles for business expertise can find you. 13 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter

Don’t Shorten Your URL or Web Address on Your Bio Page Include the complete address so they know where they’re going when they click on the link. If you want or need to shorten your URL, use a branded URL shortener like tinyurl.com or bit.ly. Otherwise, since there is no limitation on the size of your URL on your Twitter bio, don’t make it look like every follower who visits your home page is only a mere metric in your dashboard.

Investigate All Links You Plan on Retweeting Unless you know the source of the Tweet as a trusted authority on a subject and have followed them for awhile, don’t retweet a link unless you’ve been there and know what information you’re passing along. There’s nothing worse than sending your followers to a dead link, especially if it’s pointing them to a questionable website selling snake-oil. Ultimately, this will hurt your and you will lose followers.

Don’t Spam Your Followers Yes, you have a great product or service and you want to get the word out. However, Tweeting exclusively about it will only annoy people and again, you’re trying to build brand loyalty and establish yourself as a useful resource. Be prudent when sending a message on Twitter about your own products by spacing them out between other valuable Tweets.

Use Good Manners, Just Like in the Offline World Of all the etiquette tips, this is just good common sense. If someone retweets your link or information, if at all possible, thank them. Remember, if one of your followers retweets your information or link, it’s going out to all of their followers. This shows trust, and trust is a keystone in any business. Show your appreciation, and people will be more likely to retweet your offerings again and again.

Stay Away From Controversial Subjects The old adage applies here – politics and religion are incendiary topics, and may bring you more trouble than they’re worth. If you’re on a personal account, the sky’s the limit and you can debate anything you like. However, in a business setting, unless it directly pertains to your product or service, it may to leave these subjects for another time or account.

Don’t Buy into Personal Attacks, if They Occur There’s one in every crowd, and Twitterville is no exception. The of text communication means a definite margin of misunderstanding because there’s no way to hear someone’s tone of voice or observe their body language. What may be meant as a joke could escalate into something more negative, but it’s wise to just walk away if it seems a conversation is deteriorating into something contentious. It’s just not worth it.

Have Fun with it! Yes, you may be using Twitter primarily to promote your business or service, but there’s no reason it has to be hard work. Twitter users are savvy, smart, and can pick up on the nuances of personality through the tweets of others. Make your messages personable, interesting, and lively. Keep an eye 14 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter on the information passing through your own timeline and become involved. Twitter is truly the most “social” of the social networking platforms that exist. Take advantage of this to benefit your business. Twitter is a great platform in which you can promote and build your business and brand loyalty, but it’s a two-way street. It may sound funny, but you must engage in order to engage, keeping in mind these are real people behind those tweets that you see. Not only are these your potential clients or customers, but they’re potential friends, as well. Making strong connections with other people is what tweeting is all about.

Why Would You Want Quality Followers? By targeting and acquiring followers in your niche, you will be bringing users to your Twitter profile that are far more likely to check out your blog. By targeting these users from your niche, you have the potential to get your @username exposed to thousands of people interested in the topic you’re tweeting and blogging about. Short of getting a premium user to follow you, getting them to send you an @reply should be your second goal. However, these people generally get a lot of messages, so what you say to them must be useful and interesting. A niche Twitter follower is someone in your niche with a large “footprint Twitter” who is an established member that people trust. This person may be an industry leader, a popular company, an author, a famous chef, cook, or just someone with a ton of followers – you get the idea. Normally these people have large followers on Twitter and have a lot of influence. It is these people who can help your blog get a good rank as they are more interested in your niche. Thus, you have to target more of such people if you want to get more traffic. Your ultimate goal is to make them return to your site. This will ensure more numbers of niche followers to your site immediately or in the . The term future is used in this context because new users tend to search for known or famous people in their area of interest and see who they follow. If you are on this list, then you are in a great position to get the person’s authority and trust for a long time.

How You Can Get Quality Followers

Follow the Big Guns in Your Niche Find the people or which are the most influential in your niche.This will help you to analyze which techniques they are using to get quality followers. Moreover, you can interact with their followers to tell them about your blog or product. You can easily find big guns in your niche using services like twellow and wefollow.

Turn Apart from following high profile users in your niche, you may also subscribe to their websites or through RSS. This step is important because it can inform you what is essential to them. Tweeting and/or sending them a reply to the topic that you know they are interested in or promote will improve your chance of getting a reply from them. 15 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter

Use Real-Time Twitter Search Real-time Twitter Search is a great way to find followers of your choice. You can use it to find people and hot discussions related to your niche or product. Get involved in the discussion going around and this will help get more quality followers.

Use #hashtags as Keywords in Tweets Hashtags are like keyword tags that help label your tweets. Keyword tags allow people to more easily find related content of interest. Adding hashtags to your tweets will give more exposure to your tweets and people can search the hashtag and will then be directed to your tweets.

Be Engaged The main purpose of creating Twitter is engagement. Engage with your followers using @replies. If they ask any question or say something to their followers, reply to them. This engagement will make good impact on those who will visit your profile and they will not hesitate to follow you.

Show Retweet Love Retweeting other Twitter users tweets related to your niche shows your support to them. In return, they might retweet your tweets, which will make a way for you to get more quality followers.

Send Quality Tweets To get more quality followers, quality tweets is the key. Tweets should be beneficial for your community. It doesn’t mean that you only tweet about your product or blog articles, but also about yourself. For example if you are tweeting 10 times about your product, one tweet should be related to you.

Use a Customized Background Design If you have an attractive, well designed and informational customized background design on Twitter, people will easily know who you are. You can better brand your product or blog using catchy images, and text in the custom background. It will give your profile a professional touch, and people who will be interested in your services will follow you. You should also use your logo as your avatar.

Promote Your Twitter Profile This is one of the most important and simple way to get quality Twitter followers. Promote your Twitter profile on your blog or website using your profile link or Twitter button. If people like your product or service, they might follow you on Twitter to get latest updates from you. If you are using Twitter to create a dialogue with interesting people then having a large amount of followers will be good for you. However, if you are using it to promote a business, quality is definitely a better barometer. 16 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter

Other Options There are many ways to get followers. In addition to seeking out new followers, you can also gain new followers by: • Adding your Twitter ID to your website, blog, e-mail signature, , and other social networks. • Joining forums relevant to your topic and adding your Twitter ID to your signature, as well as any lists of forum members on Twitter. • Using your Twitter URL as a website URL when commenting on blogs on your subject of interest.

Topics Businesses Can Tweet About

Answers Think about the questions your customers and prospects asked you this past week. Or maybe there are the repeat questions you’ve already answered on the FAQ page of your website. To get started, create a list of questions and answer them in your tweets one by one—paying particular attention to the most relevant at this time. For example, focus on seasonal questions, current rates and discounts, promotions and sales or commonly asked how-to’s in your business and industry. Save the list and add to it as you go along. What you don’t use this week may make even more sense a few weeks from now.

Behind the Scenes Here is where you have the opportunity to share updates about the projects and work you’re currently involved in. You can also use behind the scenes as an opportunity to welcome a new or feature any other new development. Give readers or followers an inside look at your company.

Case Studies Dust off those case studies and offer them via your tweets for immediate download. Another option is to repurpose the material by pulling out 140-character messages that will wow your Twitter followers.

Daily Deals Use tweets to announce a daily deal you’re offering or one you’ve signed on with Groupon (or another daily deal site) by pushing out a message to gain optimal attention (e.g., “Today $6 general admission ticket to Museum of Science and —up to a $12 value.”)

Events When you’re hosting or attending an event, you can send out a tweet to let followers know about it. Perhaps your company has a booth, so you might send out multiple tweets during to let conference attendees know where they can find you. Tweeting about live events fits Twitter like a glove. The immediacy of getting out messages about start times is particularly useful in the business world, especially when you’re at an in-person conference or hosting a live webinar. Sending out follow-up tweets about an event is also a great way for webinar hosts to answer questions that may not have been fully addressed during the event. 17 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter

Factoid These types of tweets are the one-liner statistics that impact your industry, or are current events and newsworthy for a variety of reasons. They demonstrate your company’s commitments and interests, and add they personality to your business.

Guide Customers may be new to Twitter, blogs, and social networking sites. You can use your tweets as a way to educate them about the process and integrate your blog posts with your Twitter messages. Tweets themselves can be teaching tools about .

Keywords Web content (and print content for that matter) has always been about the use of keywords. Twitter is no exception. Good Twitter content makes use of relevant words and messages. Make a list of keywords that best describe your business and industry. Use these words as you compose your 140-character posts. Think quality over quantity. Make every character and tweet count!

Meme In a post by Sam Rosen, “5 Ways to Get the Support of Social Media Influencers”, he discusses the importance of memetic content. He writes, “No Fear is a meme. The Flugtag is a meme. It’s something that people can identify with, make their own, and share with others.” Think of the possibilities of short memetic-type tweets. If you have a tagline that speaks to people and gets your company and brand noticed, you can further expand its reach by including it in a series of tweets. The point being that tweets can have a theme to them. You can extract messages from larger bodies of work and group them together in an on-going series.

News Twitter has been instrumental in helping break important stories about local and global events. One-quarter of all Twitter posts include a link to another piece or pieces of content, such as a news story or video. Twitter has 140 million unique monthly visitors who post 400 million tweets per day, so that’s a lot of content zooming across the platform.

Opinion Using opinions in tweets is a good way to make it possible for your customers and followers to get to know more about you and your company. Opinion tweets can be seen as brief editorials. For example, if your product is environmentally friendly, you can create green-oriented posts that reflect issues beyond your product. It’s important to convey the image you want to be known for. 18 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Twitter

Photos As the saying goes, “Sometimes a picture is worth a Leave extra thousand words,” or in this case, sometimes a picture is worth 140 characters! Let’s face it, there are times when a photo is room for more effective. characters One industry that uses photos a lot is real estate. How nice it so you can be would be for people looking at homes not only to hear about an open house happening in their neighborhood, but also to sure to give see a photo, or multiple photos, of the property? credit to Quotes the source. Business tweets can also be inspirational. They can motivate and influence thinking by using some of your favorite quotes. When planning your tweet, leave extra room for characters so you can be sure to give credit to the source.

Share Links Many blogs and online news services offer integration with your Twitter account so you can share the link of the article with your followers as you read it. This is one of our favorite uses of Twitter. On the occasions when you come across a link you’d like to share and there isn’t a Twitter share widget already integrated for you on the web page, you can copy and paste the URL into a number of URL shorteners such as bit.ly or tinyurl, and add a few words about why you’re tweeting out the link.

Tips Got a product-related tip? A useful tidbit of information you’d like to share with your customers and followers? People are often looking for quick and easy solutions to manage their time and be more productive. Why not share some of your useful tips with them?

Updates and Announcements Updates and announcements from your business can be categorized as good to know, better to know and need to know. The Red Cross, for example, uses Twitter to broadcast important messages about emergencies and relief efforts.

Christmas Gift Ideas If you’re a B2C business, you can use Twitter to give customers ideas about Christmas gifts and keep your products before their eyes through the holiday shopping season. With Twitter, you can continue to promote your products up to the last minute that they can be shipped in time to guarantee Christmas delivery.

YouTube Twitter can be used to link to a YouTube video. Videos are especially viral and people love them. For example, here’s a great YouTube video by that gives a tutorial on hashtags. You could tweet, “Checkout video on Twitter hashtags, http://youtu.be/DYmmGYNCavQ. 19 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Pinterest

Pinterest What is Pinterest? Pinterest is a for sharing images and videos to users’ own pinboards. It can be thought of as a digital scrapbooking site that is user friendly and free for its users. Pinterest has over 10.4 million users and is continuing to grow substantially every day. More importantly than the growing size of this social network, is the amount of engagement and time spent on the site. The average amount of time spent on Pinterest per visitor is 97.8 minutes. Users find great value in this site, and are willing to set aside a large chunk of their day to spend on it.

Pinboards Pinboards on Pinterest can be most easily described as virtual photo albums. Each user develops their own title and category for their Pinboards, and uploads content, or “pins”, based on that information. Pinboards can range from DIY ideas, artwork, humorous photos, recipes, and much more. If you can find an image, you can create a for it.

Pins A pin is an image that is added to a user’s pinboard. A pin can be added from a website using the bookmarklet that users are prompted to download when creating an account, or they can upload images from their computer. To add a pin using the bookmarklet, users simply need to click the “pin it” button and add the category and description. Each pin that gets added using the bookmarklet links back to the site that it originated from. Because of this fact, it is best for businesses to pin from images on their website, blog, account, or any other webpage that is associated with the company. When uploading a pin, it is important to add a good description of what the image is, as well as upload it to the appropriate pinboard. This will help users, who are looking for a specific subject or area of interest, find your pins. A good pin for a cupcake recipe, for example, would look like the following:

Pinboard: Cupcake Heaven The title of the pinboard, as well as keywords like “cupcake”, “basketball”, “”, “cute”, and “dessert” will help this pin generate to the top of a search results page when someone is looking for a basketball designed cupcake or a sports theme dessert. When you’re writing the description of a pin, think about the words that you would use to search for a specific item or subject. Put yourself in the shoes of your audience, and you’ll get it right every time. Here’s a cute cupcake design for your basketball star. This dessert tastes as delicious as it looks! 20 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Pinterest

How to Create an Account Pinterest is currently an invitation-only website. Friends can invite other friends to join, or users can “request an invite” on the homepage. Pinterest will prompt you to submit your e-mail address, or ask someone who’s already signed up to send you an invitation. Users can invite friends by hovering over the drop down next to their username (while logged into Pinterest) and clicking on “Invite Friends”. If you can’t get someone to send you an invite, Pinterest will accept your request and notify you within 24 hours that you can create an account. Once you receive confirmation from Pinterest, you can register via Facebook orTwitter, or you can start a new account without connecting through a social media site. If you choose to connect via Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest will pull all your information over from your page. If you choose to start from scratch, you will need to enter in your name, email address and/or website URL, biography, profile picture, notification preferences, gender, and username. The benefit to signing up for Pinterest through Facebook, besides the ease and speed of the set-up, is that a user can tie it to their Facebook page. Every time a Pinterest user uploads a pin, re-pins another user’s pin, comments or likes a pin, or does any other type of activity on Pinterest, it will show up on their Facebook page as well. For businesses, this is another great way to create exposure and generate traffic to their sites, and engagement with their fans.

Sharing Content Sharing content on Pinterest is very user friendly. When users log into Pinterest for the first time, they are prompted to download a “pinmarklet” (a Pinterest toolbar bookmarklet) that allows them to pin any content they find on the web to share it. Users don’t have to copy and paste links or switch between tabs or browsers; they simply click “Pin It” and the image gets uploaded to their pinboard of choice. Users can pin objects that they find on a website, or “repin” images that they like from other users that they are following (which are found on the users home page). In addition to being able to “repin” an item, users can “like” and comment on pins from other users. Every time a pin is commented on, liked, or repined, it generates to the top of the home page of content. Unlike Tweets or Facebook posts, the content is pushed ahead of other pins to be seen by new users that may not have seen it the first time it was posted, thus keeping it “fresh”.

Who to Follow Figuring out who to follow on Pinterest is similar to choosing Twitter and Facebook users; you should be following users that have similar themes, ideas, interests, and personalities of your business, but aren’t direct competitors. If you are a hometown bakery, you should be following food networks, local businesses, famous cooks/bakers, and individual users who post recipe ideas. To search for people in your niche, you simply type in keywords in the search bar (i.e. bakeries, recipes, etc.) and hit enter. You can click on and browse through the search results, and find the users that will best suite your business. The purpose of following other business is to further extend your reach and to generate more ideas for your own pinboards. 21 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Pinterest

Following Boards vs. People Pinterest gives users the option of following individual users, or the individual boards of a user. Following an individual is a way for users to follow every pin that the user posts, rather than following individual boards, which only gives a user visibility to the pins that get uploaded to that board. The option to follow individual boards, rather than all boards of a user, is another way that Pinterest makes the site very user friendly. Many people are only interested in particular boards that you have (i.e. artwork or floor designs), and don’t want to see boards that don’t appeal to them (i.e. your collection of stamps). By recognizing what boards are followed the most by other Pinterest users, you can get a better idea of what your customers are interested in.

Pinterest Tools One of the newest Pinterest tools, Pinstamatic, allows users to get even more out of the site. Users are able to add locations, music, quotes, calendar dates, Twitter profile links, sticky notes, and websites to their pins. To get started with this tool, users need to go to pinstamatic.com and click on the icon of their choice at the top of the page (depending on if they want to add a location, a website, etc.) They then hit the “Pin” button, and their pin will post right to their Pinterest account. With this tool, companies have the abilitiy to showcase their website, direct users to other social media accounts, personalize their pin with more words and locations, and even add a date to the pin. Another tool, Pinwords, allows Pinterest users to instantly add beautiful text to their images that they want to pin. Users go to pinwords.com, upload their image from a web link or saved file, and select their font. Once the image has the correct text, the user selects the “pin” button, and the pin will get sent to their Pinterest account. A bookmarklet for Pinwords is availble, to make it even easier for Pinners to use the tool. Instead of going to the site, users simply click the bookmarklet and send it to their Pinterest account.

Advantage of Using Pinterest One of the biggest advantages of Pinterest for businesses is the engagement rate of the users. With people spending almost 100 minutes on the site every time they visit it, the opportunity for exposure is great. Pinterest is a tool that helps create a visual representation of what your business is all about, what you are interested in, and what makes you great. Businesses can use Pinterest to display their work, “go behind the scenes”, and display their personality. It’s important that businesses create pinboards that go beyond products and services. Like any other social media site, you need to focus your energy on creating an image for your business, building a relationship with fans/followers, and putting forward a personality. Users don’t want to be sold to; they want to engage and interact like human beings. 22 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Pinterest

Should your Business use Pinterest? When you look at the statistics of Pinterest users, it doesn’t really come as a shock that 83% of them are females between the ages of 18-34. The most popular pinboards are dedicated to design, fashion, and home decor. With this being said, you need to think about your audience before deciding if Pinterest is right for your business. If you are an equipment company that sells industrial grade processing machines to local farmers, Pinterest probably isn’t the best social media network for you. If you are a home decorator, a photographer, or even a local hospital, Pinterest would work for you because you have a very good chance of appealing to the appropriate audience. Does this mean that you if don’t sell products, or if you are a B2B company, you shouldn’t consider Pinterest? Absolutely not. Many B2B companies do very well on Pinterest. Hubspot, a company that sells software and services, has over 3500 followers. With the use of , Ebooks, and photos of employees, company events, community involvement, marketing campaigns, and humorous photos/video, they are able to create a unique brand personality and image that is interesting enough for other people to get engaged with their content.

Bottom Line Pinterest isn’t a social network to brush off to the side. The number of engaged, dedicated fans of the site should have all businesses interested in jumping on board. The most important thing to remember with using Pinterest is to stay fresh, stay interesting, and project the image that you want your company to posses. 23 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Google+

Google+ What is Google+? Google+ is a social media network with more than 100 million active users that allows users and brands to share status updates, links, images, and videos. Users can comment, share (by clicking a +1 button), and support these interactions.

Google+ Circles Circles are groups created on Google+ that allow a business to better target specific people, groups, or organizations. You, as a business, will likely have several buyer personas and know that each of them needs different pieces of your marketing content. Circles enables you to do exactly such segmentation by sending updates to select groups of followers, categorized by labels defined by you (i.e. friends, markeitng professionals, etc.).This kind of content targeting can result in high click-through rates and an engaged social following.

Google+ Button One of the biggest benefits to using Google+ is its integration into search results. Whenever a business updates their status, shares content, or has their content +1ed by other people, it appears in the search engine results on Google.com. Adding a +1 button on your blog or website and actively publishing content to your Google+ account significantly increases the chance of dominating search results. Reasearch has found that websites that use the +1 button generate 3.5 times the Google+ visits than sites without the button. Another great feature about the +1 button, is that unlike the Facebook that is confined to their social network site, the +1 button is open to anyone searching on Google. For example, when you search for “” on Google, the search results for bestbuy.com shows that over 2,000 people have +1’d the website, as well as who in your Google+ network has +1’d Best Buy or posted something pertaining to the company.

Google+ Hangouts Hangouts are video chat groups that allow you to talk to up to 9 friends at once. Video chat options provide a great opportunity for businesses to connect directly with customers one-on-one, and are ideal for resolving customer conflicts with a more personalized approach. Group video chats offer great opportunities to conduct exclusive workshops and webinars, as well as offer exclusive promotions to select customers.

How to Create an Account If you already have a google account, you simply have to click “sign in” on the Google+ homepage, and select “create a ”. If you don’t have an account, you need to create one. You will need to select a user name and password, and fill in the prompted information. Once your personal account is created and you’ve created a brand page, you can begin the fun stuff. 24 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Google+

You will want to upload an image for your Google+ account, as well as a cover photo (just like with Facebook). It is best to use a photo of your brand’s logo to allow users to quickly identify your company. Be sure to fill in profile information that gives users an idea of what your business is, what you do/are capable of, and how to contact you. You may be the sole user of your company’s Google+ account, or you can create a manager(s) to share in the responsibilities.

Google+ Managers Google+ gives the opportunity to add up to 50 managers for your Google+ account (not that we would recommend adding that many; too many people getting involved can get tricky for your business). The following are the steps to adding managers: 1. While logged into your business account, go to the upper-right hand corner of the page and click on “settings” (the icon of a gear). 2. Click on the Manager’s option on the left hand side of the page. 3. Add a manger by typing in their email address. 4. Once the person accepts the manager title, you will see them listed as “manager” for the page. If you ever need to delete this person from having a manager position, you simply select the “x” next to the person’s name in the list of managers. You can also transfer ownerhsip of the page just as easily. There is a transfer ownership option in the same area, where you can elect anyone to be the new owner of the page.

Why Should my Business use Google+? Google+ currently has over 31 million users today, and is continuing to grow in countries all over the world. Google+ is, of course, affiliated with the giant search engine that everyone knows; google.com. Google is the number one visited website, attracting over 1 billion visitors per month. A social network that is directly tied to the most-widely used search engine on the plantet is definitely something worth paying attention to. Google+ is able to integrate all Google services; Mail, Reader, and YouTube. This makes it fast and efficient for business to use, to push out their content across multiple sites. Google+ also gives companies the potential to sell, upsell, and cross sell a product. Getting a consumer to hit the +1 button is a direct action that enables you to have a direct response. You can offer a consumer an incentive to +1 your product and to buy it by offering them a discount on their next purchase. This not only builds up your +1 endorsements (thus increasing your ranking power), but it gives the consumer an extra push to buy. The two biggest user groups on Google+ are college students and software developers. Nearly 69% of all Google+ users are males, who tend to post about technology. If this demographic coincides with the target market for your business, you would be missing out on a great opportunity to reach this group if you elect to create your own Google+ account. 25 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Google+

Who Should I have in my Circles? Google+ circles should be utilized for communicating with individual groups of people. With the ability to group different people into individual circles, companies are able to speak and post different things to tailor to individual needs/wants. A B2B company could have circles for current clients, prospective clients, local businesses, and employees. A B2C company would be similar, with current customers, individuals, local businesses, and supporting businesses (i.e. manufacturing companies, agencies, and other businesses that help their business). When companies individualize their circles, they can address reoccuring issues or concerns with specific groups, can use a different voice or post different content, and can stay organized with what groups they need to pay more attention to in order to grow their base. 26 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LinkedIn

LinkedIn

What is LinkedIn? LinkedIn is a huge database of professionals. LinkedIn standardizes information entered by users into predefined “Profile Headline”, “Summary”, “Education”, “Company”, etc. categories. In addition to this huge database of information, LinkedIn provides a search tool to allow you to pinpoint the person you are looking for depending on a number of very specific factors. On the other hand, the more LinkedIn connections you have, the more you will be found.

Why Should You Join LinkedIn?

Finding and Being Found Because of the search functionality that LinkedIn has, you can find people on LinkedIn that you can’t find on the other social networking sites. And because it is easier to be found on LinkedIn, many will be able to find you too!

Acquire and Share Expertise LinkedIn has over 1 million LinkedIn Groups that you can join. Each group has its own Discussion Board, News Board, and Jobs Postings. Furthermore, the LinkedIn Answers Boards has more than 2 million answers to a variety of questions for you to peruse. The subject matter in both Groups and Answers covers a wide enough range of topics that there is value for everyone to be participating.

Career Management The advice is the same whether you are looking for a job or are happily employed: a network should “be your insurance for your future career growth”. Companies are organic entities whose needs change and do not and cannot promise you a guarantee that your job will be there 10 years from now, next year, or even next month. That is why you need to be on LinkedIn so that you can both find potential companies and recruiters, as well as be found by them. Even if you are happy in your job, it can’t hurt to have a minimal profile on LinkedIn and receive contacts from recruiters in your industry or specialty who may be able to help you out in the future. LinkedIn is free career insurance!

The Payoff and Getting Business When you create a LinkedIn profile and join groups, you set-up contact preferences. Every action you do can be included in these update e-mails that other people in your network get. You won’t get included in every e-mail, but you will get included in some, and the more you participate the more you’ll be included. Every time someone sees your name and your activity on the network it reminds them you are there, and what you’re doing. The more they remember, you the more likely they are to refer business to you when someone asks them a question about something they’ve seen you participate in. 27 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LinkedIn

Use the power search tips to target phrases of people who are asking questions that someone in the sales funnel would ask. Use your network to help you gain new leads, ask everyone to describe their ideal customer to you, and make a connection if you find someone who fits . People are much more likely to give referrals to people who give them referrals.

Why Make Quality Connections on LinkedIn? Business connections can be enormously useful to attract new clients, get good recommendations, and impress other industry authorities so that one day they might be interested in doing business with you. If you make the wrong or ‘easy’ connections, this will never happen. It defeats the entire point of being on a business network.

How to Make Quality Connections on LinkedIn

Join Groups that are Relevant to Your Industry The most comprehensive way of meeting new people on LinkedIn, is to have a discussion with them before deciding they are worth adding to your network. To do this, answer as many relevant questions as you can, and keep the dialogue going until you have made a few connections with the people that take part in the discussion. Politely ask them if they’d like to join your network. Remember to keep your business goals in mind. It is nice talking to people, but if they aren’t relevant to your end goal, your time is better spent elsewhere.

Browse the Connections You Have and Ask for Introductions If you find a person you’d like to connect with, either for business purposes or because they work in a similar field, ask your closest connection to them to introduce you. People on LinkedIn love to make connections, and if you’re friendly and honest, there isn’t a person in the world that would refuse (unless their connection refuses). Even if you’re three times removed from this person, you still have common ground. Many people fail to make connections because they are afraid to initiate the contact needed to meet that person on the platform. Making connections is essentially a social activity, so get used to the idea of contacting people first!

Don’t Accept Random Memberships or Invites from People Your network is just as exclusive as the networks you’re trying to connect with. People with premier accounts will often send you invites to ‘barely’ relevant groups, or you’ll be invited to join networks that aren’t relevant at all. Remember that to keep your connections worthwhile, you must learn to reject offers from people.

Sharing Recommendations Strengthens Your Relationships If you’ve worked with a few of your connections on LinkedIn, offer them a recommendation. If you do, they will be more inclined to comment on your discussions, return recommendations and introduce you to people in their network that you may find interesting. LinkedIn is just as much a sharing site as Facebook or Twitter, and you need to have just as much interaction to attract connections. 28 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LinkedIn

Find a Networking Event in Your Area When you join authority groups, you’ll often be invited to networking events, or to participate in an online discussion off the LinkedIn platform. Take the initiative and attend these events. They are enormously beneficial when it comes to making real-life connections, and they will help promote your business beyond anything you can add to your profile on the network. If you stick to these best practices, you’ll soon build a quality list of connections that will stimulate business growth and development.

How Businesses Can Use LinkedIn

How Often Should You Write on LinkedIn? It is not really beneficial to post information on LinkedIn more than once a day. Also, if you really don’t have any significant status change (or an update that ties into your objective) to post on LinkedIn on any given day, don’t worry about it. You should also be mindful of the fact that people are not going to want you to send frequent status updates too often. If you do, they may consider what you are sharing with them as spam. One very important fact to remember is that LinkedIn is a site for professionals, and you need to make absolutely certain that what you are posting on LinkedIn is appropriate for everyone.

Acquire New Customers Through Online Recommendations and Word of Mouth Satisfied customers are the best source of new customers. Increase your word of mouth referrals by asking your happy clients to write you a recommendation, which will be published on your LinkedIn profile and will broadcast to their entire LinkedIn network.

Keep in Touch with People who Care Most About Your Business Sites like LinkedIn help keep your business alive in the of the people who care most about your business. LinkedIn is effective for two reasons: the business’ intent of LinkedIn users and fewer status updates, which mean you stay on top of mind.

Find the Right Vendors to Outsource Services You’re not an Expert on Think of the number of times you’ve asked your colleagues if they knew of a great web designer or photographer. LinkedIn makes it easy for you to find and get vendors through the network of your peers. Additionally, you can also trade services with your vendor connections on LinkedIn; sort of a mutual referral system.

Build Your Industry Network—Online and In Person Search LinkedIn’s Groups directory to find industry associations and networks to take part in. For example, if you’re in the event planning or wedding industry, there are over 530 groups. In addition, LinkedIn also surfaces popular events in your industry, calling out local events that your connections are attending. Imagine being able to find only industry events that your prospective clients are attending. 29 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LinkedIn

Get Answers to Tough Business Questions with a Little Help from Your Real Friends owners deal with challenging questions on a slew of topics each day. LinkedIn Answers and Groups let you find answers to those vexing questions quickly by tapping into the wisdom of your network (there are over 200 different categories on Answers including one dedicated to small business and over 2,000 groups on small business related topics). Check out hundreds of questions on related topics here.

Win New Business by Answering Questions in Your Area of Expertise Use the many forums on LinkedIn to share the knowledge you’ve gained in your area of expertise. This is a great opportunity to win new business or at least find prospective clients to pitch your business to. Prospective customers will find your answers when they use LinkedIn’s advanced Answers search. Don’t forget, this is a great way to soft pitch your skills and expertise.

Raise Funding You can use LinkedIn to find mentors or potential investors for your startup because there are over three million startup professionals, and over 12 million small business professionals on LinkedIn. It’s always good to stay in touch with folks who’ve “been there, done that”, and are willing to mentor you. Once you’re connected, your participation on LinkedIn (answers, status updates or group conversations) may even cause them to consider investing in your small business.

Network with Peers in Your Industry for Repeat Business Referrals LinkedIn Groups is a powerful medium to find peers in your respective industries to network with and find complimentary businesses to share referrals with. For example, mortgage brokers can find real estate agents to partner with on relevant groups and as most small businesses know, these partners are your best source of referrals that can turn into repeat business. With over 2,000 groups dedicated to small business topics, you’re sure to find a relevant group to network.

Convince Potential Customers of Your Expertise by Sharing Unique Blog Content Small businesses are smart enough to create unique content on their expertise (either with a blog or Twitter account) and should link to it from their LinkedIn profiles. Take it one step further by promoting featured blog content to LinkedIn members on the site (i.e. with small text ads). You can specify exactly who will see your ads—Executives or VPs—and include a link to your profile so they know who’s behind this content.

Keep Your Friends Close and Your Competition Closer Over 150,000 companies have a company profile on LinkedIn, the “public profile” for companies. These pages surface key stats on companies; recent hires as well as movers and shakers. Not only do company profiles give you unique insight into your competition, they also give you an opportunity to stumble upon potential hires by browsing through company pages. While Social Media is definitely the hot topic of conversation this year, most of the tools focus on consumer centric business and improving communication. If you provide B2B consulting, services or products, your options for social media are fairly limited. Let’s be honest, you probably won’t find many fans for your Facebook Legal Incorporation Services page. For these types of businesses, LinkedIn is a much better alternative. 30 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LinkedIn

How to Build Your Company’s Profile on LinkedIn 1. To get started, go to the “Companies” menu on LinkedIn. From there, select “Add Company”. 2. Enter basic information about your company, like its description, number of employees, and industry it operates in. 3. Follow LinkedIn’s wizard for creating your company profile – you’ll be able to add a logo, locations, and a feed for your company blog. Once you’ve completed LinkedIn’s steps for getting set-up, your company profile will be available. Now is where it gets interesting. In addition to showing off the basic information you provided, LinkedIn will pull in data about your company from around the site. For example, all of your job listings will automatically show up on your profile, along with links to the profiles of all current employees, former employees, new hires, and recent promotions. As you can imagine, all of this aggregate data about your company gives potential candidates (as well as anyone else interested in your company) a lot of information to dive into and help determine if it might be a good fit for them. And for you, once it’s setup, it all happens automatically as you and your employees use LinkedIn, though you can always make edits to your company’s basic profile information. LinkedIn recently added a premium product – Custom Company Profiles – that lets you add more features, like videos about your company and positions, interactive polls, and several customization options for recruiting. These are worth considering for larger companies (they come at a price), but for small businesses, a basic LinkedIn company profile should be enough to add lots of efficiency to the recruiting process – both for candidates and for you.

LinkedIn Tips

Update Your Profile If you or anyone on your key executives, creative talent, or sales staff doesn’t already have a LinkedIn profile, they should create one. Chances are that most people already have an account, and unless they recently changed jobs, there profile hasn’t been touched in a while and could use some updating.

Add Your Voice Everyone has a personal style, way they talk or do things, and your profile should reflect your voice, quirks, and personal style, it’s what makes you memorable. 31 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LinkedIn

Go for the Readers Digest Level of Detail Give details about what you did at your previous jobs, and what schools you went to. Give some details, but not too much. Try to cover the essentials, but make it short enough to keep it interesting.

Get Recommendations Again, LinkedIn has a lot of stats showing recommendations help you get business. Ask previous and current clients you have done business with, or people you know for recommendations, and give them back. Be honest and don’t make everyone sound like Superman, if you don’t have something nice to say, it’s probably best not to say anything at all. Try to keep getting referrals; someone with six referrals spread out over three years probably looks better, than someone with 20 referrals all more than two years old.

Link to Your Website You can add up to three links, and if you choose “other” you can customize the anchor text, use it but don’t abuse it.

Create a Company Profile LinkedIn now has the ability to create a company profile for your company; it will list everyone who works there and some information about the company. If you don’t have one you can create it, but only if one of the e-mail addresses connected to your profile is from the same domain as the company website. You don’t need to do this but it makes your company look more complete, and provides a tool for reputation management should you ever need it.

Update Your Status You can send status updates on LinkedIn the same way you send status updates on Facebook and Twitter. If you’re interested in efficiency, you can save time using services like Ping.fm (http://www.ping.fm) or .com to update all of your services at once. This may not be the best idea however because your Facebook friends might want to know your kids won the baseball championship, but your LinkedIn network probably doesn’t care, so choose your updates strategically. 32 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Foursquare

Foursquare

What is Foursquare? Foursquare is a GPS mobile app where an individual checks-in at a local business, shopping center, park, government building and so on. It is a mini social networking program where the individual can have friends connected to his or her check-ins and can comment, share, become the mayor of a business, and even offer tips about the place they are visiting. Foursquare is unique in that it offers users specials based on where they check-in at. The local business of course has to sign-up to offer these specials.

How it Works A user looks at their device, finds the name of the place they are at, clicks “Check in Here” and if there is a special, they will get a coupon that a business can type in a code or scan. Foursquare keeps track of the person’s check-ins at each location and can earn points, as well as become the mayor (person who has checked in the most). The premise behind Foursquare is that when users check-in, they broadcast or share their check-ins with their Twitter stream and/or Facebook stream. For good or bad, over sharing is a hallmark trait of social media, so much so that Foursquare has an over sharing badge for anyone who checks in more than 10 times in a 24 hour period. If the user has a Twitter stream, it is updated with every time they become “mayor”. Because of this, it’s a good idea to use that . By enabling the “X number of visits” or “every X number of visits” discount, you are encouraging repeat business and repeat broadcasting of your business.

Foursquare Basics Users of Foursquare earn activity points, badges, and titles with regular play, and businesses and brands gain targeted local advertising. Businesses can determine when, where, or if users check in at any given location. When a user notes at a location, he or she can send the arrival message using the social networking site, sending a text message, or using a specialized cell phone application. The check-in can be forwarded to other social networking sites and so the information will be displayed there as well. Foursquare can forward user input to other wide-reaching, interactive sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and even Everywhere. Not only is the business name and address available for others’ perusal, but user feedback on the business or name brand is also readily accessible. Businesses registered with Foursquare can improve their advertising profile, and brands can solidify name brand loyalty. 33 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Foursquare

Why Your Business Should Join Foursquare

Value for Your Business Foursquare offers value for your business. All it requires is some smart thinking and swift action. The founding principle of Foursquare is based on getting people to your place of business. Therefore, it’s well-suited for a variety of businesses such as restaurants, book shops, spas, salons, etc. The folks at Foursquare realize the business potential of location-based services, and therefore provide an opportunity for business owners to claim their business. Once you’ve claimed a location as your business on Foursquare, you can launch incentives and campaigns in order to encourage more users to check in at your business location. As a business, you should encourage user shout-outs, offer cool mayor incentives, and regularly monitor check-ins to make best possible use of Foursquare.

Create Customer Loyalty Foursquare can create customer loyalty for your business. Some restaurants offer the “mayor” of their location a better deal than anyone else. The person shows up the most and orders from them. Reward your top clients and they’ll keep coming back. Also those who are not mayors can also get special deals for multiple check-ins. So this too creates customers fighting for “mayorship” or to receive a free meal, drink, percentage off, or something special now and then.

Other Perks • It doesn’t cost to list your business and it gives more people opportunity to see your name. • Most of your competitors are not using it (yet). • It is growing in popularity; there are currently over 10 million active users. • You can learn what people think of your business: people can offer tips about the businesses they visit.

Foursquare Statistics for Your Business Foursquare provides valuable information regarding your business location including: • Most recent and frequent visitors. • The time of day people check-in. • Total number of unique visitors. • Histogram of check-ins per day. • Gender breakdown of customers. • Portion of Foursquare check-ins broadcast to Twitter and Facebook. This data provides vital feedback for a business regarding their performance and reputation on Foursquare as well as social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. 34 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Foursquare

How Your Business can use Foursquare Effectively

Communicate with Your Customers When you are reading the customers’ comments, you will be able to gain a lot of value that you can apply to your business. It is very important for you to interact with your customers after you have become aware of how they are thinking and feeling. However, before you do interact with them, it is essential that you really listen to what they are saying. That customer feedback will contain information on what your customers want and need from you. The more you pay attention to the needs and wants of your customers, the closer they will feel to you and the stronger your relationships with them will become. You can use Foursquare as your vehicle to keep in touch with your customers and to continue strengthening your relationships with them.

Measure the Success of Your Business on Foursquare You can monitor the total amount of people who check-in, the users who share updates on Twitter and Facebook, and the number of unique visitors. Also, you are able to track the demographics of the users on Foursquare. Once you are armed with that information, you can use it to reward your loyal customers. When you reward your customers, they want to be in a relationship with you. Everyone loves to be rewarded. The stronger your relationships become with your customers, the more those customers will tell other people about your business and recommend that those other people also become your customers. Foursquare gives you a very good opportunity to increase the visibility of your business online, to strengthen your credibility, increase brand identity and awareness, and give your customers the feeling that they are important to you.

Explore the Neighborhood With Foursquare, people are rewarded for checking into your community. As people build their communities on Foursquare, the interactions become more and more interesting. The more they check-in, the more they are rewarded. The incentives make them want to keep interacting. When your customers check into a certain location, they will see which particular promotions you are offering. Everyone loves to get something for nothing, or at least for doing very little.

Drive Sales Even if you are not actively promoting Foursquare use, chances are that by having a robust and accurate business profile on Foursquare, you’ll still capitalize on Foursquare use by your customers. 35 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Foursquare

More and more people are beginning to use Foursquare and some of those people are your customers. As customers check-in, and leave tips for others, your business will be exposed to many more potential customers. Hopefully, over time, you’ll begin to start actively using Foursquare for business, whether that’s through a Foursquare Mayor Campaign, a Foursquare Loyalty Program, or something totally new that you come up with. When you do, you’ll start to see just how powerful it is. Foursquare provided the platform, and now it’s our job to take advantage of it to help grow our businesses.

Use Foursquare to Promote Events and Trade Shows Early adopters have already been using Foursquare successfully to promote events and tradeshows. A year ago, Intel partnered with Foursquare during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and offered unique badges and freebies for users who “checked in” using Foursquare. A good way to promote your even is to use the “Tip” function to broadcast event updates, incentives, and nearby meetings and venues to event participants. Then encourage check-ins, engage participants and reward them. Also, don’t forget to flag the venue as closed after the event is over.

Integration with Other Social Media Platforms B2B companies can also effectively integrate Foursquare with other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, to synergize marketing efforts, and enhance end-user experience. By linking Foursquare to Facebook and Twitter, check-ins can be shared across platforms. B2B companies can host social gatherings, such as lectures and meet-ups, where savvy social media users will check-in at the event venue on Foursquare, send out real-time event updates on Twitter, and share event photos on Facebook, which may even prompt their friends and followers to also become supporters of the company. These marketing efforts will all help with building brand awareness and generating leads.

Target Search Engine Results Location-based platforms are changing the overall search picture. Search engines will likely integrate real-time location-based data into search results, as they’ve done with universal search and real-time social updates. Companies with more check-ins and tips from engaged fans will rank higher in the blended search results. It’s very possible that companies will be able to leverage Foursquare to boost their SEO efforts through brand engagement signals, much like what has happened with Facebook and Twitter. Bing Maps has integrated Foursquare data for users to view quick venue tips and mayorships. Google and other search engines are sure to be developing their own location-based features too. Foursquare mapping and commenting features really benefit B2C companies, especially retailers with storefronts. B2B companies can also benefit by adding company locations and listing company events, venues, trainings, seminars, etc. on Foursquare.

Utilize the To-Do List to Give Users Tasks to Complete Each business has the potential of creating a to-do list for Foursquare users. If you visit a Foursquare page for a business you will find a button to create a to-do list.This could be utilized as a contest for people visiting the location. You could offer perks much like the user became a mayor of your location. 36 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Foursquare

Encourage Users to Become Superusers of Your Location When a user becomes a Superuser at your location they have the ability to edit venue information. It is easier to have users edit your location information because they are actually using the tool and experiencing your company in a completely different way. Also, this helps for annoying bad data that could be spread through different users.

Employees and Foursquare

Track Sales Team Performance Another way companies can use Foursquare is as a sales management tool. Companies can use the mobile networking platform to track sales and sales performance metrics and to offer incentives to its sales staff. For example, the sales person who works hardest and collects the most check-ins could earn a reward. What’s more, the sales team could possibly identify potential leads and grab about the leads by tracking their check-in behaviors on Foursquare. The customer service team could benefit in the same way. This would work like e-mailing or text-messaging, but with location features, which would be easier for two-way communication. To be more advanced, employees can view the updates and tips through a corporate e-mail account with a simple connection. And every company and employee can have several Foursquare accounts for public, private, and other use. In the future, a person’s online and mobile accounts will all be connected, but with advanced features to address concerns.

Enhance Corporate Culture and Community B2B companies can use Foursquare to build community within the organization. Through checking in at the corporate location, both management and employees will achieve stronger internal relations. Whoever checks in the most will become the mayor, and everybody has an equal opportunity to obtain the mayorship, not only the CEO. The mayorship can also be stolen by another employee. In the game-like process to grab mayorship, employees will gain a better bond, build morale, and better internal relationships. Employees might also check in together at a restaurant after work, or at the airport on a business trip. Internally, they win badges of swarm (50+ people are also checked in here) and jetsetter (five airport check-ins). With a better sense of company , they can show clients and fans that they’re part of a great team with a strong corporate culture. 37 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Yelp

Yelp

What is Yelp? Yelp is a website for consumers to find and review local businesses. Yelp members can create a profile about themselves and their friends, who are also members, can follow businesses they search for and review. Businesses can also create an account. All accounts are free with the exception of certain optional advertising features.

How to Use Yelp Yelp is used by creating a personal or business account. With this account you are able to read and write reviews for local businesses or even businesses you visited while on vacation. Your friends can follow what you search for and write reviews on and delegate a star rating. In addition to reviews, you can use Yelp to find events, special offers, lists, and to talk with other Yelpers.

Who is Using Yelp? Anyone and everyone! Yelp is a site for consumers and businesses. Yelp allows people who search for the best businesses in their location with the highest quality reviews. Yelp also benefits businesses by allowing them to post events and special offers. Business accounts on Yelp can post offers, photos, and message their customers.

How Popular is Yelp? Yelp is rising in popularity. According to Yelp.com, there is, on average, 71 million unique visitors every month. Yelp is an effective business tool that many are aware of. Yelpers have written over 27 million local reviews, 83% of them rating a business three stars or higher (Yelp.com).

Yelp’s Reach Yelp is for everyone! Yelp is not just for large cities, it’s for the small towns too. Yelp is international providing access to other countries such as Austria, , France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, The Netherlands, and The United Kingdom. To search, you can either put in a business name and location or just a location. Location can range from city to a specific neighborhood.

Specifics to Yelp

Business Reviews For each business you are able to write a review on your experience there. You are able to rate others reviews for a business. You can rate their review three ways: Useful, Funny, or Cool. You are also able to send reviews you see to a friend. In place of writing a full review you do have the 38 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Yelp option of writing a quick tip which is a small blurb consisting of 5-10 words posted from the reviewer’s iPhone that sums up what a full review would entail.

Following a Friend To follow a friend on Yelp you have to first become a fan of theirs. When you become someone’s fan they are unable to see your identity. You will be able to follow their reviews by them showing up first in the default sort order when browsing a business that they have reviewed.

Elite Squad Yelpers Yelp has a rating system for its reviewers. The highest and most prestigious rating is an Elite Squad Yelper. Elite Squad Yelpers are consumers who fall under a specific group of characteristics. Elite Yelpers have personality (a balance between usefulness, funny, and cool in their reviews), use their real name and photo for legitimacy, and writes reviews in extreme detail.

Account Details Each account holder has their own personal profile page. This page includes their past reviews, number of friends they have, how many reviews they have written, their star rating distribution, a list of quick tips, and photos they may have from places visited. Their account profile also includes their hometown and what year they started Yelping.

Yelp and Your Business

Business Details on Yelp Yelp provides a great deal of information for each business. At the top of the site there will be a picture of the business, a listed location, business hours and a . Additional information is included depending on the type of business. For example, a restaurant will have listed the following details: parking, attire, price range, delivery/take-out/dine-in, seating type, alcohol, noise level, and wheelchair accessibility. A link to the business website can also be found on the review page.

How to Use Yelp Most Effectively Yelp was created to connect people with great local businesses. To use Yelp most effectively create an account and connect with others in your area. This allows you to be updated with where the people in your area are visiting and what they think of each place. It is best to be completely honest with your reviews.

How Can Yelp Help You? Yelp can help consumers become aware of your business but what will keep them coming back ultimately is if you can deliver. If you provide a quality service or product you will get a good review thus spreading a positive word about your business. Yelp can also help in the sense that you can read reviews others have written about your competitors, which allows you to see what others like about them and what they are doing that you may not be. 39 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Yelp

Official Business Account Your business may already have a yelp listing with reviews. Why is this you wonder? Yelp allows account holders to add a business and then review it. You can create an official account for your business which will allow you to post offers and events along with allowing consumers to write reviews.

Yelp Tools Yelp has done research and broken down who exactly is reviewing what. This can be found in Yelp’s blog. This tool can help you determine or expand your target market. Yelp’s blog offers a variety of information that is helpful to business that use Yelp as a form of advertising. Yelp also has a mobile application allows a larger audience to be reached. “The Weekly Yelp is available in 42 city editions to bring you the latest business openings and other happenings” (Yelp.com). This tool is specifically for larger cities.

Is Yelp Fair? Because Yelp is a public site you may question if business can comment and review their own business. No need to worry, paying advertisers can never change or re-order their reviews. All reviews are raw and from true consumers. Yelp also has a feature called a review filter which helps protect against fake reviews and reviews from competitors. “The review filter is automated to reduce human bias” (Yelp.com).

Mending Ties With the raw reviews on Yelp, a business may encounter the unhappy customer every now and then. Yelp is not a place to have a debate; However, Yelp can be used to address an issue publicly or this issue can be addressed through personal messaging. Yelp strongly advises not to “use public comments to launch personal attacks, advertise, or offer an incentive to change a review” (Yelp.com).

Connecting With Other Social Media Sites Yelp can be linked with Facebook and Twitter accounts. To publish a review on either your Facebook or Twitter site you must log-in and under my account click the external services tab and follow the instructions provided. This is a great example of social media sites working together to create a more powerful source.

Keep an Open Mind Yelp can help a business tremendously. Be open with reviews and accept the constructive criticism when reading a negative post. Take it and better your business and know what wonders a positive review can do for your PR. 40 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Groupon

Groupon

What is Groupon? Groupon is a social commerce website that offers online deals for businesses in your local community. Groupon is a deal-of-the-day recommendation service for consumers. Every 24 hours, Groupon broadcasts an electronic coupon for a restaurant or store in your city, recommending that local service while also offering you a 40% to 60% discount if you purchase that service.

How Does Groupon Work for Your Business? Groupon is a commission-based middleman service. They provide a motivated customer base to the seller, and a promise to achieve X number of sales per day. If Groupon doesn’t meet that promised quota, there is no need for the seller to provide any discount services, nor any commission pay to Groupon. Much more common, however, is where Groupon exceeds their quota of daily interested customers, and then all of the Groupon customers enjoy a half-price deal while the seller enjoys a big rush of new customers, and Groupon earns a commission from the sales. (As of this writing, Groupon earns a commission of 50% of the coupon sell price). It’s a very powerful win-win situation for all three parties.

How Does Groupon Work for the Customer? Groupon itself is a free service for everyone to join. Each day, Groupon will send an e-mail announcement to its subscribers, describing the deal-of-the-day in that metro area. Commonly, the deals are 50% discounts at a particular restaurant, or 50% discounts at a particular store. If the customer likes the deal-of-the-day, then they purchase an electronic coupon directly from Groupon using their credit card or PayPal account. They then print that coupon, take it to the restaurant or store, and redeem it for commonly double the value they paid.

Why Does Groupon Do This? Groupon is a middleman service that promotes your city’s restaurants and stores. Groupon encourages people to try a different restaurant or store each day, and earns a commission whenever they successfully refer a customer.

How to Use Groupon for Your Business

Provide an Offer People Can’t Refuse You have to get at least 100 people to sign-up for your offer during its feature so be sure it’s something spectacular. Discounted coupons work very well and if you’re a small or little known 41 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Groupon business, the larger the discount you’re able to offer, the better. It isn’t uncommon for business to offer up to 50% or even 90% off. Again, the bigger the better for small businesses - particularly during your very first Groupon feature. Try to provide the best offer that you can afford because the best offers are the most talked about offers and that can bring in some pretty big business for you - even if just for the short term. A Groupon offer may create a huge spike in business and you’ll be gaining free publicity as well - even those who aren’t buying your deal that particular time will learn that your business exists and may be on board for your next feature.

Fill Out Groupon’s “Get Featured” Section You’ll simply need to provide your name, phone number, business name, e-mail address, country, website, appropriate category for your Groupon deal and then choose the geographical location in which you want your Groupon to run. Once you’ve submitted that information, Groupon will get in touch with you. You are always contacted prior to being featured.

When will Your Business be Featured? Groupon reserves the right to feature anything in their pipeline at any time, just in case there are time-sensitive deals that come to their attention at the last minute. Groupon uses metrics and past trends to determine the best placement for each feature. To make sure you have time to prepare your business and that all questions have been answered, Groupon will always contact you before they feature your business.

Schedule Seals to Run Whenever You Need More Customers Choose what you want to offer, the discount you want to give, and how long you want the deal to last. Customers walk in and present their Groupons, bringing you business when you want it the most. Groupon will then send you payment for your share of the Groupons redeemed.

Promote Your Groupon Deal When you receive notice of your Groupon deal, be sure to inform your current followers as they will likely be interested as well. This could help spread the word even more amongst the followers you already have.

Target Your Market Customers will tell Groupon a little about themselves - starting with their zip code, gender and age – Groupon then will make them see the deals most relevant to them. They then can still discover cool new stuff with their city’s featured deal of the day. This is good for your business since you can target your market.

Who Does the Write-Up? Groupon will take care of all the copy, and usually incorporate existing reviews from other blogs, websites, magazines, or newspapers. They do this to ensure that every Groupon is engaging, entertaining, and non-intrusive. This signature style resonates with their subscribers. It’s why 2/3 of Groupon’s subscribers read their write-ups every day regardless of the offer. That said, if there is some specific or unusual point you would like to include, you are more than welcome to suggest it to them. 42 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Groupon

Watch it Spread When people find great deals on Groupon they are easily able to share the deal they received through social media outlets like Twitter and Facebook. If they refer three people to buy your deal, they’ll get their Groupon for free so you could potentially even have other people referring their friends, family and followers to your deal.

Specifics to Groupon

Where is Groupon? Groupon is growing quickly. You can find Groupon deals in nearly any major city in Canada and the USA. Groupon is also quickly growing in Central and South America, Australia, the UK, Europe, Asia, and parts of the Middle East. There is tremendous consumer appeal for what Groupon offers.

Who is Using Groupon? Groupon’s subscribers are modern consumers who love to spend money. They especially love to spend money where they get a discount or a perceived bargain. Groupon works because it provides motivating choices for its motivated group of consumers.

Groupon on Your Mobile Phone Get any deal with the touch of a button, keep track of your Groupons by location, date and expiration, and redeem them any time you want without killing trees. Search nearby Groupons using GPS, and keep track of all your purchased Groupons by location, date, and expiration. And best of all? You save trees by using paperless redemption! Check your phone’s app store to download the Groupon application.

What Do You Get With Groupon That You Don’t Get Anywhere Else?

Valuable New Customers, Guaranteed Since a minimum number of people must buy for the offer to be valid, Groupon guarantees paying customers. These subscribers are not looking for “the perfect deal.” They’re looking for the perfect excuse to try something new. Groupon gets them to your business, and you bring them back again and again.

Efficient, Measurable Marketing There are no out-of-pocket costs associated with being featured on Groupon. They make money by taking a piece of each Groupon they sell. In other words, Groupon only wins if you win – and you know what you’re getting at every step of the process.

Become of the Town Their eager young audience looks to Groupon as a city guide, pointing them to all of the great stuff they may have never tried, or maybe never heard about, right in their backyard. Customers find out 43 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - Groupon about great new businesses, and businesses get more new customers with Groupon than with any other form of advertising.

Big Exposure, Bigger Word of Mouth A Groupon feature puts you in front of thousands of subscribers in each Groupon city – with thousands more opting in each day. Groupon can easily become viral, and its daily discounts spread quickly through e-mail. Groupon subscribers like to forward the deal-of-the-day as recommendation links to their friend. In a world of social media and online personal suggestions, an e-mail suggestion carries a lot of clout. Groupon subscribers are even given a $10 incentive to refer friends, so people are extra motivated to spread the word about Groupon to their personal networks. Our subscribers share your offer with everyone they know via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. This buzz will continue to attract new customers for months following your Groupon feature. 44 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LivingSocial

LivingSocial

What is LivingSocial? LivingSocial offers daily deals on handpicked experiences that can be shared with friends. Their mission is to add surprise to every calendar. So LivingSocial digs deep, pursuing both the things that define a place and the undiscovered jewels. LivingSocial designs total experiences that bring an adventurous, loyal new following to local businesses. Innovation and imagination have made LivingSocial the fastest-growing company in the social-buying category. They satisfy cravings for the new and different at significant savings. LivingSocial means living with real connection.

How Does it Work? When you create an account, which is as simple as your e-mail address, first name, and last name, you select your favorite cities in which you would like deals for. Each day a daily deal is sent to your e-mail based on your location and favorite cities. You have the option to buy the daily deal and once it is purchased it is sent to you the following day. You are able to share this deal with three people via a unique link that is sent to you. If three people buy the deal using your link, then your deal is free.

Where is LivingSocial? LivingSocial is in many large cities throughout the North America, Oceana (Australia and New Zealand), Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. LivingSocial is present in 291 cities throughout North America, 38 Oceanic Cities, 10 cities in the Middle East, 3 citites in Asia, and 73 cities in Europe.

Who is using LivingSocial? LivingSocial is a site for everyone. It is specifically handy for those who like to frequently have nights out. According to LivingSocial.com, 51% of site users are below the age of 35, 70% of users are female, 50% have a college degree, and 38% of users have an income of $100,000 or higher a year.

Why Business Should Join LivingSocial

Build Your Brand With LivingSocial your business can reach a wider audience with the influence of word-of-mouth advertising. Every day, thousands of subscribers share LivingSocial’s deals with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking sites.

Daily Deals LivingSocial offers one fantastic deal every day with discounts of up to 90% at local restaurants, bars, spas, theaters, and more. LivingSocial’s members excitedly anticipate their daily deal to hit their inbox and can’t wait to see what’s next. 45 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LivingSocial

Instant Deals A local shopper with a growling stomach is walking around your store’s neighborhood. Food is needed ASAP, but so is a great deal. This potential customer logs onto LivingSocial through a mobile browser or app and voila! A list of local deals appears and on that list is your store. With one click, the deal is bought and the consumer has walked through your door and ordered something delicious. Just like that, you have another customer and your customer has a new favorite lunch spot. Instant gratification for both of you.

Escapes LivingSocial allows you to be here today, and escape tomorrow. They package affordable getaways that are hard to resist and will have you typing up that “out of office” message in no time. You’ll find everything from one night staycations at a bed and breakfast, to a week-long retreat in another country.

Find More Customers A recent Hitwise survey found that 50% of people that purchase a restaurant deal are first-time customers. Furthermore, 87% of all customers are satisfied and plan to return to that business.And on top of that, they spend an average of $33.65 above the value of their voucher.

Book More Revenue There are no up-front costs to running a deal. Plus, LivingSocial will send you a check for full payment of pre-paid vouchers soon after your promotion, which means you’ll have money in your pocket before some customers even walk in your door.

Specifics to LivingSocial

Gift Card with a Twist You can gift a deal to a friend. It is like a gift card, only a little different. Gifting a deal is where you are offered a deal via your e-mail and you are able to purchase this deal and send it to a friend, no charge to them.

Deal Bucks For every person you invite to use LivingSocial you are awarded five free Deal Bucks.Your invited friend will also receive five free Deal Bucks. You need Deal Bucks to purchase deals. The other way to have Deal Bucks is to have money loaded on your account from your credit card.

Connect on Facebook With LivingSocial, you can sign in with what is called Facebook Connect. Facebook Connect is LivingSocial’s Facebook account. On their account you are able to see daily deals.

How Can Your Business Benefit From LivingSocial?

Create Awareness Simply by your business having a presence on LivingSocial.com you will get recognition from a vast variety of users nationally and internationally. Plus it is free. 46 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LivingSocial

Competitive Advantage Because LivingSocial is no cost to you and is free advertising, it is an efficient and cost effective way to enter yourself into a category of viewers who may have never heard of your business. You can strategically have a competitive advantage over your rivals.

Word of Mouth Thousands will receive your deal and buzz about it with many of their friends. Not only will you be providing a great deal, you will get word spread about your business. Keep your customer satisfied once they walk through the doors and the sky is the limit!

Demographics LivingSocial provides charts featuring the demographics of account users at the site. Details of demographics include: Gender, Age, Education, and Income. This will help you determine if your target audience is being reached.

Minimum Requirements LivingSocial offers deals that are a minimum of 50% off your original item or service price. “Usually, the most successful deals are vouchers that can be redeemed for a given price at your business location, which enables subscribers to choose what they purchase” (LivingSocial.com)

Business Tips for Using LivingSocial

Focus on the Customer Experience and be Prepared to Handle a Crowd Proper staffing the day your promotion runs is critical. If you are ill-prepared to handle the rush of customers flocking in to redeem their coupons, your first-time customers could end up having a lousy experience and quickly become last-time customers. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so don’t blow it. Be adequately staffed with properly trained employees who are eager and ready to convert these bargain hunters into loyal customers.

Watch Your Margins Do your math ahead of time to make sure the promotion you run is priced appropriately. Remember, you are not only offering the customer a steep discount, but you’re splitting the discounted revenue raised from the coupon/voucher sales with the promoting company (e.g., Groupon) and possibly incurring other transaction costs (such as credit card fees) on top of that. Unfortunately, many small businesses find themselves running money-losing promotions.

Compare and Contrast Different Providers This area has become crowded with a regular stream of new entrants at the national, regional, and local levels, so do your due diligence to determine which company and program makes the most sense for your business. 47 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - LivingSocial

Check Your Stock Be sure to have enough stock to cope with the extra demand. It’s always wise to be ready for the unexpected, so plan for selling thousands of deals, so that you never run out when you new customers arrive.

Get Ready for an Ever Ringing Phone One constant among businesses running deals over social buying sites is the ever ringing phone. New customers will most certainly have questions and doubts, and they will call. Moreover, if you own a service that requires booking, people will start calling immediately after they buy the deal. Don’t panic and don’t get annoyed. Be sure to have someone (or maybe even more than one person) assigned exclusively to answer the phone. If you can’t cope with the constant calling, get an answering machine, and record a nice inviting message asking people to leave their contact information or redirecting them to an e-mail address.

Make Sure Your Website can Handle the Extra Traffic More customers and the huge exposure you will get might be a little bit too much for your website. Call your hosting service and make sure it is prepared to receive thousands of visits. If you run an online business or a service that requires previous bookings, you may consider to include an online booking tool, so that you can cope with the extra customers in an easier way. Another good idea, might be to add a special section on your home page aimed at the people who bought the deal.

Keep Records of Your New Customers The sites don’t disclose the e-mail addresses of the customers who bought your deal (or any other contact information for that matter), so make sure you keep some record of who they are and how to reach them. This may be useful for further contact with them or for mere statistical purposes. A wise idea might be to ask new customers to fill out a small questionaire asking them what they think of your business, and request them to provide an e-mail address at the end of the form. If your service requires previous booking, make sure to ask users their e-mail addresses by the time they call to reserve.

Don’t Forget About Your Old Loyal Customers Adding thousands of new customers to your business may upset your regular customer base. If you run a business that requires booking, such as a nail salon or a dental service, keep in mind that after your deal, you could get booked for days, or even weeks. Make sure to reserve free time slots for your regular customers, so that they don’t get frustrated (and run to the arms of your competitors) when they can’t use your service for days. 48 | Social Media Made Easy 2.0 - In Closing

In Closing

We hope this social media guide has helped you get started in the right direction, given you a better understanding of each option, and increased your confidence across-the-board. If you are a business owner or lead the marketing efforts at your company and are still a little unsure about what to do next or how to get the most out of social media to strengthen your brand and grow your business, contact us today. You can find us online at:

You can also contact us via e-mail or by calling 608.519.3070. Now that you have a social media guide, what will your destination be? Facebook? Twitter? Foursquare? Wherever you decide to participate to build your network, enjoy the ride and make the most of it.

About The BLÜ Group – Advertising & Marketing The BLÜ Group is a full-service, fully-integrated ad agency focused on doing whatever it takes to strengthen your brand and grow your business. We specialize and employ a wide range of disciplines that approach our clients’ marketing challenges from many different fronts. These include: Market Research, Brand Platforms, Marketing Strategies, Broadcast and Print Advertising, Graphic Design, Corporate Identity, Direct Marketing, Website Design, Media Planning and Buying, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), E-mail Marketing, and Social Media to name a few. Our services are available a-la-carte or on retainer. Contact us today to continue the conversation.