Successful Business Uses for Facebook and LinkedIn (GF202)

Professor: Elyse Tager, Silicon Valley American Marketing Association

Online and Traditional Media Done Right

For Business

June 2009

Social Media for Business

• Inbound vs Outbound marketing

• LinkedIn vs. Facebook – different cultures = different objectives

• Time vs. $$ - it’s free, but….

Get Started

• Know your audience, be clear about your objective(s)

• Play with the tools yourself first,

• Be sure to check out Learning Center for LI, and FB About page

• Check out groups in various applications and see what they are doing. Learn by emulating

• Participate in your community

• Define the outcome and then pick the right tool for the job

• Start with measurement in mind.

Possible Objectives

– Personal Branding/Career management/job search• Branding• Establishing thought leadership• Gaining knowledge• Establishing professional credibility

– Corporate• Customer relations/customer service• Crisis management• Corporate reputation management• Event management• Lead generation/promotion/sales• Internal communication• Issues/advocacy/fundraising• PR/Twitpitching

Strategy for any objective

• Connect/Create/Engage

Connect

• Building your connections strategically

Create

• Create content - Each post has the opportunity to either create content, or point to content– Link to your website of blog– Link to articles/white papers etc of value– Link to picture, videos, podcasts

• Frequency – to gain attention/momentum• Be of Value – in each of the above

Engage

• Post/comment often• Pose questions publicly

to other members• Answer queries• The secret sauce for all

Social Media is in the engagement. The more you connect, the more will come back to you.

LinkedIn

• Over 41 million members in over 200 countries and territories around the world.

• A new member joins LinkedIn approximately every second, and about half of our members are outside the U.S.

• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIn members.

• Different levels of participation– Personal = free– Biz, Biz plus, biz pro= more features, more $

LinkedIn

What can you do?– Homepage-use it– Profile – importance, add apps, build in keywords– Company pages – profile and search– Build and Maintain a meaningful network– Join Groups– Ask/answer questions – Show up in Service Provider – request

recommendations– Polls

LI Home Page

• News • Inbox-control panel for all

of your LinkedIn user interactions

• Network Update - feed displays the latest activity of your connections.

• Profile views – brand management – who is viewing you

LI – Create and optimize your Personal Profile

• Headline – – be specific about your location

and industry– Use headline to attract visitors

including search engines• Real time updates

– Similar to Twitter – update frequently w/ value/thought leadership

• This will show up in your connections’ “network updates”

• Add your “online places” website, blogs etc– Edit to name your company or

blog – more click thru’s

Profile

• Summary – who are you, what do you do. Elevator pitch, optimize for keywords

• Education – use for connections

• Interests – maybe too personal for biz use – you decide

• Security settings – decide how open and visible you want to be

• Add apps for credibility – depth

Company Profile

• Description – keywords, elevator pitch

• Logo• Employee info• All are searchable

w/in LI and outside

Company Search

• Search by name, location, industry

• Browse industries• Companies in your

network

Building your Network

• Aggregate all databases

• Upload from Outlook, ACT, GMail, AOL etc and invite all

• Search your connection’s connection

• Let LinkedIn suggest connections

• Search for your old contacts, school mates, work-mates

• Peruse members of relevant groups

• Quality and relevance trumps quantity

Groups

• Can search for groups by category

• Join strategically – up to 50. Seek common interest, experience, affiliation, and goals

• Check your connections to see what groups they have joined

• Use to find new connections, ask for help, pose questions, find resource, solve problems

Ask/Answer Questions• Ask/answer questions to get or

give answers from your network and others outside

• Can showcase your knowledge, expertise, and interests by answering questions

• Questions will be listed on your profile – good branding.

• Answers will show up on your network update

• When answering you may be chosen as “expert” – adds more credibility

• Don’t over use for self-promotion – sounds like spam

Service Provider

• Built from recommendations – ask for these frequently using “request recommendation” function

• Use to find providers or be one

Polls

• New feature• Can only ask one

question• Can send to your

contacts or to larger audience (for a fee)

• Jury is out

• 20 million active users• 100 million users log on daily• 600K new users daily• 3rd most trafficked website• Fastest growing demographic = age 35+• More than 4 million people become fans of pages daily

FB - Getting started – biz vs. personal accounts

• Start by building a personal profile– Basic info– Personal profile– Contact info– Education

Personal Profile – Account Settings

Personal Profile – Privacy Settings

• Control who can see how much of your profile

• Who can search for you and how much they can see

• Control what of your activity is visible on your wall and newsfeed

Personal Profile - Friends

• Connect with Friends– Use networks and

groups to find– Invite friends function– Find friend function

• Think strategically about why you are connecting

FB for biz

• Page

• Group

• Events

• Ads

• Metrics

Create your page

Biz Page

Edit Page

Biz Page Tips

• Be sure to sign up as your first fan

• Have 2 admins – in case one disappears

• Update frequently

• Add FB page to your email address – promote shamelessly, FB badge on blog

• Create a beefy page – videos, blog posts, discussions, photos

Facebook Group

• Must be a member to view

• Internal w/in FB

• Search engines will not find

• May want to create both

Events

Facebook Ads

Step 1 – Create Ad

Step 2 - Targeting• Target Your Audience By:

– Location – Age – Sex– Keywords – Education – Workplace– Relationship Status – Relationship Interests – Languages

• Target your exact audience with demographic and psychographic filters about real people. By default, Facebook targets all users 18 and older in the default location. However, you are encouraged to modify this to reach the most appropriate people for your ad. Be sure to reference the approximate reach figure for an estimate of the number of people who match your criteria.

Step 3 – Set pricing

• Can buy on a CPC or CPM basis• Click thru rates very low• If use CPC, will get lots of branding w/ impressions

Metrics - Insight

Metrics – Insight (part 1)

• Graph shows how fans are interacting with your posts and consuming your material.

• Interactions: Total number of comments, Wall posts, and likes.

• Interactions Per Post: Average number of comments, Wall posts, and likes generated by each piece of content you post.

• Post Quality: Score measuring how engaging your content is to Facebook users. A higher Post Quality indicates material that better engages users.

Metrics – Insight (part 2)• Stream CTR / ETR: This graph is a measure of the Click Through

Rate and Engagement Rate for your content appearing in the Facebook News Feed. If a user clicks on one of your posts, that will be counted as Stream CTR. If a user likes or comments on one of your posts, that will be counted in the Stream ETR. Please note that Stream data is based on a sample and therefore is an estimate of your Stream CTR and ETR. (Coming soon)

• Media Consumption: Total photo views, audio plays, and video plays for the content you have uploaded to your Page.

• Discussion Posts: The number of Discussion topics users have created on your Page.

• Reviews: The number of times fans have used the Reviews application to rate your Page.

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