Here are some resources related to the Putting Web 2.0 to Work for Your Business presentation for Vistage. This page provides links to all of the resources I mentioned during my talk – and some extras. Additionally, if you would like ongoing insights and tips about social media and Web marketing, I encourage you to subscribe to my newsletter. And please feel free to contact me if you have questions or if I can be of service to your organization.
– Jeff
Presentation Slides
Here’s a PDF version of the slides from my presentation:
Background Materials
One of the key background resources for understanding social media marketing is The Cluetrain Manifesto. This is the source of the “markets are conversations” concept. You can get the full text for free at:
Also, for straightforward, easy to understand explanations of key social Web technologies, it is hard to beat the videos at Commoncraft.com:
- RSS In Plain English
- Blogs In Plain English
- Wikis In Plain English
- Social Networking In Plain English
- Twitter In Plain English
- Twitter Search in Plain English
- Online Photo Sharing In Plain English
- Podcasting In Plain English
- Social Bookmarking In Plain English
- Social Media In Plain English
- Websearch Strategies In Plain English
Listen
Before you dive in and start talking about yourself or your company, learn to “listen” to what is going on out on the Web first. Some key listening tools are:
- Google Alerts: Set up searches on your company name, yourself, key staff, and topics that relate to your market. Google will deliver the results to your inbox or an RSS reader like the free Google Reader. (I recommend using an RSS reader and treating it like a brand “dashboard.” Be sure to use quotes around phrases you enter to ensure that results come back only on the exact phrase.) See How to Get Better News Alerts for tips on how to use more advanced techniques for refining your Google Alerts results.
- Also consider using the search capabilities on Twitter to see if people are talking about you, your organization, or topics that are important to you. You can subscribe to Twitter search so that you can view them in your RSS Reader along with your Google alerts. Use the advanced search capabilities to make your searches more local or filter them in other ways.
- For other listening techniques, see my blog post 10 Tools for Monitoring Your Brand.
Engage
- Consider a blog to help you communicate your expertise to customers and prospects – and give them a way to ask you questions and make comments. WordPress.com is a great free option for setting up a blog. A step up from that is getting a hosting provider to host your own installation of WordPress. Nearly all host now have this capability. It is a bit more involved, but gives you tremendous flexibility. You may want to see my recent post on 10 Reasons to Use WordPress for Your Web Site. Finally, here’s the first post in a series on Marketing and Growing Your Blog.
Blog Success Story: Articulate Rapid E-learning Blog
- For video content, consider getting a Flip Video Camcorder. The quality is very good, and it is designed to make it easy to capture video and upload it to YouTube. You can find the WillItBlend videos I referenced at WillItBlend.com. Remember, these were made with very simple equipment and were hugely successful!
- Simple High Value Tip: Put your company’s Web address (i.e., http://www.mycompany.com) within the first several words of the description you enter for each YouTube video.
Video Success Story: WillItBlend.com from Blendtec.
- Use Twitter as a way to really connect into conversations with your customers and prospects. Register yourself at Twellow and also use it to search others you may want to follow on Twitter. I also recommend the Twitter for Business ebook by John Jantsch. Finally, if you become an avid Twitter user, consider using a tool like Tweetdeck – it makes managing Twitter much easier than using the Twitter Web site.
- Facebook is unlikely to produce overnight results for most businesses, but over time, it can be a way to really cultivate close relationships with your customers. To get started, you will need to create a Fan page for your business. If you already have a personal profile, the page will be associated with that profile. If you don’t have a profile, you can set up a page that is just for your business. Once you are set up, I recommend that you also look at advertising on Facebook.
- For more details on how to actually use Facebook effectively, I recommend Hubspot’s How to Use Facebook for Business. And to help you easily put content into your Facebook page, you may want to try out some of the tools offered by Involver.
Facebook Success Story: Sprinkles Cupcake Bakery
Track
- As you start to make use of some of the tools above, make sure you have put into place some sort of analytics software for tracking traffic and other activity on your Web site. One of the best options out there is the free Google Analytics that can be installed just by having your Web master put a line of code in the right place on your Web site.