Using Social Media for Business

Prepared by Laraib Saleem

What is Social Media?

• Is it social networking?• Is it social bookmarking?• Is it wiki?The best way to define social media is to read it in parts, media is

instrument of communication like newspaper, radio, internet etc therefore ‘Social Media’ can be considered as social instrument of communication

Using Social Media for Business Needs

• “According to the Cone Business in Social Media Study, 93 percent of Americans expect companies they do business with to have a social media presence. And 85 percent believe a company should not only be present, but also interact with its customers via social media.”

5 Reasons Why Your Business Needs Social Media

• Brand recognition• Take your message directly to

the customer• Increase your search engine

rankings• SEO benefits• Social media content is now

integrated with search results

Step by Step Guide to use Social Media for Business Needs

Track Your Company Reputation• Track your company reputation on internet, the first thing to do is to

know your brand reputation before you go online and make your online presence

Develop Target Audience• Monitor the interests of target audience, the search they made, the

discussion they do on social networking sites

Discover Influencers • Tracking the conversation of the online people helps a lot, it

creates base for launching new campaigns, knowing the competition out there, the impact of competitive offers to the customers by different brands

Gather Research• Social media are repositories for discussions and content on every

possible topic. Search tools can help you mine that data.

Tracking the Conversation Distribution• Some monitoring tools allow the use to track the places where

active conversations and discussions are going on this includes forums and blogs.

Trend the Conversations• Conversations made on sites are really helpful if you divide them

carefully they will be easily utilized in appropriate time like when to launch new offers, when to cut down the advertisement campaigns.

Determine the share of Attention• The conversations going on social networks helps in tracking the

competition between you and your competitor.

Identify Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)• It’s up to marketing to find SMEs who can engage in the

conversations that are most important to your target audience.

Assign SMEs to engage with key influencers and/or topic areas

• Think of this like the old beat system in newspapers. You want to have someone knowledgeable get involved in the most important and relevant conversations. Marketers and PR people can help by monitoring conversations and alerting SMEs to the topics and conversations they should get involved in

Promote other types of marketing• By engaging, we can share links to the various other forms of

marketing content that we produce, such as white papers, events,

Webinars, etc.

Seed discussions• Using social media, we can drive interest in other forms of

marketing by posting provocative questions or information. For example, posting a link to a survey that you reference in a white paper or will discuss in an upcoming event helps drive interest—and may even provide valuable research.

Build loyalty by being timely• SMEs that can be counted on to contribute to conversations quickly

will become very popular among their social media followers.

Develop and test points of view• Managing the conversation through vehicles like blogs and

communities gives you a ready test bed for getting help and feedback on ideas that you are trying to develop into thought leadership.

Extend conversations• Managing the conversation gives you a way to keep your target

audience’s interest by bringing in conversations from other

marketing channels and giving them a permanent home.

Closely observe behavior• By capturing a target audience within your own community, you can

get much richer data on their actions, needs, and interests.

Concluding Remark“social media adoption by small businesses has doubled from

12% to 24% in the last year. Small businesses are increasingly investing in applications including blogs, Facebook and LinkedIn profiles”.

“A business without social media Balance intervention in it is just like a body without

soul…..”

Thank You