How to use social media!
SPONSORED BY FACEBOOK GROUP FLINT AFTER 5
Free workshop 02/24/2011 5:30- 7:30 Flint Public Library.
TEACHING SOCIAL MEDIA-BY USING SOCIAL MEDIA
Thursday 02/24/2011 5:30 - 7 :30 pm Main Branch of the Flint Public Library on Kearsley.
This link
http://goodmorningflint.blogspot.com/2011/02/do-not-let-you-social-media-expierence.html
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Event follow up email
Thank you for attending the Flint After 5 Social Media Class. We hope that you found the class informative. We realize that you were given a lot of information in a short period of time, so we are sending this follow up e-mail to provide links to the websites discussed at the class and to answer some of the questions that we may not have had time to address during the class.
Terry Bankert advised us that there are many ways for an organization or business to use the internet as a free marketing tool. You can create a free blog at www.blogspot.com. You can also post comments on Flint Journal articles at www.mlive.com or make posts on the community page at
http://www.abc12.com/
. Terry also reminded us that if you have a facebook page for your organization or business, it is important to update regularly - even multiple times a day. People generally check their facebook when they get up in the morning, around lunch time, when they get home from work, and before they go to bed. If you only make one post in the morning, people may not see it.
Angela Alexander told us that you can use
http://www.mailchimp.com/
, to publish and share e-mail newsletters with up to 12,000 people a month (for free!).
Terry Wisner suggested that if you plan on using social media as a marketing tool, it is important to develop a social media policy for your organization or business. For help with this, you can go to www.policytool.net. Terry also told us to remember The 3 E's of social media: Entertain, Educate, and Enlighten. When you are making social media posts, they should always fit into one of these categories.
Our final speaker, Kali Varner, told us that it's important to claim your listing online. An easy way to do this is to go to
http://www.getlisted.org/.
There were several questions posted on Terry Bankert's facebook wall during the class. Some of them were answered and some of them were not. Here is a list of the questions with answers:
Q: Do you need both a website and a facebook page for your organization?
A: It is a good idea to have both. A website is more formal and will be found easier when people are doing internet searches. However, if you do not have money to pay to have a website designed, it is okay to just have a facebook page. If you already have a website, you can use your facebook page to promote the website.
Q: How do you attract more friends?
A: Suggest your page to all of your current friends. Once they "like" your page, ask them to post a link to your page on their wall or to suggest it to their friends.
Q: How did you take the picture? Was it with your phone or webcam?
A: Terry used his phone to take the picture and videos and upload them to facebook. You can also you a webcam to take and upload pictures.
Q: How does one create an organization page? Is it different from a personal page?
A; An organization page is different from a personal page. Here is a link to a website that provides simple step-by-step instructions for creating a facebook page for an organization or business:
http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/the-super-simple-guide-to-setting-up-you.php
Q: I'm the administrator for my organization's Facebook page and it is tied to my personal page. Anytime I try to 'like' anything it's my personal page that shows as liking it, not my organization. Why is this and how can I change it?
A: In the past, you were not able to change this. However, facebook is now introducing changes that will be applied to all pages by the middle of March. These changes allow you to switch back and forth between using facebook as yourself or as you organization.
Thank you again for attending our social media class. This is the first time we have presented this type of class and we would love to hear your feedback. We will be sending a survey later in the week to get your opinions on what you liked and what you think can be improved.
Please reply to this email if you would like more information on joining the Flint After 5 Business Network. We hope to see you again at future events!
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Flint After 5 Business Network
"Different Professions Coming Together"
P.O. Box 320915
Flint, MI 48532
Find us on facebook:
www.facebook.com/flintafter5
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This class will be interactive with you. Go to your facebook account. In the search bar type " We help you use social media" Click like, type your name in a comment box, interact... before the workshop ask what questions you would like answered. During the workshop ask questionS, share your expierence. We will teach social media using social media! YOU ARE INVITED.
By Terry Bankert
Contact on the Web-
http://www.attorneybankert.com/
At this page use “contact” to reach me.
Social media involves a natural, genuine conversation between people about something of mutual interest, a conversation built on the thoughts and expierences of the participants. It is about sharing and arriving at a collective point, often for the purpose of making a better more-informed choice.[sm-32]Participatory on-line media where news, photos,videos,and podcasts are made public with the audience able to immediatley respond.[sm-46]
1.Social Media is all about enabling conversations.
2.You cannot control conversations, but you can influence them.
3.Influence is the bedrock upon which all economically viable relationships are built. [b-5]
Social Media is not about the content itself: it is about the way in which consumers of content are connected and about the conversations that result. [sm-65]
We need to transform the way we touch our clients, and integrate ourselves into the very fabrick of what they do every day. We have to embrace social media/networks , digital communications and the online expierence and build organizations that embrace conversations and transparency. [5b]
The exercise here will focus on your participating on-line in a Work Shop on Social Media held in Flint Michigan 2/24/11 5:30 pm atthe Flint Public Library on Kearsley St in Flint. You may be physically present but your are asked to bring your laptop or smart phone.
First a review of a good local Social Media set of sites for the American Red Cross.
A. Web site American Red Cross
http://www.geneseelapeer-redcross.org/
B. Google Business Map
C. American Red Cross Face Book Page
http://www.facebook.com/pages/American-Red-Cross-Flint-River-Chapter/140124869331817
D. American Red Cross in MLIVE Business Finder.
E. “ We help You use Social Media” face book page to be used for training 2/24/11
MY APPROACH FOLLOWS
1.GOOGLE TEACH SOCIAL MEDIA
2.GO TO 100 Tips, Tools and resources for Teaching Students about Social Media
http://www.teachingdegree.org/2009/06/22/100-tips-tools-and-resources-for-teaching-students-about-social-media/
3.Why Use Social Media?
Some Statistics about the new "Two Cultures": the Culture of Knowledge and the Culture of Information
83% of adult respondents thought that a twelve-year-old knew more about the Internet than their elected representative in Congress (Zogby 2006)
48% of all children six and under have used a computer, and 30% have played video games (Rideout, Vandewater, and Wartella 2003)
55% of youth 12-17 use social networking sites (Pew 2007)
57% of teens who use the Internet could be considered media creators (Pew 2005), a statistic that may be an undercount, because it does not factor in newer digital forms of expression or those that produce artifacts other than written texts (Jenkins/MacArthur 2006)
While engaged in an average of 2.7 simultaneous Internet Message conversations, 39% of surveyed college students were also writing academic essays while multitasking online (Baron 2006)
71% of students at the University of Minnesota use Wikipedia; 28% cite it (Adams 2006)
36% of students in a U.S./Canada study admit to "cut and paste" plagiarism of sources from the Internet (McCabe 2004)
81% of faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences get digital resources from Google-type searches (Harley 2006)
http://www.digitalrhetoric.org/socialmedia.html
4. WHAT IS SOCIAL MEDIA
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue. Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein also define social media as "a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, which allows the creation and exchange of user-generated content."[1] Businesses also refer to social media as consumer-generated media (CGM). A common thread running through all definitions of social media is a blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
5.SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
One of the key components in successful social media marketing implementation is building "social authority". Social authority is developed when an individual or organization establishes themselves as an "expert" in their given field or area, thereby becoming an "influencer" in that field or area. [12]
It is through this process of "building social authority" that social media becomes effective. That is why one of the foundational concepts in social media has become that you cannot completely control your message through social media but rather you can simply begin to participate in the "conversation" in the hopes that you can become a relevant influence in that conversation. [13]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
SEE EXAMPLE: RED CROSS OF GENESEE COUNTY.
http://www.geneseelapeer-redcross.org/
6.DO NOT BE AFRAID IF SOCIAL MEDIA
Fear – fear pervades the process with anyone older than 40 unless they started years ago. The most common reaction I get is that they don’t know if people are watching them. While in my opinion, much of this is fear driven via the constant harping of regular media, (predators and the rest) or people use stories like Kathy Sierra or the Yale law students that were pinged and harassed via Autoadmit. The fear of social media is going to keep some of the best people off the social network, this includes Facebook, linked in, and even internal company blogs. They will read them, but they will never write them, even under a pseudonym.
To address fear I usually start off with the augment, who is looking at you when you are walking downtown? Do you know them? Do you know if they are well meaning or want to mug you? By pointing out the risk of social media as a risk they take every day seems to help. You can insert any mass grouping in here, a bus, a football stadium, a rock concert, they key here is to legitimize the things they are thinking, then show them where they take similar risks.
Demonization of Social Networking – every time a person does something wrong on a social network, it is demonized, the press has a field day, and the information is all over the news on how evil social networking is overall. We have seen this in a number of cases, like Lori Drew, and the MySpace child sex predator scare. This has a major influence on the use of social networks. If you go back and take a look at MySpace stats and Facebook stats (although I cannot get the two year stats from compete), one of the beliefs in some research circles is that the flat line in MySpace and the growth of Facebook was when the press was happily demonizing the dangers to your children at MySpace. While MySpace has done excellent damage control with equally visible campaigns to rebuild their credibility, ask any parent of a teenager if they can have a MySpace page they will stop and think about it (they will for Facebook as well, but not as long). Facebook preempted the problem by joining in looking like they were being proactive to take care of their audience, where MySpace looked reactive.
To address demonization I usually go into how sensationalist the press is to build out an audience. You can usually compare this off to the finest of sensationalist press like the Weekly World News, the Drudge report, the Huffington Post, and other in print or on line news systems that rely on sensationalist press to get a point across and build audience. This turns into an interesting discussion on how sensationalism works to grab an audience, and how it can be used to drive an agenda in the press, both on line and in print. Students usually love this discussion, because it gives them an opportunity to discuss the number of advertising systems they see, and how they relate to blogs and to the press. After a while, students realize that just about anything in print or on line carries some form of spin, the key to that spin is to work out how much the student agrees with it. Demonization usually falls off the map after addressing the issues and talking openly and frankly about the things they see on line and in print.
http://techwag.com/index.php/2008/12/18/teaching-social-media-by-addressing-fear/
7. Google social Media Non-profit
8. 4 Ways Social Media is Changing the Non Profit World
constituents.
1. Deepening relationships and Engagement
Over the past five years, The March of Dimes has used social media to nurture its online community, Share Your Story. It is one of the better examples of how non-profits can use social media to empower supporters without having to control it.
A few weeks ago, the March of Dimes supporters came out in droves for a networked memorial service for a toddler named Maddie. The community raised tens of thousands of dollars for the March of Dimes in Maddie’s memory as well as covering the funeral costs for the family. The organization did little to stage this event. The March of Dimes has embraced openness and inspired their stakeholders to feel empowered enough to take action on their own.
2. Individuals & small groups are self-organizing around non-profit causes
Social media is enabling individuals to create, join, and grow groups around issues they care about outside of the direct control of a non-profit. Whether flash activists or fundraising events like Twestival, activities like these are on the rise.
Social software design is also helping accelerate this trend. Look no further than the Facebook Causes Birthday application that encourages an individual who is a member of a Cause to use their birthday as an excuse to raise money for a non-profit organization. DonorsChoose recently launched a similar feature called “Birthday Give Back,” with Stephen Colbert leading the charge. And keep an eye out for more social apps with a conscience that will offer even more creative ways for supporters to self-organize and take action around causes.
As non-profits begin to engage their own communities in these online conversations, they are able to reach more people than ever before, and using less effort doing so. As Maddie Grant, a partner at SocialFish, observes, “We can all be change agents and that has to be good for the entire non-profit industry, as long as organizations adapt to this new way of being part of a two-way conversation and groundswell of social responsibility.”
3. Facilitating collaboration and crowdsourcing
The social web lets people who work in non-profit organizations connect and collaborate informally across institutional boundaries quickly and inexpensively. Non-profit organizations are also collaborating with their supporters by crowdsourcing ideas, feedback, and content for programs.
Lights, Camera Action, Help Film Festival, which was created to promote the idea of films-for-a-cause, was a collaboration that happened across different non-profits by individuals connecting on the social web.
Another example is WeAreMedia, a wiki project where over 100 non-profit technology professionals have pooled knowledge resources and developed training materials to help non-profits learn how to use social media effectively. The initial content was facilitated through discussions on blogs, Twitter, and Facebook. Now, presentations are being remixed and delivered as trainings to non-profits at conferences and workshops across the country.
An interesting example of crowdsourcing by a nonprofit comes from Michael Tilson Thomas, artistic director of the San Francisco Symphony with the recent performance of the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. The performers were selected from thousands of video auditions from around the globe. The finalists were winnowed down by a jury of professional musicians, not unlike a traditional audition, but the winners were crowdsourced by YouTube users via online voting. The resulting “mashed up” symphony orchestra, had more than 90 players representing over 30 countries.
4. Social change behind the firewall
We know that for many non-profits, adopting social media requires a culture shift before it can be successful. And, while that is certainly true for a lot of organizations, a number have been effective in introducing social media to help change the culture, flatten hierarchical structures, speed decision-making, improve programs and services.
Conclusion
We’re just at the beginning of seeing how social media is impacting how non-profits engage with their supporters and do their work. As more and more non-profits adopt social media and their practice improves over time, we will no doubt see a transformation of the non-profit sector.
http://mashable.com/2009/05/22/non-profit-social-media/
9. Google Business and Social Media
10. 30 Ways to use Social Media in Business
1.Get feedback: There is even software for that like Uservoice, GetSatisfaction or OpenMind. Or simply listen to what people say on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and forums. There are also tools for that.
2.Create demand: Better than simply reacting is proactively informing about upcoming products, features or services. This way the demand is there before the actual product arrives. Apple is doing it all the time.
3.Offer discounts: Once you have an account on Facebook or Twitter or even before you gain a significant following the best thing you can do is offering discounts. People will follow you then and they also will buy. Dell has been selling computers on Twitter for years.
4.Get attention: Sounds simple doesn’t it? Say something of importance and then you migt get attention. Why? Well, on the Web not money is the most valuable good, it’s attention. It can be turned into money but you earn more money in the long term by trying to get attention repeatedly.
5.Spread the word: Tell the people about you and your business once you have established a connection with your following by getting attention over and over again and again. Announce changes on your blog, promote your next appearance at a conference or like mentioned above present your new product.
6.Build brand loyalty: Brand loyalty is self-explanatory isn’t it? People like your brand and then buy from it in the future again. How do you make them loyal customers? Either by providing formidable goods and services or you provide something for free, be it information or community.
7.Establish a community: The Web is a great place for creating communities. Why? People from all over the world who are obsessed about the same weird hobby can virtually meet with other like-minded individuals. You can establish a community of fans of your brand right there on your blog, feedback site or Facebook group.
8.Answer questions: People as questions all the time on the Web. That’s why start ups like Quora try to be next big thing while Yahoo Answers had more traffic that Twitter up to 2010. replay and answer questions, be helpful, whether you are dealing with your won products and services or the niche by and large.
9.Provide support: sometimes people have more than questions. They are annoyed, angry or even desperate. Your product or service may have caused that suffering. A simple tweet can help. Just this week I tried to install open source analytics Piwik and failed miserably. I voiced it on Twitter and the official Piwik account replied with a very simple solution. It took them one short look at my installation to find out what’s wrong.
10.Get clients: Of course you get clients or customers this way as well. When Yahoo announced that Delicious will be discontinued i and many other were scrambling to find an alternative to rescue their bookmarks. I got contacted by at least one other company.
11.Improve CRM: Does your company use customer relationship management tools like Salesforce? Well, many CRM tools already support CRM features to manage relationships beyond customers or rather before they become customers. Even simple Twitter tools like CoTweet provide CRM features. You can view past conversation with each Twitter user you interact with.
12.Empower staff: In Germany we have a drugstore chain infamous for being stingy. Their shops are small, look shabby and they don’t even have a phone to prevent staff for private conversations. Thus these drugstores get robbed regularly as staff can’t even call the police. Likewise many companies forbid Facebook, Twitter etc. on the job and isolate their workforce. other companies empower their staff and win customers or clients on social media.
13.Monitor trends: You can find out more on social media than just who is talking or complaining about you. Many tools allow to watch trends unfold. You determine what’s cool and where the demand is almost instantly by scanning Facebook and Twitter with simple tools like Topsy.
14.Identify influencers: Topsy also allows you to find out who actually tweets about your business. You can check how many clicks these people brought to your site via bit.ly or Twitter’s own stats. Indeed Topsy even marks important users “influential” or “highly influential” based on their activity.
15.Reach out: Once you know who likes you you can reach out to these people. blogger outreach is even an established industry term by now. Contact them, simply express your gratitude, invite them to your next product presentation or sen them your products for testing purposes.
16.Discuss features: Feedback is great but as long as it’s a monologue by disgruntled users complaining about you it isn’t very helpful. Often users can already suggest solutions. O you can try to explain how you’d like to change your product or service. A discussion will often yield far better results than just simple feedback.
17.Facilitate testing: social sites are not only for talking aka conversation. Some sites like Clue e.g. offer user testing as a free service. Usability testing is not only a task for experts you always need real people do the testing as well. Approach them on social media and simply ask to perform a short test.
18.Debunk myths: People are often complaining about you in public on social media in an exaggerated way. They may misunderstand your product or go way over board out of anger. These people will make look like the worst hotel in history or the most expensive car dealer in the country. Just counter these allegations with numbers, customer feedback etc. Often people complain about your brand even without trying it just beacuse someone else said “it sucks”.
19.Market offerings: Yes, indeed, you can market your offerings as well. It’s not like marketing elsewhere though. You don’t appear on the social media scene and start shouting about you and your offers. All the actions mentioned above and below are part of the marketing. People like you when you do all of or at least part of it right and then nobody will mad at you for just mentioning your offer even without it being new or a bargain.
20.Forge relationships: Did you know that people don’t want to talk with companies, they want to talk with people. So they really want to have a relationship with you. They want to know who you are, where you live and that you are a human being. People don’t want to talk to anonymous call canter agents they will never again talk to because there a hundred more any each time you get another one randomly. social media users want to follow a CEO, a public figure, a visible representative. Rad Fishkin, Matt Cutts and Lee Odden are perfect examples of this in the SEO industry.
21.Develop authority: A real life person telling the truth, being helpful and sharing valuable information more than once is on her or his way to develop authority. Isn’t it logical? So having a recognizable representative over time can make your company exec or spokesperson become an industry authority important beyond the position s/he has in your company.
22.Build links: That’s funny, I almost forgot that! As this here is an SEO blog: You can get links on social media and even likes and tweets counts as votes on search engines these days. So building links on social media is a wonderful side effect. You don’t want to submit your site to “10000 social bookmarking sites”. That’s spam. I mean building links doing all of the above.
23.Raise funds: Your business model doesn’t have to be selling something. Maybe you don’t even have a product or you work for an NGO. Social media is an excellent fundraising tool. There are even sites that automate that process and promote your projects. It’s called crowdfunding: Kickstarter is quite well known by now but only open to hip elite projects. Other sites like Kapipal do not have such high hurdles. Also there is P2P credit where real people can lend you money for your business idea.
24.Get publicity: What’s the difference between getting attention, spreading the word (I mentioned both above) and getting publicity? Well social media is used no only by bloggers but also by old school journalists. Social media press releases and giving away the news to bloggers can result in publicity beyond the social media sphere itself.
25.Watch the competition: In case you are not on social media your competition probably already is. You can watch their steps and try to learn or mimic them. As long as they excel on social media you have to do that. Than you can just watch them like you watch your overall industry and mentions of your brand. Google Alerts is your first love to do it but plenty of other tools assist you here.
26.Find talent: I don’t need or want a job, I value my freedom. A few years ago I still was open to job offers but nonetheless I get headhunters who are contacting me on LinkedIn and Xing. I got my writing gig here on SEOptimise via Twitter back in 2007. So looking for talent is one of the more evident ways to use social media sites.
27.Organize: Do you know Anonymous? It’s a group of Internet activists who are really a pain in the back of the corrupt and powerful these days. You might not condone their methods or goals but their mode of organization is simple, it’s social media. You can organize your workforce all over the planet using social media.
28.Create value: These days value is often ephemeral. Stocks and money are often virtual an traded at the speed of light. Real value as in gold or made of steel, brick and mortar are rare. Assets are often data and knowledge. It’s very easy to create value by sharing and thus multiplying information. Resources lists I often compile on SEOptimise are an example close to home.
29.Locate markets: Do you know the idiom “big in Japan”? It refers to artists or musicians who have been overlooked in the US, UK or Europe but who are hugely popular in Japan. Likewise some products and services flop at home but are all the rage elsewhere. On social media you have people from all over the world listening. When your market is crowd you can discover another somewhere else.
30.Meet peers: Watching your competition is not the best thing to deal with other in your niche or industry. They are your peers. Of course you compete with them a bit but at the end of the day hooking up with them will be more beneficial to you and them that solely competing. In the SEO industry we share our knowledge all the time. I haven’t seen anybody going bankrupt beacuse of that.
http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2011/01/30-ways-to-use-social-media-for-business-people.html
11. Lets get started.
a. Create an email account..on you own
b. Google “face book” go to Welcome to face book
c. Create a face book account or log in.
d.open your account
e. In the search bar at the top type in .” we help you use social media”
f.click its highlighted bar when it opens click like.
g. This should take you to its face book page.
h. Go to the first thread “We help you use social media” click comment to open a comment box, in the box type your name. This will be how we communicate during the course. Feel to tell me the questions you want answered before the cource and to make comments during the course. You are now part of the instruction process. The essence of social media.
[sm]
Social Media Marketing , by Dale Evans Wiley Publichigan Inc. 2008
[b] Social Media Bible by Lon Safko and David K. Brake 2009 Wiley Publications
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