Websitefunctionality:

Social Media

Brian McManus

✔ PMT✔ Millennials✔ Social Networking✔ Books✔ Tools for:

✔ Webinars, Blogging✔ Podcasting RSS✔ Search Engine ✔ Optimization

In the interest of “Web 2.0”

The slides shown here are available online at:

http://www.slideshare.net/pmtidaho

You can contact me at:bmcmanus@pmt.coop

PMT-Project Mutual Telephone

● Idaho Based Rural ILEC with 12,000+ members

● <70 employees.● Company since 1916● Website since 1997

● Redesign in 2002● Redesign in 2006

● Social networking tools since 2007

Your websites audience

Who visits your site? Where does this traffic come from?

● Current Customers● Potential Customers● Organic traffic from an ad, bill insert, etc.● Search Engine Traffic

Millennials

What is a millennial?

Characteristics of a Millennial

●Reliability is valued less.●A high value is placed in emerging technologies●Monetary and REAL value is placed in to virtual products.●Device Hungry & Device Savvy.●Silent Generation: Texts replace phone calls, visits are replaced with email.●Social Networking.●Bandwidth Hungry.●Not scared of Technology.●Z's are Movie Crazed.

Marketing to Millennials

● Have a product they want, and a product they can customize and make their own.● Soft Phone Service (IM/SIP Mobility)● Disk Backup Service (Web Vault, Online Drive)

● www.linopoly.com/webvault.php● Online Gaming, Hosted Game Servers● Chat rooms, social networking

● PalTalk

A dream, A vision.

Keep your values, and traditions. Marketing to this group doesn't mean your company changes.

It only changes how you interact.

The vision- become an internet immersed company, market to their buyer persona. Speak

in their “dialect” and “language.”

Create bandwidth hungry tools that helps them want more bandwidth!

What is your website?

A community portal for your customers Local content is not just for your cable network An incredible and inexpensive Marketing and PR platform

Planning your site, and choosing tools.

When planning your sites social networking and social media strategy you need to know:

What browsers your visitors use.What display resolution your visitors use.What bandwidth.What technologies: Javascript, Flash, etc.Marketing goals that you may have on your website.

You can't evaluate something you don't know.

Tracking your visitors:

WebalizerAWStatsOmniture

Google Analytics www.google.com/analytics

Our First Step: Making a plan

Product Development group of four in charge of:

Marketing PlanMarketing Segments/Business Plan

AgricultureSmall BusinessMillennials (Me)

Market Segment Business Plan Example

● My business plan for “Teenagers and Millennials” was about 14 pages

● Contains pricing but if you email me I will send you an appropriate copy:

● bmcmanus@pmt.coop

Needs analysis

How does social media fit in to your larger marketing, PR, customer service and media

relations strategy?

Which strategies fit?

What is social media?

Social media is best understood as a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics:

● Participation● Openness● Conversation● Community● Collaboration● Connectedness

What is social networking?

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others.

Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

Social Media & Marketing Tools

There is dozens of tools. Start with one, and then Pick two or three more that will fit your audience.Use an “a la carte” approach.

● Blog● Social Media Tags & RSS Feeds

● Microblog● Podcast● Video & Video based product tutorials and walk-

throughs● Viral Marketing & Viral Buzz● User community forums● Webinars● Wiki● Subscription based Newsletters

Leverage existing Social Networks

Don't recreate the wheel when you don't have to. We didn't.. Mash-up the appropriate social networks and applications.●MySpace●Facebook●Squidoo●Twitter●BlogSpot

Marketing in a Virtual World:●Lively by Google●Second Life

Blogging●Start internally-I started blogging on our intranet to keep employees informed.●The benefits of blogging.

● Search Engine Traffic● Keeping customers informed● Press releases● Product Tutorials

●Who in your company blogs?●Which software?

● PMT uses wordpress● Blogger.com, Wordpress.com, Drupal,●

Do you allow your employees to send e-mail?

How about letting them blog?

Social Media Tags, RSS Feeds

Tag your content. Feed them to “news distribution release services”

● Technorati● Digg● Reddit● Feedburner

RSS Feeds are important. Firefox- Live Bookmarks

Micro blogging

● Twitter.com● txtwire.com● A way to get a quick word out.● Users can subscribe and receive your quick announcements on their IM clients, or as Texts on their cellphones

● We integrate our blog to our twitter. New blog posts “tweet.”

PMT's:http://www.twitter.com/pmt

Podcasting

● What is podcasting?● Tools for podcasting

● Audio recording device● Good microphone● XML Feed so people can subscribe to podcast automatically download it● Feedburner, Itunes

● Involve an IT geek!

Example Podcast Marketing Plan

(handout)

Also available at: http://www.pmt.org/podcastexample.doc

Using Video

● You don't need $80,000 to have a huge impact● Example: Blend Tech - Google for “Will it blend?”

● You'll find a Utah blender company that got six million downloads in less than 10 days. Oh, and 10,000 comments in the same period of time. All by spending a few hundred bucks, recording a one-minute video, and uploading that to YouTube.

● Create tutorials, hype marketing use cases for your products, or a monthly vlog and post it to video sites.

Live Streaming Video

ustream.tv

Stream live content to your website and record for later use as well.

● Parades● Community Events● Games● Video blog

Viral Marketing & Viral Buzz

Web marketing piece to increase brand awareness that is creative, funny, and engages the user to invite there friends to look at there

scores or content they created.

User community forums

●Local discussion●Classifieds●Easy to implement. Software is readily available-

● PHPBB● Vbulletin● Simple Machines Forum

Drumming up a user-base

Get people excited, reading and interacting with your blogs, social profiles, and sites.

● Comment on other blogs linking back to yours.● Friend-add other users on Twitter, MySpace they'll add you back.

Webinars

Use live, or “on-demand” webinars in sales with small businesses and enterprise customers..

For example: Demonstrate PBX systems, your new cable tv, internet classes, your computer repair services.

Live - Hosted live with live participantsOn-Demand- Previously hosted webinar recorded so anyone can watch it at any time

Wiki

A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language.

If applicable create your own online wiki. Great for internal documentation as well as online product training.

Subscription based newsletters

Perhaps one of the easiest of these to implement.Inexpensive---NO POSTAGE! No printing!

Allow customers to opt-in online, maybe even opt-in as they subscribe for service.

Monthly mailings and newsletters. Ideas: Use your current paper newsletter. Include technical tips, product of the month, scholarships

and contest winners.

Other Value Adds to make your site useful

Product walk-throughs, and Product tutorials using Flash software.

Demonstrate the web interface to your unified messaging software.●Camtasia

Search Engine Optimization

Algorithmically optimizing your site to show up higher in search engine results.

● Include H1, H2, H3 header tags.● Key words in URL for example: www.pmt.org/computer_repair_twin_falls.html

● Key words in body● “Landing Pages”

SEO Tools

http://www.tufat.com/category18.htmThree toolkits, $5/piece

● Check Google PageRankings● Keyword Density Analyzer● Headings Check● Link popularity comparison tool

Books & Papers I recommend

We've definitely had some guidance---

The NEW RULES of MARKETING and PR-David Meerman Scott ISBN: 978-0-470-11345-5

Guerrilla Marketing on the Internet-Jay Conrad Levinson ISBN: 978-1-599-18194-3

Social Media and Social Networking Starting Points-Chris Brogan - http://www.box.net/shared/ig1lqkzk0g

Go out and DO!

Go out and DO!

Do the simple things first that you'll follow through with that make your site valuable.

Don't do something if you don't commit to it.

STALE content gives the impression you didn't try hard enough, and it disappoints when

someone expected more then two year old content when they click the link.