Welcome

to

Promoting Your Business Using

Social Media

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The Women’s E-Business Enterprise Learning (E-BEL) project will help

women entrepreneurs to better use information and communication

technologies (ICT) to promote innovation and improve their business

competitiveness. Partners are:

• The Women’s Organisation

• Kemmy Business School University of Limerick

• European Centre for Women and Technology

• Human Development Resource Centre (HRDC)

E-Business Enterprise Learning Project

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Aims of the workshop

• To understand the free web tools available to

promote your business

• To consider appropriate e-markerting strategy for

your business

• To look closely at specific social media tools and

evaluate how they may fit with your strategy

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Working policy

• Please set aside enough time to complete this

workshop

• Minimise disruption - Allow yourself to focus

• Utilise all the resources available

• Respect other views

• Respect confidentiality if you are working in a

group

• Relax and enjoy the course

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Introduction

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Social Media

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What do you understand by this terms?

What are the key features?

What sites or tools are you aware of?

Social Media / Social Networking

In context

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http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=lFZ0z5Fm-

Ng&vq=medium

Social Media…

web-based and mobile technologies used to

turn communication into interactive dialogue

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Where Do I Start?

Reflect!

• What is your business mission?

• Who are you?

• Who do you want to be?

• Who are your customers?

• Who are your competitors?

• What are your aims and objectives?

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Where Do I Start?

Research

• What e-marketing strategies are companies

like you (competitors) using?

• What do you think is working well for them that

could work for you?

• What are the statistics of the sites you are

considering using? Do your customers go there?

• What are your objectives for using Social Media?

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Task 1

What are the benefits of promoting your

business online?

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Benefits of promoting online

• Build better relationships & strengthen networks

• Raise Awareness About your Cause

• Increase Website Traffic

• Build Up Your Customer Base

• Inspire People to Act & Interact

• Increase Donations or Sales

• Measure the success of your marketing activity

You can build key performance indicators to measure

success and ROI (Return on Investment)

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Task 2

List all the ways you can think of to promote

your business online

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Some options for promoting online

• Publish – Blogs

• Network – Facebook (Social Networking)/

Linkedin (Less Social)

• Discuss – Forums/Article Comments

• Micro-Blogging – Twitter

• Photo/Video Sharing – Flickr/Youtube

• Book Marking – Pinterest/Delicious

This is just a small overview, the list is endless!

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Which to use?

STOP! and consider which is most

appropriate for your business

• Choose just 1 or 2 social media tools that are most

appropriate as a starting point – Ones that fit with

your brand and customer base – these should be

GREEN for GO on your traffic light

• Other tools park in ‘future plans’ and don’t look at

them again until you have more time or money to

commit to them – Set them in AMBER or RED 15

How can I use these tools?

• Events – Whether a meeting with someone

worth mentioning or a full scale event your

can keep details & comments you can share

online or invite people to attend.

• Take Photos – Upload and share pictures

of products or business promotion. You can use

photo albums like a catalogue if you are retailing

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What am I talking about?

How can I use these tools?

• Gather Feedback offline to share and invite online

feedback

• Build existing customer list from your social media

contacts

• Follow industry trends/news – Keep up to date

and be seen as an expert. Set up Google Alerts

for industry keywords to help with this

• What’s happening in your business? Tell people!

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Task 3

Using the hand-out provided list 3 things that

you could talk about

on your facebook status, blog

or Twitter under the headings:

• Current news – How this links to my business

• What has happened in my business today?

• Coming soon to my business…

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Task 3 – How did you do?

• Current news

For example, if you are a sports therapist,

keeping in touch with news of a major sporting

event and relating it to your business.

• What has happened in my business today?

For example, new stock has arrived, news of who

you are meeting with or an event you are attending.

• Coming soon to my business…

For example, ‘website launching soon’ or new

products people should look out for

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Health Check Your Social Media

Activity Regularly

• What are your key performance indicators and are you

meeting your targets?

• Search for keywords across social media platforms, or set

up alerts with SocialMention -who is talking about you &

what are they saying?

• Use Twitcleaner to check how you come across on Twitter

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The Final Step of Strategy

Monitor!

Remember Social Media

is only part of your strategy

Other Ways to Reach Your Customers

• Online directories (e.g. yell.com, The Women’s

Organisation online business directory)

• Pay per Click (Facebook, Google)

• E-commerce Sites (Ebay, Amazon)

• Email Campaigns (Mailchimp)

• Advertising Media (e.g. Gum Tree. Groupon, Wowcher)

• Offline marketing (networking, printed media etc.)

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Want to Further Explore

Social Media?

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You can move on to our Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin

courses to help you further plan your strategy

Thank You

Please complete an evaluation to let us know

what you thought

Set yourself actions to promote your business

using social media

If this was useful we have further modules to

support you!

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