Social Media Guide Making the most of Social Media

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Contents

Social Media Plan 2

Introduction: 2

Why should you use social media? 2

How much will this cost? 2

Social Media & FG Wilson 3

How Much time should this take up? 3

Content Creation 4

Do’s 4

Don’ts 5

Twitter 5

Let us help promote you! 6

More information? 6

Useful sites: 6

Appendix 1: How to set up Facebook Page 7

Setting Up your profile account on Facebook 7

Setting Up your Company page on facebook 7

Appendix 2: How to set up twitter profile 8

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Social Media Guide

Introduction:

What is social media?

‘Social Media’ is defined in this document as those websites that facilitate virtual conversations between users – often referred to as social networking sites. For many of us, social networking has become an integral part of our lives.

With millions of users globally, social media offers a unique opportunity to reach out to people on an unprecedented scale. Unsurprisingly, such sites are now being increasingly adopted by the business world to reach customers and ultimately boost sales.

‘Social Marketing’ describes the use of social media sites to attract new customers and build relationships with them by engaging them in ‘conversation’ about your brand, products and services.

Why use social media for your business?

Social media can impact all the elements of the customer buying process (as shown in the illustration opposite) from customer awareness of the FG Wilson brand to purchase loyalty and ultimately advocacy.

Marketing via Social media will help you drive sales lead generation by:

Increasing your website traffic

Building customer trust through open communication

Monitoring mentions of your brand

Improving search engine optimisation(SEO)

Providing a cost-effective marketing and advertising alternative

NOTE: Social Media Should coMpleMent your other Marketing activity by conveying

the SaMe MeSSage(S) acroSS every coMMunication channel you uSe.

How much will this cost?

The use of Social media sites is completely FREE to register and maintain.

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FG Wilson & Social Media

Since early 2013, we have been actively involved in social media. We promote and update profiles on all of the sites listed below, concentrating the majority of our efforts on Facebook and Twitter. Use the links below to view the types of content we have posted:

Facebook – weekly updates on key FG Wilson news: http://www.facebook.com/fgwilsongeneratorsets

Twitter – daily updates on events, upcoming products, general news: http://twitter.com/fgwilson

LinkedIn – monthly updates and key FG Wilson News: http://www.linkedin.com/company/fg-wilson

Blogger – case studies and PR stories, Latest News articles: http://fgwilsongeneratorsets.blogspot.com/

Google+ – for improved SEO and links to case studies and stories: http://plus.google.com/+fgwilson/

Youtube – videos (PDC, ONE Global Standard, Lean launch etc): http://www.youtube.com/user/FGWilsonGenerators/

There are numerous other social media sites that can be used. However, our recommendation is that you to create a Facebook and/or twitter account(s) as a starting point.

It is vital, regardless of which social media sites you choose to create accounts with, that you ensure they are effectively maintained i.e. updated regularly with relevant and engaging content. You will obviously find this more manageable if you have fewer sites to maintain.

How much time should this take up?

This is dependent on the resources you have available. Again, it is very important that when you start using social media you update and maintain your social media channels by keeping them fresh and newsworthy to your audience.

These sites should be checked at least twice a day: generally morning and evening.

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Content Creation

The market needs to hear the same message about a brand repeatedly in order to build up a strong perception of that brand.

You represent the FG Wilson brand to our customers. It is crucial therefore that you align your communications to your market with Fg Wilson corporate messages. In this way, we can ensure there is a consistent brand perception in the market place.

You need a good mix of content to share on your social channels. Product content has been very successful for us with the majority of people liking and sharing posts relating to product information. However, we have also found posts regarding our latest news to be well received

While it may be effective to post information about products and services, it is also very important that your posts reflect the human aspect of your company. Remember – people buy from people!

Do’s & Don’ts within the social networking community:

• Do stay on message - ensure that your communications reflect the activity and messaging for your Dealership. Know your audience and stay within your area of expertise.

• Do Make Social Media a Habit - you should be checking your social media profiles twice per day, minimum. We recommend checking it in the morning and again later in the day when preparing to leave.

• Do share articles, videos, blog posts and other content that people in your target industry, or at your target organization(s), will find useful.

• Do promote yourself. Share your accomplishments, articles you've written, professional challenges you've overcome, etc. but be careful not to come across as a braggart.

• Do engage your peers, both current and future. Ask and answer questions, join conversations and groups, comment on others' updates, retweet, etc.

• Do remember whom you are ‘talking’ to. On Facebook, for example, you are sharing information with everyone that you have liked your page. On Twitter you are sharing information with everyone… period. Twitter is a public network.

• Do check – and be sure you completely understand – privacy settings.

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Don’ts:

• Don’T post derogatory content - whenever there is negative conversation on a particular topic or even around your brand, companies MUST remain diplomatic and professional.

• Don’T post too frequently – daily updates are great but do not update so much that your posts become white noise

• Don’T only talk about yourself – one way conversations do not work and people will quickly lose interest in your site if there is no genuine interaction

• Don’T ignore the ‘chatter’ – when people tweet at you or write/comment on your Facebook wall, you are obliged to respond in some way - often a simple “like” of their comment/post or “favourite” of their tweet will suffice.

• Don’T leave profiles incomplete – first impressions matter. Often, consumers will see your social media pages before they visit your company website so it pays to invest effort in ensuring your profiles project the desired image.

• Don’T share too much information (TMI), especially information of a personal nature.

• Don’T neglect to proof read your social media posts carefully.

• Don’T forget that people may have a different sense of humour so what you may think is funny may sound offensive to others.

Things you should know about Twitter:

• Always use a short URL - you only have 140 characters, so make it count! There are sites known as ‘shorteners’ such as Bit.ly.com that will do this for you.

• The symbol # on Twitter is known as a hashtag. These tags are used to affiliate a tweet with a certain topic e.g. #gensets #power

• Avoid the temptation to use tools that send automatic direct messages. These types of messages are often construed as spam and may cause people to “unfollow” you.

• You can engage Twitter followers and influencers by including an @ mention in your tweets. e.g. @fgwilson links through to the FG Wilson profile

• Use Twitter during events and to promote things like competitions. A great way to engage your Twitter followers is to create a competition that asks followers to contribute in some way

• You want your Twitter feed to be a mix of Tweets you’ve created, as well as replies and retweets.

• Use bold visuals and clear calls to action

• When crafting posts, consider the cluttered environment that the news feed is—grab attention with visuals and be clear on the next step they should take (e.g., like, share, comment).

• Post regularly- post at least three times per week. Build consistency and credibility to keep fans engaged. Posting content is the main conversation initiator on Facebook; it keeps your Dealership & brand in fans’ news feeds and provides a sense of community to fans.

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Let us help to promote you!

We have a lot of content on our social channels that you can share on your sites to begin this journey into the social zone. This will help your build your audience. Once your sites are created send an email to support_tools@fgwilson.com and we will promote your Dealership on our social media sites. as installations happen and big contracts are won send us the information and we can tweet this news. Send us photographs of installations so we can post these.

Need more information?

Google it! The internet has loads of resources out there for companies and people using social media.

Useful sites:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/marketing/library/100/social-media

http://www.marketo.com/definitive-guides/social-marketing/

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Appendix 1: How to set up Facebook PageSetting Up your profile account on facebook

1. go to: www.facebook.com

2. enter your details in the section “Sign Up”, choosing a password

3. enter your details in the section “Sign Up”, choosing a password

4. Click {Sign Up}

5. Your account has been set up

Setting Up your Company page on facebook

1. go to: www.facebook.com

2. Select the “Create a Page” link at the bottom of this page

3. Select “Local Business or place

4. Enter the details of your Company

5. Click [Get Started]

6. You will be asked to “Log in with my Facebook account” or create a Business account

7. Choose appropriately, it may be better to create a Business Account to ensure this is kept separate from your own personal account

8. Complete the details of your business account as required.

9. Once you have logged in you will be asked to complete a few steps:

a. Profile Picture

b. Company website

c. Twitter links (if using)

d. Select an email address for Facebook

10. Once completed select [Save Info]

11. Your Facebook page will appear in the left hand side of the profile page

Facebook has a lot of useful resources, many of these in video format, taking you through the process in setting up a company Facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/help/search/?query=set%20up%20facebook%20page

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Appendix 2: How to set up twitter profile1. Go to https://twitter.com/signup

2. Fill in the details as required

3. Follow the onscreen instruction to complete your twiiter account setup

ImpOrTaNT: change you proFile picture iMMediately. thiS Should be your

coMpany logo. tWitter deFaultS the proFile picture to an egg. you Want

people to recogniSe your coMpany iMMediately by Seeing your logo.

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Glossary of terms

Blog – Blog is a word that was created from two words: “web log.” Blogs are usually maintained by an individual or a business with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogger – Blogger is a free blogging platform owned by Google that allows individuals and companies to host and publish a blog typically on a subdomain. Example: yourblogname.blogspot.com

Bookmarking – Bookmarking online follows the same idea of placing a bookmark in a physical publication--you’re simply marking something you found important, enjoyed, or where you left off to continue reading later. The only difference online is that it’s happening through websites using one of the various bookmarking services available, such as Delicious.

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Chat – Chat can refer to any kind of communication over the internet but traditionally refers to one-to-one communication through a text-based chat application commonly referred to as instant messaging applications.

Circles – Circles are clusters of a user’s friends on Google+, meaning you can group certain people you choose to connect with on your Google+ into a certain Circle--such as colleagues, college connections, family, etc. When you want to share content with only these individuals, you include that specific Circle in your post’s sharing options.

Comment - A comment is a response that is often provided as an answer or reaction to a blog post or message on a social network. Comments are a primary form of two-way communication on the social web.

Connections – The LinkedIn equivalent of a Facebook ‘friend’ is a ‘connection.’ Because LinkedIn is a social networking site, the people you are connecting with are not necessarily people you are friends with, but rather you met in brief, heard speak, or know through another connection.

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Ebook – An ebook is an electronic version of a printed book. However, most ebooks are not actually available in print (unless you print them). These are typically published in PDF form.

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Facebook – Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study, and live around them. Facebook is the largest social network in the world with more than 800 million users.

Firefox – Firefox is an open-source web browser. It has emerged as one of the most popular web browsers on the internet and allows users to customize their browser through the use of third-party extensions.

Flickr - Flickr is a social network based around online picture sharing. The service allows users to store photos online and then share them with others through profiles, groups, sets, and other methods.

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Forums - Also known as a message board, a forum is an online discussion site. It originated as the modern equivalent of a traditional bulletin board, and a technological evolution of the dialup bulletin board system.

Follow Friday (#ff) - Follow friday is a trend via the hashtag #ff every Friday on Twitter. Users select other usernames and tweet them with #ff in their post, meaning they recommend following those Twitter users. People tweet at their favorite brands, colleagues, celebrities--you name it!

Friends - No, not your pals you play poker with on the weekends. We’re talking Facebook friends. These are individuals you consider to be friendly enough with you to see your Facebook profile and engage with you.

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Google Chrome – Google Chrome is a free web browser produced by Google that fully integrates into its online search system as well as other applications.

Google Documents – Google Documents is a group of web-based office applications that includes tools for word processing, presentations, and spreadsheet analysis. All documents are stored and edited online and allow multiple people to collaborate on a document in real-time.

Google+ – Google+ is Google’s new social network. It differs in that it promotes social sharing that is more similar to how people share in real life by providing features such as one that limits who you are talking to, creating 1-on-1 conversation.

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Hangout – A Hangout is a video service on Google+ that allows you to video chat with up to 10 Google+ users are a time. You can name these chats, watch YouTube videos during them, open a Google Doc with colleagues, and much more.

Hashtag – A hashtag is a tag used on the social network Twitter as a way to annotate a message. A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by a “#.” Example: #yourhashtag. Hashtags are commonly used to show that a tweet, a Twitter message, is related to an event or conference, online or offline.

HTML – HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a programing language for web pages. Think of HTML as the brick-and-mortar of pages on the web. It provides content and structure while CSS supplies style. HTML has changed over the years, and it is on the cusp of its next version: HTML5.

Inbound Marketing – Inbound marketing is a style of marketing that essentially focuses permission-based marketing techniques that businesses can use to get found by potential customers, convert those prospects into leads and customers, and analyze the process along the way. Inbound marketing leverages tactics such as SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, email marketing, lead nurturing, and analytics. It is in direct contrast to outbound marketing, which utilizes traditional interruptive marketing tactics such as direct mail, trade shows, print and TV advertising, and cold calling.

Instagram – Instagram is a photo sharing application that lets users take photos, apply filters to their images, and share the photos instantly on the Instagram network and other social networks like Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Foursquare. The app is targeted toward mobile social sharing, and in just over one year, it has gained almost 15 million users. Currently, it is only available for iPhone devices.

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Instant Messaging – Instant messaging (IM) is a form of real-time, direct text-based communication between two or more people. More advanced instant messaging software clients also allow enhanced modes of communication, such as live voice or video calling.

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Like – A “Like” is an action that can be made by a Facebook user. Instead of writing a comment for a message or a status update, a Facebook user can click the “Like” button as a quick way to show approval and share the message.

LinkedIn – LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site. Founded in December 2002 and launched in May 2003, it is mainly used for professional networking. As of June 2010, LinkedIn had more than 70 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide.

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news Feed – A news feed is literally a feed full of news. On Facebook, the News Feed is the homepage of users’ accounts where they can see all the latest updates from their friends. The news feed on Twitter is called Timeline (not to get confused with Facebook’s new look, also called Timeline).

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opera – Opera is an open-source web browser. While not as popular as Firefox, Opera is used as the default browser on some gaming systems and mobile devices.

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Podcast – A podcast, or non-streamed webcast, is a series of digital media files, either audio or video, that are released episodically and often downloaded through an RSS feed.

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Retweet – A retweet is when someone on Twitter sees your message and decides to re-share it with his/her followers. A retweet button allows them to quickly resend the message with attribution to the original sharer’s name.

RSS Feed – RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blogs and videos in a standardized format. Content publishers can syndicate a feed, which allows users to subscribe to the content and read it when they please, and from a location other than the website (such as reader services like Google Reader).

RSS Reader – An RSS reader allows users to aggregate articles from multiple websites into one place using RSS feeds. The purpose of these aggregators is to allow for a faster and more efficient consumption of information. An example of an RSS Reader is Feedly.

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Search Engine optimization – Search engine optimization is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a website from search engines via unpaid or organic search traffic.

Sentiment – Sentiment is normally referred to as the attitude of user comments related to a brand online. Some social media monitoring tools measure sentiment.

Social Media – Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques.

Social Media Monitoring – Social media monitoring is a process of monitoring and responding to mentions related to a business that occur in social media.

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Timeline – Timeline is the new Facebook form