Patrick Schwerdtfeger, author and international speaker, commented on social media and its many uses for marketing and managing a business more effectively today at the Chamber’s first program in the Bloomberg Speaker Series, an exclusive series sponsored by Bloomberg Television and Comcast Business Class that will offer Chamber members valuable take-away information.
At the Chamber offices in Center City, Schwerdtfeger spread important advice to attendees in the audience on how to efficiently utilize well-known social media sites including Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. “You can have a massive online identity, and work less than your competitors,” Schwerdtfeger revealed.
Here are some of Schwerdtfeger’s tips for each social media outlet:
- According to a 2009 study, 40% of tweets are “pointless babble” and 38% are just conversational tidbits between individuals. The result? “It’s not hard to shine in this crowd.”
- Use search.twitter.com to search for any keywords you want and find your target audience on Twitter, and then communicate with them
- Create a helpful value-added document that has to do with your business, like a PDF, to give away for free to increase interest
- You can find people location based, status based, etc. and get a following of exactly your target market
- People are statistically more than seven times as likely to open an email they received on LinkedIn – knowing that, use it to your advantage
- Join groups that your potential customers and clients are part of to be able to contact them easily; also check out your competitors’ groups to see what they’re doing
- Post your articles in groups for everyone to see
- Write recommendations for people you like that have done good work with you in the past, and expect to receive favorable recommendations in return
- Facebook has profiles, groups, and pages. Pages are for businesses
- You don’t even have to be logged in to view pages on Facebook; they’re indexed by Google and easily accessible. Use important keywords about your business in the page title to attract viewers
- Tag people in photos of them interacting with or using your business at events, etc. It will appear on their wall, and their whole network will be able to see it
- “The opportunity with Facebook is to engage your community.”
- The biggest category of new content on YouTube is educational material – people are going there to learn. What can they learn about what you have to offer?
- YouTube equipment: a flip digital video recorder or a camcorder with an external microphone is all you need
- “It has to be simple.” Your YouTube video doesn’t have to be perfect; it just has to be simple and straightforward.
- “The opportunity on YouTube is to leverage rich media.”
Highlighting the key values and ways to use each different social media venue, Schwerdtfeger emphasized that it is smart to incent existing customers to communicate with you over the social channel, because this allows for everyone, their whole network, to see it and find out about your business. You also must continue to update and post quality, interesting content online on a regular basis. “In the beginning,” he said, “it’s slow, but you start building a critical mass, and you’re everywhere [online].”
Schwerdtfeger concluded by elaborating on the significance of today’s cultural revolution. This is the idea that throughout history, people have looked at the source first and the content second… but not anymore. People look at the content first today. So, “the only thing that really matters is: what is your content?”
For more information on Patrick Schwerdtfeger, visit http://www.patrickschwerdtfeger.com/
As one formally disinterested in the entire social media phenomenom because of a preconceived notion that it is a time consuming “Triviance” or dalliance not worthy of the time, Patrick has shown value; and provided a pathway for those intent on making it work favorably.