Building Your Community and Market with Web 2.0 Applications

1. Building Your Community andMarket with Web 2.0 Applications Oct 27, 2010 David S. Eng Project Lead Web 2.0 Applications

2. Agenda • What is Social Media Marketing? • Communication Plan • Marketing a Successful Social Media Web Site • Key Web 2.0 Application Features • Sustaining Your Community • Search Options for Maximum Visibility • Social Media Guiding Principles for Third Party Tools • Facebook • Twitter • Other Authorized professional collaboration • Summary

3. What is Social Media Marketing? It is a platform that is easily accessible to anyone with internet access. • Opens doors for organizations to increase their brand awareness and facilitate conversations with the customer. • Provides an organization with direct feedback from their customers and targeted markets. • Contains content that attracts attention and encourages readers to share it with their social networks. • Uses Web 2.0 technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogues.

4. Communication & Marketing Plans Recommendation – Two Plans 1. Develop a draft  Communication Plan 2. Prepare a draft ‘living’ marketing plan Refer to your Organizational Communication & Marketing Plans Format Next Step: Coordination and Approval Process

5. External Site Approval Coordination and Approval Process - before you start developing your ‘Third Party Site’. Step 1. EPA staff needs their supervisor's permission, Step 2. Talk to their Web Content and/Infrastructure Coordinator, Step 3. Along with their Web Content/Infrastructure Coordinator, meet with OEA (Kay) and present a business need for the use of the site.

6. Marketing a Successful Social Media Web Site • Create new content that serves your customer base. • Continually interact with the people you want to reach. • Include material that is truly relevant to the people you are trying to interact with. • Dedicate people and resources to create products (i.e., story-based articles, fact sheets, audio and video). • Create a site that is friendly, engaging in content and style and approachable. • Make it easy for people to get the information they need.

7. Key Web 2.0 Application Features A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community. • Search - Finding information through keyword search. • Links - Connects information together into a meaningful information ecosystem using the model of the Web, and provides low-barrier social tools. • Authoring - The ability to create and update content leads to the collaborative work of many rather than just a few web authors. In wikis, users may extend, undo and redo each other's work. In blogs, posts and the comments of individuals build up over time. • Tags - Categorization of content by users adding "tags" - short, usually one-word descriptions - to facilitate searching, without dependence on pre-made categories. • Widgets and Extensions - Software that makes the Web an application platform as well as a document server (i.e., software like Adobe Reader, Adobe Flash player, Microsoft Silverlight, ActiveX, Oracle Java, Quicktime, Windows Media, etc.) • Alerts and Signals-Using syndication technology - RSS to notify users of content changes.

8. Sustain a Community – Things To Do (1 of 2) To build, get the word out and retain a community. Each post must have relevant title and tag words so that search engines willfind the site.  Create the site index using Google's format for the 3 major search engines. Have one consistent voice Contact top bloggers, especially those who write about topic. Have a social media champion within your organization Create links to other top bloggers from posts. Include a monthly e-newsletter, send e-mail alerts to all subscribers (use GovDelivery) and send out in RSS feed. Note: Additional Information for Discussion

9. Sustain a Community – Things To Do (2 of 2) Prominently link from top EPA.gov pages and top navigation bar on all pages.  End posts with questions, calls to actions, and opinion requests to solicit comments. Via RSS, bring the blog posts into your Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, del.icio.us and digg accounts, and other social media sites. Use blogrolls, or lists of links to link to other blogs in your subject area. Connect with Technorati http://technorati.com/blogs/directory/ Add question of the week or widget for quick survey.

10. Social Media Platform Guiding Principles • Define and measure success (a great free analytical tool is Twitalyzer). • Choose Social Media platform that makes sense for your event • Use Facebook to create a destination for engagement. • Publish your event to Facebook. • Create a Facebook Page. • Invite friends and fans to attend and help spread the word. • Use Twitter to generate publicity and allow users to connect more fluidly. • Create an event hashtag and promote it. • Create a Twitter profile (Twitter is automatically more public than Facebook). • Reach out to stakeholders and people with influence to help spread the word and outreach. • Use other authorized professional collaboration sites to leverage business communities. • Post the event to these sites. • Build your own community.

11. Search Options for Maximum Visibility • Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - links, descriptive title, meta tags • Built in Blog Stats – site meter, Google Analytics • Syndicate your Blog Headlines and Story Feeds • RSS News Feeds - widgets, headers, syndicated news aggregator • Category Cloud - tags • Third-party Tag and Bookmark Sharing - identifiers, del.icio.us • Others: • Discussion Forums • Mailing Lists • Newsletters • Photo-galleries • PodCast and Feedburner – HipCast • Audio and Video Blogging

12. Facebook Use Facebook to create a destination for engagement. • Publish your event • Create a Facebook Page. • Post updates daily. • Include multi-media - share photos, post quick videos to help bring it to life. • Involve users via the fan page to get them involved by asking questions that can influence the content or the agenda. • Invite friends and fans to attend and help spread the word. • Search for other fan pages on related topics and engage users there. • Become a fan of that page and write on their wall. • Let people know about the event and why they should attend. • Include a link to your page or Facebook event. • Reach out to specific individuals who may be connected to your event topic.

13. Twitter Use Twitter to generate publicity and allow your attendees to connect more fluidly. • Create an event hashtag and promote it. • Designate the hashtag early in the process to claim your space. • Publicize the hashtag in advance across all channels - your registration page, website, and in every single Twitter post. • Promote it repeatedly - in signage, printed programs, and from the stage. • Get every tweet about your event to contain your hashtag. The hashtag will aggregate all Twitter conversation around the event and help attendees connect and spread the word. • Create a Twitter profile. • Use a personal profile to promote your event. • Include a human touch - attendees might like to see the face behind the event and connect directly with you as the organizer. • Create a dedicated Twitter profile . • Share event information as it unfolds to engage attendees. • Reach out to stakeholders and people with influence to help spread the word.

14. Authorized professional collaboration sites Use authorized professional collaboration sites to leverage business communities. • Post the event. • Create an update that includes summaries on why you are excited about the event and include a link to your page. • Post the event to generate additional traffic and interest for your event . • Set up a “Just go to the events” section of collaboration site and click on the “Add Event” tab. • Enter in your event details and include a link to your page. When you publish the event, it will automatically send it out to all your collaboration site connections. • Seek out groups that are relevant to your event and publicize it. • Share the event with specific contacts.

15. Summary • Choose a social media strategy with frequent postings. • Develop a simple word-based website. • Use a dot gov address whenever possible. • Build your social media presence within the framework of an older, existing site. • Have a content approval process that works quickly and efficiently. • Add outreach and marketing material frequently. • Post items based on target audience needs. • Make it easy to locate (create and post categories at the top of your site). • Post material in a variety of formats (audio, video, fact sheets, and story-based articles). • Place your content on Facebook, Twitter, authorized professional collaboration sites (or sites that cater to your audience). • Create fact sheets on key topics based on user requests.

16. Contact David S. Eng eng.david@epa.gov (202) 566-1182