To get business results using social media, you have to find your sweet spot: where what YOU want to achieve overlaps with what motivates your community. This was a keynote I gave at the http://whatsnextDC.com conference in Jan. 2011.

2. STEP 1
How Do You Adopt
The Social Media
Mindset?

4. BE TRANSPARENT
• take advantage of negative feedback
• open up two-way conversation and
listen
• collaborate and create with your
stakeholders

5. Stay Foolish
EXPERIMENT
• try something new on facebook or
your blog
• nobody responds? falls flat?
• fail fast. ok to feel foolish. move
on.

6. STEP 2
How Do You Find
Your Social Media
Sweet Spot?

7. SOCIAL MEDIA
SWEET SPOT
YOU
• PR
• brand enhancement SOCIAL
• new way of doing MEDIA
business? SWEET
• drive revenue? SPOT
EMPLOYEE CUSTOMERS
• a bit of self-promotion • save money
• expand comms toolset • be part of
• feel more valuable something cool
• easy to participate

8. SOMETIMES YOU
FIND THE SWEET
SPOT BY ACCIDENT

9. STEP 3
How Do You
Solve The
Social Media
Puzzle?

10. LEARN HOW TO FIT
THE PIECES TOGETHER

11. UNDERSTAND
THE CHALLENGE

12. HUGE
DIGITAL
FOOTPRINT

13. TWITTER
• 1.8 million followers
• dozens of store accounts
FA C E B O O K
• 443,000 fans
BLOGS
• cooking & CEO blogs
FLICKER
• photo streams
• contests
FOUR SQUARE
• check ins
MOBILE APPS
• iphone and android
AND MORE

14. WHAT CAN YOU STEAL?
How Whole Foods uses the different tools together to feed
the hungry content beast. They have an editorial calendar
and community manager for each store account.
• Twitter for real-time alerts
• Facebook for less time-sensitive info
• Blog is for recipes and longer content
• Flickr photos & YouTube videos provide more content

16. PROOF
Submitted
projects have
received 42
million votes,
more than
voted in last
presidential
election.

17. SWEET SPOT
Multiple sharing
options, including
Facebook,Twitter,
mobile, widgets.

18. WHAT CAN YOU STEAL?
Pepsi has found a win-win sweet spot:
 Buzz for their brand and a lift in sales.
 Street cred for giving up 30-sec Super Bowl ads.
 A social media campaign fostering social change.
Participants benefit by:
 State-of-the-art, well-organized site.
 Recognition from Pepsi for submitting their projects.
 Further validation by instant sharing with friends to get votes.
 The chance to win $5K to $250K.

19. STEP 4
LET S PLAY THE SOCIAL
MEDIA GAME

20. SOCIAL BY SOCIAL {game instructions }
Take a piece of paper and draw a line down and across to
turn it into quadrants. Write in each quadrant:
 Define the audience you are trying to engage
 Identify the sweet spot where your goal overlaps with what
motivates them
 Choose the tools you could use for your social media campaign
(blog, Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.)
 Discuss what roles are needed (content creator, editor, moderator,
etc.)

21. WHAT IS THE GOAL FOR YOUR SOCIAL
MEDIA CAMPAIGN?
3 mins – Heads down, silent writing in quadrants.
5 mins – Share your ideas with the group.
sweet
audience
spot
who will
Social media execute
tools

22. SPEAKER
Named one of the Most Influential Women
in Technology in 2010, Debbie Weil is an
author, speaker, and corporate social
media consultant based in Washington DC.
EMAIL: debbie.weil@gmail.com
MOBILE: 202.255.1467
WEBSITE: www.debbieweil.com
TWITTER: @debbieweil
All slides copyright Debbie Weil, 2011

23. RESOURCES
Blogs
For case studies on how to use social media and tips on writing great content:
Mashable www.mashable.com
Problogger www.problogger.net
CopyBlogger www.copyblogger.com
Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com
Books
Linchpin by Seth Godin
New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott (2nd ed. 2010)
Send by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe (on how to use email)
The Networked Nonprofit by Beth Kanter and Allison Fine
The Twitter Handbook by Tim O Reilly and Sarah Milstein
The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil (download 2010 ed. from Amazon)