Posts tagged: courses

Search and Social Media Marketing Course: Class of 2015

10 December 2015

10 Weeks of Search and Social Media Marketing

SSMM7

The SSMM class after their final session

This year’s Search and Social Media Marketing Course was brought to a close on the 5th of November, after 9 weeks of all things digital marketing. The evening was a celebration of the work and dedication demonstrated by our professional cohort throughout the programme. Read more…..

The Power of Social Media in Events Marketing

27 November 2013

We are all aware that social media plays a key role in marketing and business communications. Through growing up in a generation where everything was discussed online, whether it be homework, love interests or music, it was evident that online social networking had provided the general public with an opportunity to reinvent themselves entirely from behind a computer screen. The new quick and easy method of converting through an instant messenger, uploading photos and finding out information, without having to visit the local library, was revolutionary. Everything became easier. People could communicate with each other from anywhere in the world – and from this, millions of potential customers became accessible.

In the field of events, this created a huge opportunity. The old marketing techniques of sending out press releases and contacting local media was no longer the key to boost your attendants. People were relying on social sites to gain feedback from others in order to consider attending an event. Therefore, once your target audience had been identified, all you had to do is go to the sites where they would typically visit for information – and promote.

Social media had provided the public with a platform to create potential connections before, during and after an event had taken place. It had given potential attendants the opportunity to network, share topics and join discussions, giving the event organizer the chance to monitor these interests and create relevant content in order to involve their audience.

Why did I choose to talk about events marketing?  Because I had seen living proof of the importance of social media after I managed an event myself.

Before I took the Search and Social Media Marketing Professional course, I had graduated from my Music Journalism degree at The University of Huddersfield this year. During my time studying, I had gained experience in various roles outside of university i.e. I had volunteered at an LGBT radio station and worked on a programme of my own, I had written countless music articles and reviews for websites and I had worked as a volunteer Press Officer for an independent record label for almost a year. Sitting in a cold, stone-walled office writing press releases in a leaky old building covered in graffiti near Great Ancoats once a week, dealing with stroppy musicians with no direction, and sorting out drunken old rockers who refuse to pay the entry fee on gig nights, I can honestly say – it was fun while it lasted.

However, during my time working for the label, to mark their two year anniversary I managed and organized an event in the Huddersfield area with a fellow peer from university. During the marketing stage of the event, I managed the Facebook and Twitter accounts to give potential attendants the opportunity to invite others and network with each other, while I would continuously post content and updates relevant to the event. Through this, we were acknowledged by students who blogged about it, and published it in the student newspaper. Then word reached the Huddersfield Examiner who wrote an article about the event. During this time, we also had the musicians and record label promoting the event through other websites and social platforms; therefore, through all of the promotion we generated online, we managed to fill the venue to the brim with attendants. Although the venue was facing the university and fairly popular, the staff informed us that they had never seen it so busy in their time of being open. In the end, it had worked wonders for our sales and we had made a fantastic profit – accomplished entirely through the use of social media and online marketing.

I began working for Salford Professional Development as a Marketing Officer in August. Since I began working for SPD, I focused my attention to the social media platforms immediately and brought up the Likes, Connections and Followers noticeably in a short period of time.

I was also managing the social media for the Salford Media Festival, and through continuously posting and tweeting updates and news, we were generating more interest, supporters and even some ticket sales through Twitter and LinkedIn. I took advice from a social media expert and ran a campaign to give away two free tickets to the festival in exchange for Follows and Retweets on Twitter, in just two weeks we gained up to 200 more Followers and, as predicted, people were Retweeting like no tomorrow. An important rule in marketing – people love free stuff! In conjunction with this, we paid for a temporary Facebook advert, which almost doubled our current Likes in just 3 weeks of being live – this gave us a good head start to build Likes. Through continuously posting news and updates on social media, we began to see the traffic coming through to our websites on Google Analytics. Approximately 6% of our click rate traffic for the Salford Media Festival website was referred from social media, namely Facebook and LinkedIn. It doesn’t seem much, but it makes a visible difference. Interestingly, although the most visible activity and interaction we receive is through Twitter, there wasn’t any noticeable traffic coming from this platform, as followers preferred to Retweet, rather than explore links. I would advise to keep Twitter for interacting with your audience in simple ways – by using Retweets and hashtags – as Twitter users like to keep things straightforward, but ensure your content on Facebook and LinkedIn is appealing and engaging enough to generate clicks to your website links.

In Events Marketing, it is vital to share, post and tweet continuously and consistently. Generating excitement and anticipation towards the lead up to an event is important. Link building and contacting relevant websites to help with the promotion is also a good way of branching out and reaching a wider audience, as it generates more interest and response. We offered various media-based websites discount codes off ticket prices to promote to their members for Salford Media Festival, which proved successful for our revenue.

I chose to attend the Search and Social Media Professional course so that I could develop in the area of online marketing and social media enough for the company to see a real difference from the marketing generated by myself. I didn’t have experience in Search Engine Optimization, therefore the SSMM course seemed like the perfect opportunity to progress and put some new skills into practice.

I took the course simply because, although I entered my teenage years during the explosion of online interaction, SEO and social media marketing are completely different notions. They involve technical strategies and consumer awareness, rather than just socializing and sharing. In order to reach business success, there’s more that needs to be considered when marketing in the virtual world.

Overall, the course has taught me how to build links effectively, how to engage your audience through social media content and create effective campaigns, how to make use of keywords, how to use Webmaster Tools to keep up to date on your click through rates and what interests your audience, and to make use of all social media platforms to create brand awareness. I intend to integrate all of these tactics into my work.

In today’s digital world of sharing and networking, marketing your services online can take The Water-Cooler Effect [or Word of Mouth Marketing], to a powerful new level. Campaigns can go viral overnight. The key is to think outside the box, identify with your audience and research their needs, and never underestimate human emotion. The recent Christmas ad campaigns by John Lewis and Sainsburys will tell you that.

I already have many plans and ideas for SPD, through taking the course, in order to create brand awareness and generate more sales, and I hope to continue my progression in the field of Online Marketing, using the experience and knowledge I have gained –hopefully accomplishing some noticeable results.

SEO & Social Media Marketing Essentials

26 June 2013

SEO & Social Media Marketing Essentials

Wednesday 24th July – Book Now

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO) are no longer an optional choice for many organisations competing for the increasingly internet savvy consumers. Do you have a digital strategy and a social media policy? Do you know that if you don’t manage your social media presence chances are your customers will manage it for you and not always in a most favourable way.

As part of the University of Salford’s commitment to delivering the best digital training available, Salford Professional Development have developed a one day ‘SEO & Social Media Marketing Essentials‘ course. This course is aimed at busy executives who want to have theoretic understanding as well as some basic hands on practical exercises which will highlight the essentials in SEO and Social Media Marketing. This knowledge will enable you to develop a better understanding of your customers behaviour online and help you to develop long term plan and implement basic techniques for management of day to day social media engagement. Working from your business objectives you will be able to draft some key performance indicators for your online presence, identify key social networks for your organisational use as well as conduct some basic Social Media Optimisation. The main focus on this course is to offer you a broad overview of search and social media marketing and help you to start working on your long term digital marketing strategy as well as plan for use of techniques.

Tutor:

Aleksej Heinze – http://businessculture.org

The course will be taught by Dr Aleksej Heinze, Aleksej is a co-director for the Centre for Digital Business which is part of The University of Salford’s Business School. He currently works on an international projects Passport to Trade 2.0 which helps businesses to understand International Business Culture and develop new business opportunities in Europe using social media networks.

Guest Speaker:

The course will also feature Martin Cozens who is the Managing Director for Banc Media. Based in Old Trafford, Manchester, Banc Media are a Search Engine Marketing company providing Pay Per Click & Search Engine Optimisation. They specialise in a measured & transparent approach, focussing on ROI for our clients through researched search engine marketing.

Martin Cozens: “We develop close relationships with our clients, proving to become an integral part of their business, smashing targets set by them and showing real return on investment in the products we supply and the search results they gain. Developing these relationships is what makes our business stronger and helps our team grow further to providing the very best service.”

Their clients include:

  • Lufthansa’s business rewards air miles scheme SACP
  • Cruise1st – a leading cruise holiday provider operating in the UK, Ireland & Australia
  • FADS.co.uk – the nationally known online furniture retailer that was on the high street in over 800 stores
  • Breens Solicitors – a renowned law firm operating out of Merseyside for both private and business clients.

Venue

SEO & Social Media Marketing Essentials is based and delivered at the state of the art teaching and training facilities in the heart of the UK’s Media hub at MediaCityUK, University of Salford. This cutting edge facility is on close proximity of the BBC, ITV and many other top digital and media agencies.

Price

This course costs £299 + VAT.

Want to know more?

If you wish to enquire about this course, simply get in touch with Robert Goodison at Salford Professional Development on 0161 295 5407 or email R.Goodison@salford.ac.uk.

This course is aimed at busy executives who want to have theoretic understanding as well as some basic hands on practical exercises which will highlight the essentials in SEO and Social Media Marketing. This knowledge will enable you to develop a better understanding of your customers behaviour online and help you to develop long term plan and implement basic techniques for management of day to day social media engagement. Working from your business objectives you will be able to draft some key performance indicators for your online presence, identify key social networks for your organisational use as well as conduct some basic Social Media Optimisation. The main focus on this course is to offer you a broad overview of search and social media marketing and help you to start working on your long term digital marketing strategy as well as plan for use of techniques.
This course draws on the content used as part of the ten week evening course in Search and Social Media Marketing but does not include the level of detail necessary for senior individuals who are responsible for managing strategic plans

How to make a video viral? Jonathan Berger’s STEPS in “I feel Good” campaign

7 May 2013

Have you ever wondered why certain online digital marketing campaigns go viral? As part of our MSc Marketing course at Salford Business School we created a video and tested how Jonathan Berger’s STEPS concept works in real life projects.

We were introduced to Jonathan Berger’s idea of STEPS during our Search and Social Media Marketing module guest speaker’s Denise Brooks presentation.  Berger suggested that going viral is not just luck, its science based on psychology of talk.

Jonathan Berger’s STEPS concept

The key 6 STEPS in creating a viral video using Jonathan Berger’s idea of STEPS are:

  1. Social currency
  2. Trigger
  3. Emotion
  4. Public
  5. Practical value
  6. Story

Here is bit more background on the concept from Jonathan Berger himself:

I feel Good – viral video campaign concept

Our task was to create a viral campaign to promote Salford Business School to future applicants. The question we faced was – “How to make a video viral?”. We decided to take an interactive and lively approach to the campaign and link it to the online community of those following the ‘I feel good’ song by James Brown as a base for the viral video. Using keyword research we identified that “I feel good” is a popular search term, which taps into an existing community of interest online.

Through this song we emphasised that Salford Business School has great facilities and it is an enjoyable place where students feel good when they are better placed. People from different backgrounds have sung the verse showing the cultural variety that could be found in Salford Business School. This video linked to current campaign of the University of Salford – ‘Be better Placed’ and anyone interested to study business management courses at Salford Business School. At the end of the video we used a call to action message: You feel good when you’re better placed. Salford Business School… Be better placed. What makes you #IFeelGood? The idea here was to get people to share their own stories and get the video “viral” so that students would create their own footage and post it using this already existing hash tag on twitter  – #IFeelGood.

Jonathan Berger’s STEPS Framework application and results

The video contains 4 key Jonathan Berger ideas: It has social currency as the video uses humour which makes people feel good and encourages people to share. This is because of well-known trigger, the song, which becomes associated with the positive emotions that could be achieved studying at Salford Business School. It kindles the fire to share as ‘feel good’ emotions are embedded in the song. The video has a public message as it shows how Salford Business School community is beneficial for studying business in an interactive environment.

“I feel Good” campaign results

The “I feel good” campaign ran for one week during which time we were competing with five other student teams. By integrating this video with social networks sharing and organic search optimisation we achieved over 500 views in just over a week! This was associated with an incredible number of re-tweets, shares on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, comments and various social media platforms.

Our campaign integrated Social Media Optimisation (SMO) with YouTube video optimisation. YouTube optimisation was done using a keyword rich video title, video description and keywords in video tags so that we have had a good stream of organic traffic coming from different searches.

This practical project as part of our Search and Social Media Marketing module proved that a viral campaign could be easily managed through a controlled message and a plan without a budget!

What do you think about Berger’s STEPS framework? Is it a science that makes it contagious or just luck? Please share and comment below.

Diana is on LinkedIn: Diana

SEO Career – 10 Steps to Help You Get Yours Up and Running

17 November 2011

With the demand for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) skills on the rise and the average UK salary paying £32.5k a year, it’s no wonder more and more people want a career in the SEO industry. The question is however, how do you get a job in SEO?

If you type the phrase “how to start a career in SEO” (and that’s including inverted commas!) in to Google’s web search, you are presented with over 2,500 pages of content in the search engine results page (SERP). With so many websites giving their own advice on which is the best way to begin a career in SEO, it’s hard to focus on what you really should be doing. This post covers the definitive steps you should be taking in order to maximise your employability in the SEO industry.

1. Start reading… Learn the basics

At first glance learning SEO seems like a near impossible task. With so much reading material available through the internet and with certain web sites charging for this privilege, it’s difficult to be sure of which material is worthwhile reading.

One thing is for sure though, you don’t have to pay to learn the basics. There is a wealth of free information out there in the form of e-books, blogs, videos, and web sites that are worth paying attention to. Google’s SEO Beginners Guide is the perfect place to start as it is written by the people who’s search engine you will be mostly optimising for. It’s a no-brainer really. Another great place to start reading up on the basics (and the more advanced) is the highly reputable and popular SEOmoz. With over 18,000 likes on Facebook and over 100,000 followers on Twitter you get the impression that they know what they are talking about. SEOmoz provide a comprehensive Beginners Guide to SEO that is easy to read and digest for people new to SEO. Both guide’s are available for download and best of all they are free!.

2. Get Advanced… Familiarise yourself with HTML code

Arguably this should be an ongoing step, and form part of your basic learnings but with the advent of WordPress and other WYSIWYG editing platforms, knowledge of HTML is no longer a pre-requisite. There will definitely come a time though when you will need to edit HTML code directly so it’s important (and often a required item on a job description) to know your way around.

3. Start Practising

The numerous ebooks, blog posts and learning materials you have accumulated in steps 1 and 2 may leave you a little overwhelmed. They say practice makes perfect, so now would be a great time to piece together your understanding of SEO by getting your hands dirty and putting it into practice. You could either build a site, and experiment with the different SEO tactics you have learned to date, to attempt to get it to the top of the SERPs or create a personal blog in a platform like WordPress and start practising from a content creation angle. If you’ve got friends in business who have a web site, offer them some free SEO advice. Small businesses and charities that are on a tight budget will be more open to listening to some free advice and may even let you have a go at optimising their website… for free of course.

Tip: For some real-world work experience, check out the Analysis Exchange. They offer a great opportunity for people to develop their web analytics skills, a sure-fire way to boost your CV.

4. Keep Listening

Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving and there are always opinions and new techniques worth listening to. If your “beginners handbooks” are gathering dust, swap them with some more advanced reading materials, found on sites such as Search Engine Land and SEOBook to stay abreast of the latest insights and to generally stay sharp. Moreover, it is advisable to visit Google’s Webmaster Guidelines as these are updated quite regularly whenever they make tweaks to their algorithm.

Tip: Keep an eye on Matt Cutts’ Blog – he regularly hosts Q & A sessions on new Google algorithm changes.

5. Just dive in

Get involved with discussions; which include answering questions on Q & A forums and being involved with relevant groups/threads on forums and commenting with your own opinions on other blog posts. Don’t just comment “great post”, elaborate, give your opinions and ask further questions. SEOmoz, SEObook, and Matt Cutts blogs are definitely ones you should consider bookmarking. Quora is a question and answer website, where anyone can ask a question and anyone can answer. Many industry professionals are actively involved so you never know, the likes of Rand Fishkin could be answering your questions! The Warrior Forum is a highly popular marketing forum where you can find people talking about anything from programming to mobile marketing and just about anything in between.

6. Attend a course

So far all of your knowledge has come from the sources available on the internet which is great, I mean it hasn’t cost you a penny. However, you can’t exactly put this down on a CV can you? Although there isn’t actually an official SEO certification available, and probably won’t be for the foreseeable future, there are SEO courses out there. But which one should you choose? Well a lot of these courses are aimed at businesses rather than individuals starting up on their own and the majority of the courses only run for one day.

From personal experience, Salford University’s Search and Social Media Marketing Course is a must for anyone starting out in the SEO world either as an individual or as an established company. Not only do you get free refreshments and sandwiches, you get 1st class lecturing from the head of Salford Business school, guest speakers from the marketing industry, and official US based global leader SEMPO training course material. This course is sure to give you the knowledge to stand out from the crowd.

Tip: For an “at a glance” comparison of the courses available in SEO & Inbound Marketing bookmark this great post from the David Naylor blog.

7. Engage in Social Media

Chances are you are quite active on Facebook already, but for more professional social media activity, recommendations include Twitter, LinkedIn and more recently Google Plus. Google Plus has amassed around 40 million users and the majority of these are “first movers” that are heavily involved in the tech industry. This has led to a very active core of users posting regular digital marketing blogs and updates. All of these social media tools will provide you with great sources of SEO information.

TIP: Many SEO jobs will require social media optimisation (SMO) as part of the job role, so it makes sense to be actively involved and have an understanding of how they work so you can show off your knowledge in an interview.

8. Speak to Industry Professionals

Contact industry professionals and ask them for their advice. Ask them how they started out, they may reveal something that you could use to propel your career.

Mark Johnson, a Digital Insight Consultant at Latitude kindly took the time out to offer some industry advice for this post… “If you plan on building a website, before you do make sure you have a strategy and a clear goal of what you set out to achieve. Don’t rush in and always do your market research”. He also adds a bit of technical advice by saying, “Make sure your website is hosted in the right place (UK clients = UK IP address) and is URL friendly”. A great tip that should be applied to step 3 in this post .

Tip: A great place to meet industry professional in person is via the Manchester SEO (meetup). This meetup provides a fantastic opportunity to talk to like minded people who can offer you advice and point you in the right direction.

9. Apply for jobs

Now with all the SEO knowledge, tools and self generated experience you have developed it’s time start applying for jobs. Finding that perfect first job isn’t that easy. In fact your first job might not specifically be in SEO. For example, the requirements to become a PPC executive aren’t quite as demanding becoming an SEO executive. However, by being a PPC executive you can build up the experience and develop certain skills such as keyword research, analytics, & reporting that are required to be an SEO executive.

Here are a few recommended websites to get your job search started. eConsultancyjobsinsearch, The Drum, SEO vacancies, Only Marketing JobsIPA, Reed.

Tip: Now for when you get selected for an interview check out this blog post for an idea of what questions to expect.

10. Don’t just stop there….

Always look for ways to continually develop yourself no matter what level of knowledge and skills you have. It’s a competitive field out there so you must continually grow and stay fresh. You can achieve this by constantly engaging in the steps covered in this post, over and over again. You could even concentrate on one area such as the increasingly important link building and become an expert in that area.

In a recent SEOMoz Whiteboard Friday session, the topic was exactly what we’re discussing here – so for a visual representation of some of the topics covered, and to give this post one final element of depth you can view that below!

Video:

Each one of these steps could actually warrant their own detailed post but this is a summary of the key steps an SEO newbie should take. Sure, there are more which is the beauty of the SEO industry. The learning possibilities are almost endless. However, by following these 10 steps anyone’s arsenal will be well equipped with vital SEO weapons that employers look for and will ask about in an interview.

It would be interesting to know what you think about the steps covered in this post. If you are already in the SEO field, what first steps did you take and did any of these steps apply to you? Please feel free to comment below.

Follow me on Twitter and Linkedin.

#SSMM SEO and Social Media: Show me the money

16 November 2010

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING; `SHOW ME THE MONEY’

No matter how much of a `feel good’ factor any business has about social media, in the end, hard-headed marketing managers only really ask one question; `How can we make money from using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and all the rest of these time-consuming networks?’

The answer lies in identifying particular `tribes’ of users who are potentially your customers, your brand champions, your harshest critics when things go wrong, and born communicators – yes, some people are going to do your marketing for you. How cheap is that?

THE FIRST FACEBOOK UPDATE WAS A CAVE PAINTING

As the well known Twitterer @lesanto noted recently, Facebook 40,000 years ago was a cave painting. The update was `We hunted and killed today, it was good.’

This highlights what Robin Wight of the Engine Group spoke about at Like Minds in Exeter 2010. Human beings evolved in tribes of around 150-180 people. Our brains cannot truly `know’ more people than this, plus the number gives us a range of skills which helps group survival. So human communication is irrevocably tied to our evolution. That means Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and every other social network is underpinned by this same DNA-mapped reality.

Those who think they have 2000 `friends’ on Facebook are wrong. You don’t know these people. Those who simply broadcast on Twitter, without using Retweets, hash tags or @ replies to have a conversation, are on an ego trip. That isn’t social, it isn’t a conversation.

Any business can head down a digital one way street by simply broadcasting messages, but in the long run, they risk hitting a dead end in marketing terms. You have to listen.

CASE STUDIES; SEO IS CHAPTER ONE, SOCIAL MEDIA IS THE BOOK

I chose two small-medium sized companies as case studies; Frution Broadcast based in Manchester and London, plus MCi Tours, based in Altrincham to test the knowledge acquired on this course.

Fruition’s search ranking is low ( see more background at my Posterous blog ) and the site is heavy with slick flash player media. But the company doesn’t really want public visitors, they want relatively few music industry players to visit the site, be impressed, then hire them. But the SEO site audit did highlight one benefit.

One thing we all know is that people in the UK are looking for jobs right now. I found `event planning jobs’ were the top rising search UK term, up 190% in the last year. `Event co-ordinator’ was up 50%.

I refined it geographically and seasonally in Google trends;

Searches in England showed a spike in August 2010 and London, then Manchester, were top cities last summer.

So Fruition could place a house ad on their site in August, maybe blog and Twitter it too, plus run a PPC ad in the Manchester area during August, leading to a specific job application landing page.

The response could be huge, if so, people could be held on file by Fruition – a talent pool basically, full-time or freelance. All that would save a large amount currently spent on recruitment agency fees or local media advertising. Crucially, it also saves hundreds of man-hours phoning around for staff each year at peak times.

So in terms of using SEO research, we are showing the client the money trail – recruitment gets quicker and cheaper. Result.

THINKING LIKE A CUSTOMER

MCi Tours wanted more people on their motorcycle holidays for 2011, winter is their peak booking season, kicking off with the UK motorcycle show.

Working with MCi Tours’ boss Al McFarlane, we identified three things that could be done over winter to improve things.

1. Audit and tweak the website layout and content to make it more `SEO-friendly.’

2. Try and capitalise on the link traffic that’s coming MCi Tours way. Make it relevant, as well as increase it.

3. Use social media to drive more potential motorcycle touring customers towards MCi Tours – especially those interested in Route 66 US tours, as there seems to be healthy demand at present.

SEO X-Ray revealed just one external link to the site. One of things I’ve suggested to MCi Tours is that they try to get a link from the FSA, because MCi are authorised agents for motorcycle travel and breakdown insurance. Having a link from a government site would be gold dust – we can but try.

SEM Rush found 288 searchers went to MCi Tours site looking for `Motorcycle breakdown insurance.’ Interesting, as it isn’t a core part of the business, but it shows a healthy demand in the market. The fact is many UK insurers do NOT recover your motorcycle from across the English Channel – there’s an opportunity here.

We made a tweak to the site and put `Travel Insurance’ in as a H2 sub-heading and flagged it on the home page separately. MCi Tours didn’t want to commit to a full social media campaign, building Facebook conetent and a fan base of Twitter followers, but they did send a customer database email out announcing their presence at the UK bike show and the FSA-authorised travel insurance.

The result was seven holiday bookings prior to the show, whereas the previous best was two bookings in early November.

SEO works. Good news. The better news for me is that MCi Tours have retained North Point for a six week social media campaign, with live blogging, video clips from the show, posted on a new MCi wordpress blog, also on You Tube. Plus we are building a base of Twitter and Facebook followers running up to the show which opens on the 27th November – see you all there!

THE FUTURE IS MOBILE

One of the things that emerged from TruManchester was that mobile recruitment is growing fast. According to Jobsite UK it still only accounts for around 6% of all traffic, but mobile use was up 390% from Jan 2009 – April 2010. ( source; Jobsite Whitepaper ).

What does it mean in broader terms?

Social media is time consuming, so in the near future, when perhaps 50% of mobile phone users are comfortable using Smartphone browsing, stripped down, graphics heavy interfaces will become the norm. Time spent magnifying screens to tap in passwords painfully slowly, or enter a whole stack of personal data won’t be popular. Smartphone software developers are going to have create social network tools that can be used quickly, easily and intuitively.

Humans are lazy, we like the familiar. Those who insist on bombarding their Facebook `likers’ with spam updates that don’t prompt any conversation, any meaningful interaction, will fall by the wayside. Those companies who already infest Twitter with irritating 140 character PR messages, repeated twice a day and autopost replies to followers just don’t get it. You can’t automate every conversation, people are different, even if they want the same things.

The companies that develop QR code digital `fingerprints,’ which a user can access as their default gateway to the company, a kind of Polaroid snapshot `app,’ will find more business heading their way.

Mobile apps that shortcut the time involved in searching for insurance, jobs via LinkedIn, or buying gig tickets on Facebook, will make small fortunes for those who do it right, and lose large fortunes for those who back the wrong horses. Software which tracks people’s eye/mouse movements and detects their body language via webcams has incredible potential. Where our attention goes, our money follows…

Companies who use social media stripped to its essentials, the basics of human communication will always find a market. If you sell your Facebook Farmville crops to Jamie Oliver’s restaurant and get paid in real money off vouchers, people will buy into that. It is human nature.

SMALL BUSINESS, BIG VALUES

`Brands must be useful and confer status on the user.’

Robin Wight again. It takes an adman to sum up the psychology of why we buy.

So small businesses; there are 500 million people on Facebook, find your `tribe’ within that global nation. Some 300,000 new users open a Twitter account each day, joining 105m already on the network and there are 600m Twitter searches by trend, name or topic each day. Mine that gold dust, it is worth digging deep for it. Social media allows you to set your own algorithms; location, interests, age, occupation, circle of friends, Facebook apps used etc. People buy from people, so show a human face to your company. Be a friend first, a salesperson second.

Do you sell to the trade only, not the public? Use LinkedIn.

Mark Williams, known as @Mr_LinkedIn on Twitter recently noted that this network has probably halved the amount of B2B PR and trade shows that anyone does in the UK. You can join relevant discussion groups and announce conferences, webinars, invite potential buyers to look at your new product video on Vimeo or You Tube. You control it, it’s your online business media – not a big publisher’s trade show or magazine.

If you want to start a conversation, that leads to conversion. Go social.

Alastair Walker

North Point

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