As a recruiter I have gone through a journey. Gone are the days where I could solely rely on newspapers and company websites to find and attract talent. Although these methods are still used, with the growth of the Internet and social media combined with a competitive market, I recognise that social media recruitment is an essential tool to finding top talent. Not only do I recognise this, I am excited by this!

How do we know this?

A global social recruiting survey completed by LinkedIn found that more than 50% of jobseekers now use social media to assist them in their job searches. With this in mind, it is important to understand and develop a social media recruitment strategy. Not only is social media an important recruitment tool to attract and source top quality candidates, it’s also an exciting opportunity to create and develop your digital presence.

Read more…..

Hmmm… So, which course?  These were my initial thoughts.  Do I do a long distance course or do I stay close to home and come to the building.  By opting for the SSMM (Search and Social Media Marketing) at Media City, I now know, I made the perfect choice.

University of Salford Campus – Media City

It had all the aspects that I was hoping for and none of the ones I feared.  I didn’t want to just do ‘a course on seo and social media’… I wanted the course that would add value to my skillset.

When you leave University and/or Further/Higher Education, the question usually is… “What experience do you have?”… This is usually followed by an answer consisting of erms, buts and opportunity.  In other words, doing your best to prove you are willing to learn.

For probably only the second time in my life, I found myself on the other side of the argument.  As, somewhat fortuitously and serendipitously I found myself knowing a lot about SEO, social media and digital marketing, but didn’t have the academic or professional qualifications or accreditations to back up my experience or prove what I knew.  So it was important on my part that I showed evidence of Continued Professional Development (CPD).

I work in the charity and voluntary sector, so it is vital to spend the limited resources we have in the most productive, efficient and effective way possible.   This just happened to involve social media, website building, search engine optimisation and other aspects of digital marketing.  This is because, these activities can be done on a very limited budget; the challenge being, knowing what to do and having the time to invest.

So began my journey into the world of social media, website building and SEO.  It started off as a hobby with the website/organisation I founded called, Positive About MS (www.positiveaboutms.com) and it’s social media following which now reaches out to about 10,000 supporters!  Subsequently I developed a website called, The Luggie Scooter (www.theluggie.com), which features on the first page of Google and in some cases features in the coveted Golden Triangle section of Google on page1!

So you can see SSMM was something I fell into and something I just happened to enjoy too, not realising at the time it would become Web 2.0.

However, all this experience didn’t give me what I needed, which was a way to quantify what I know and give me a recognised professional accreditation and/or qualification.

The Search and Social Media Marketing course

Right from the first week of the course I liked what I saw.  From the email communication prior to arrival, to the structure and general feel of the class.  It was just what I hoped it would be.  There was a structure to the whole course and it was clear what the course would give you.  I thought it would be more formal and not as comfortable, but I was pleasantly surprised.   I really liked the layout, atmosphere and the general way of teaching.

One of the reasons I opted for the course, was the opportunity of interaction with the course leader (Alex Fenton @AlexFenton) and the chance to ask questions in person.  This also exceeded my expectations.  You could speak in person, via social media, on private linkedin groups or by email.  It gave you further reassurance that you weren’t just going to be given course notes with a presentation.

Guest speakers

The format of giving you a presentation on the subject matter, followed by a talk and Q&A session from an industry professional worked really well and I got more than I expected from it.  We got the opportunity to hear from the likes of Phil Morgan (@PhilipMorgan) & Tom Mason (@totmac) from Delineo (@Delineo), Aisha Choudhry (@AishaZulu) from Fast Web Media (@FastWebMedia),  and the UK’s Number 1 best selling small biz marketing author; Dee Blick – pictured (@DeeBlick) of www.themarketinggym.org.

Dee Blick – Guest Speaker

I also felt the course was well pitched and did exactly what it said on the tin!  Initially I was apprehensive that parts maybe too basic or complex, however this was not the case and it was helpful that Alex Fenton would sometimes spend more time on certain subject areas than others, based on the group and what we needed.

It was never a case of times up and that’s it, you got a chance to review what we’ve already discussed and check your understanding.

One of the many revelations to me personally was the benefits and features of using Google Drive, something I was neither keen nor found necessary to use before I went on the course.  Google Drive allowed you to revisit slides and talks from previous weeks and made it very easy to review course notes.

I found it very refreshing and useful that information on the course and was freely shared by Alex, and that was what I had hoped for.  If there was something you were not sure on, there was always the opportunity to revisit it out of class time, with informal group sessions.

Overall, this course has filled in those missing gaps from my own learning’s and has also introduced me to industry terms and given me a chance to quantify what I already knew, by putting names and phrases to the processes I was practicing.

Furthermore it has opened up my eyes more to the idea of Web 2.0 and the importance of Digital Marketing.

Hopefully, this has helped you regarding your professional development course choice.  Feel free to share this post or share your views, I am @mrkazlaljee on twitter and you can use the hastag #ssmmUoS

More information & booking details for the Search & Social Media Marketing Course  &  Salford University location at Media City UK – Video

Where do you turn when your business slows down or reaches a point where it stops growing? Well that is the question I asked myself, working on an organic vineyard in the beautiful south west of France and a in a wine shop in Hale, a few months ago. Well grab a glass of wine, sit back and look no further guys, organic marketing and social media are the answer.

Nowadays, most social businesses don’t use their capacity to their advantage. It’s easy to employ a marketing company, spend a lot of money, and not see any results. A friend of mine has a successful optical instruments online business and decided to outsource his Google ads campaign to a marketing company. After 6 months of paying high management fees he decided to end it and he saw no difference in his sales or website visits. This is why I went out there and studied SEO at the University of Salford as you are never better served then by yourself.

Maybe now is the time to mention that this blog is written by a glamorous blonde, and so will not be full of complicated words and non-understandable long statements about how you can go in the back end of your website and change every small details and correct mistakes. Time to employ a descent IT professional. However, there are still many things you can do by yourself.

So, to get back to how you can make a massive difference in your business, social media is a great opportunity. You’re probably thinking that I’ve lost the plot, that everyone uses Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social websites; but do you use them the appropriate way? Probably not or you wouldn’t be reading this post.

For a start, pay attention to what happens on the social media. Listen for what social media users are saying about your company, your competitors, and your products, why they love them, why they don’t. Don’t start guessing or thinking you know what people want, because honestly you never know what’s in anyone’s head. You can also find future trending topics, and maybe even spot new markets and products opportunities. Isn’t this great?

Now that you’ve done this, you can start populating your social media content. The great thing is by listening to others, you will now have a better idea of what to post, what will be shared, talked about and even referred to. Be the first to post an interesting and relevant news and gain more customers awareness.

To make your customers connected with your brand you need to engage with them, make them feel they matter to you. The hardest thing is that you might sometimes get negative feedback as you can’t always have happy customers, but the way you deal with them will be crucial for the rest of your social network. Breathe in, stay calm and never step out of place. The customer is –unfortunately- always king.

As you don’t get anything for free these days, social ads is a great way to spend your money. Social ads are those ads that are displayed to users who have friends that are fans of the advertised business; they aren’t excessively expensive and can draw more attention to your business and target a specific part of the population.

After you’ve made so much effort in putting yourself out there don’t forget to measure your success. By doing this every so often, you will be able to see what works and what doesn’t and with time it will become easier to use social media and you will always be the one knowing all the gossip – and hopefully spreading a few- in your industry.

I guess you are at least half way into your bottle of wine by now, so as a last note here are a few tips. Have a strategy, plan what you want to post every week or month so you don’t forget to do it. Social content needs to provide value and encourage action, your post isn’t just here to look good but also to be shared. By using social media wisely, your customers will sell your brand for you, and the best is that social media will help your business dominate the first page of Google.

If you ran out of wine by now, don’t hesitate to have a browse on here http://tour-de-belfort.com (free delivery all over the uk).

Melanie

The benefits of social learning

My name’s Zoe Breen and I’m producer of the WebWise a BBC* website which promotes adult digital literacy.

I’m also a blogger for Manchester Girl Geeks a group which aims to engage women and girls with science and technology.

Having produced websites for the BBC for 12 years I felt it was time I had a look at how my counterparts in the third sector and commercial worlds use search and social media marketing techniques.

A major perk of attending the Search and Social Media Marketing professional course at the University of Salford was the opportunity to network with people from a wide range of backgrounds.

I got to benefit from the knowledge of  a public relations expert, someone working at a creative agency, marketing professionals,  a local authority media manager and the UK’s foremost Yorkshire pudding blogger!

The Search and Social Media LinkedIn group set up for the course has been a great forum for asking questions, debating issues and sharing knowledge and ideas.

Experiments in generating social capital

It was a post in the LinkedIn group by fellow student Liezl Hesketh that got me thinking about the value of my personal social media activity.

Liezl highlighted a news piece from online magazine TechCrunch which reported that airline Cathay Pacific were offering free business lounge access to anyone who could prove they had earned a score of 40 or more on social influence website Klout.

I hadn’t checked my Klout account for a while so was delighted to see that I had a score of 46. Not only did I qualify for business lounge access, but that I had the basis of my end of course presentation.

Looking back at my social media activity, I realised that I had employed a variety of techniques over the years to boost my rating on social influence websites like Klout and PeerIndex – sites that generate a score reflecting your reach and activity across a number of social media platforms.

Raise your personal web profile at low to no cost

Here are my top tips for boosting your personal web presence:

1. Plug your social media accounts into Klout or PeerIndex to keep an eye on your progress.
2. Set yourself targets, get your first 1,000 Twitter followers or aim to join the 500+ club on LinkedIn.
3. Use Twitter to engage with people who share your interests – follow, reply, favourite, retweet.
4. Create lists as a way to group related Twitter accounts to follow trends in a specific field.
5. Use a tool like paper.li to automatically generate an online newspaper from your Twitter list or other social media platforms.

Connect with me on Twitter as @ZoeEBreen and on LinkedIn

*Views expressed here do not represent those of my employer.

So, you’ve decided to embrace the world of social media…

Perhaps you’re an organisation who has heard all the buzz about Facebook and its ilk, and feel that you’re missing a trick not being on there too. Maybe you’re a freelancer who feels that getting social would lead to a fatter contacts book and more juicy commissions. Or perhaps (like my Dad), you’re a fifty-something with too much time on their hands who likes the idea of Twitter because it allows them to keep tabs on their children (sorry Dad). But now, after registering on all of these sites – choosing a pithy user name and a swanky avatar – you’re not sure what to do next.

But wait! Don’t fiddle around with it for five minutes and then brush it off as being a bad lot. Social Media can make a difference to your business. It’s all about finding a niche, taking the time to make connections, and pushing out good content to the right people.

I’ve been using the internet regularly since 1996, when it was all fields and the occasional IRC chat room. And, throughout the years, it feels as though I’ve jumped on every social media bandwagon going – IRC, Livejournal, Friendster, MySpace, Friends Reunited, Bebo, Facebook, Twitter – you name it, and I’ve probably had a profile on there.

I don’t claim to be an ‘expert’ about this subject, but I am one of those ‘Digital Marketing’ types (by day I’m the Web Manager for The Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, and by night I post recipes and restaurant reviews on my food blog, Little Red Courgette), and I feel proud to say that I’ve managed to make a career out of messing around on the web. I’ve also recently been studying on Salford University’s Search and Social Media Marketing course which has enabled me to think about social media in ways which I hadn’t envisaged before. Whilst this isn’t going to be the definitive tome on the subject, think of it as a handy Beginner’s Guide.

But why should my organisation use social media?

As Bill Gates famously stated in 1996, when it comes to the internet, Content is King. But it’s not enough to create amazing words and pictures and let them sit there on your website waiting for people to stumble across them. If you want to make an impact on the SERPS, you have to be a bit noisy. As this handy infographic says, social is SEO and content is social. Google’s Panda algorithm actively encourages people to produce and share high quality content, and posting links on Twitter, Facebook and Google Plus allows people to share your content to their own personal networks. Having a single tweet retweeted by someone with thousands of followers can lead to your content going viral, meaning lots new followers and customers for your website and a higher page ranking on the search engines.

Become an expert

If you want to make an impact on social media, find your niche. There’s no shame in being a one topic wonder, so long as people connect with the content you’re sharing. If you provide users with the most useful, attractive and engaging content that you can, then this will motivate them to share it with their friends, link to it and keep coming back for more.

• Don’t be afraid to tailor you content specifically towards your target market. If you try and be relevant to everyone, you won’t relevant to anyone.
• Don’t sound too sales-y. There’s nothing worse than someone who is using a blogpost to simply flog their services. The more relevant information you can provide, the more people will be wanting to return to your website.
• Remember – the more high quality content you share, the more valuable it becomes and the more people will share it. So make it sensational!

Start making friends

Social media should be exactly that – social. Don’t just use your profiles as a glorified RSS feed. Start conversations and make connections. Reply to tweets and Facebook messages. Comment on people’s blogs and befriend people in your industry who you think may be interested in listening what you have to say.  A bit of cheekiness can go a long way – and can reap huge rewards.

Don’t restrict yourself

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – it’s easy to find a platform  that suits you and use nothing else. But in doing so, you’re doing yourself – and your brand – a bit of a disservice. Different social media platforms attract different audiences, of different age ranges and different nationalities. When devising a social media campaign, it’s important that you look at each platform, think about how you can transmit your key messages through each of those in a unique way and adapt your voice accordingly. For example:

• I use Twitter to share links and chat with friends and freelance clients
• I use Facebook to catch up with old acquaintances and the family members I have scattered across the globe
• I use WordPress for my blog
• I use LinkedIn to speak to colleagues and business connections
• I use Google Plus to promote my blog posts to a wider audience

If you’ve not yet encountered Google Plus, it’s a social network which aims to be Facebook, but better (and with less risk of your boss seeing pictures of you drunk and falling over). To find out more, watch the handy explanatory video below.

Learn from the masters

When it comes to devising and implementing a social media strategy, it’s always good to look at what your peers are doing. If they’ve got a good online reputation, it’s usually because they’re doing something right.

A few brands who do social really well are fashion retailers ASOS, Topshop and Evans (which have all utilised blogs, Twitter and Facebook to connect with their key demographic). Evans have also reached out to the blogosphere, holding press days for fashion bloggers to see their new collections, and encouraging influential bloggers to contribute guest posts to their corporate blog.

The Golden Rule – Don’t be an idiot!

OK, so this just sounds like common sense. But it’s a sentiment which can easily be forgotten in the heat of the moment. The internet has a long memory, and it’s often quick to judge. One misjudged tweet or Facebook status update can have a debilitating effect on your brand. A good example of this is when, in 2009, Habitat used ‘Hashtag Spam’ to get into the top trending results on Twitter. Hashtags are the keywords used on Twitter which allows users to follow a conversation, and, using hashtags like #Iran and #Mousavi, the retailer added notes about its products into the stream of tweets about the Iranian uprising in 2009. Whilst Habitat blamed this on the actions of a rogue intern, the effect was debilitating and, arguably, the brand’s online reputation hasn’t really recovered since.

And, above all else, have fun!

It’s easy to take social media too seriously, but in doing so, you’d be missing out on seeing it for what it can be (namely, bloody good fun). If you’re prepared to put the effort in, you’ll soon reap the rewards, as well as make friends, influence people, and (eventually) become a social media superstar.

Agree? Disagree? Or perhaps you just want to say hello? If so, feel free to follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/misscay, or feel free to add me on LinkedIn.

At this precise moment in time, I am a member of 44 LinkedIn Groups with one additional group membership request pending.  As someone with an avid interest in social media and who is taking time to learn new skills, it has been an extremely simple process to sign up to numerous groups and platforms. Every new lead or connection often leads to the exploration of new groups and other interesting sources of information. This is great in the context of information discovery; but it can quickly lead to information overload and a constant battle to stay on top of incoming messages.

LinkedIn Discussion Groups Experiment

On November 1st, I decided to try a small experiment.  I signed into my LinkedIn account and changed all of my groups’ settings to switch them to ‘email each new discussion’ and remove any weekly and daily digests.  The intention was to use the filters within my email client to divert the junk mail directly to my delete folder and try to achieve a more manageable email flow. However, what I actually did was set up a single filter to divert all of my LinkedIn Group notifications into a dedicated folder.

Over the course of the experiment, I discovered a number of  things:

1. It is very difficult to set emails to automatically delete unless there is a specific subject or person that merits being avoided;
2. I receive an average of between 15 to 20 notifications per hour, varying according to time of day and day of week;
3. The vast majority of notifications contain links to articles, blog posts and marketing material with no commentary or additional value to warrant the use of the LinkedIn platform;
4. There is a considerable amount of duplication across different LinkedIn groups, not to mention external sources such as other social networks, news aggregation services and monitoring tools;
5. Closed groups are typically more valuable to me than open groups, in terms of relevant content, fewer problems with spam and more interaction.

So, what I end up with is a list of emails that looks a lot like this:

Sample list of emails from LinkedIn Discussion Groups

Filtering Discussion Group Notifications

At which point, it becomes necessary to employ a technique called ‘thin slicing’, which I first learned about when reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell.  First of all I use the select all check box, then I skim the subject titles for key words, patterns and phrases that look like they hold some potential.  You quickly become blind to the words ‘New discussion’, which leaves only a short title to skim through. If one of the subject lines grabs my attention I glance over to the right to check which group the item was posted to and then to the left to see if I recognize the author. If the email subject looks interesting, I deselect the check box for that email and repeat until I reach the bottom of the list, at which point I delete all selected emails.

This technique allows me to filter out up to 98% of the LinkedIn Group notifications that make it to my inbox, which means that it is critical for messages to have well-written, concise and highly targeted subject lines.

One example of an email that attracted my attention was the third email in the list above, using the subject line: “Anyone know of any articles or resources that can justify the creation o…”. The primary hook being my interest in information research and the indication that this is a discussion question as opposed to a link share.  In my view, discussions on LinkedIn are worth following where there is the possibility that expert knowledge might be shared or where valuable connections can be discovered.

Clicking on the link revealed that the full subject line was even more interesting: “Anyone know of any articles or resources that can justify the creation of a branded Google Plus page? How is it different than a Facebook page? Will Google Plus be around next year?”

New Discussion Notification Email from Social Media Today Group

This is the second decision point in the filtering process: deciding whether or not to right click on the link to open it in a new tab before hitting the delete button. I will typically run through all of the emails that escaped the initial delete, before moving over to LinkedIn to check each discussion item that I have opened in a new tab. [N.B. It is useful to be logged in to LinkedIn before starting this process.] In the case of the example used above, there is no article link in the discussion posting and it generated ten comments in two days, containing some very useful links, tips and feedback.

Improving the Signal to Noise Ratio

LinkedIn have just launched group statistics, which are accessible by clicking on the graph icon on the My Groups page.  This can simplify the process of targeting group interactions; so it is possible to unsubscribe from email and digest notifications from groups, in circumstances where it may be relevant to be a member but not to have an active participation.  If we look at the activity statistics for two groups with strikingly different member and activity statistics, opting out of discussion notices from a larger group becomes a viable option, especially when the majority of postings may be duplication either within multiple LinkedIn groups or on other social networks.

Example demographics of a small LinkedIn Group

Example demographics of a large LinkedIn Group

Example activity levels of a small LinkedIn Group

Example activity levels of a large LinkedIn Group

The important thing to remember is that even though it is very easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information that flows through social media networks, there is an ‘off’ switch.  As you get to know the groups you have signed up to, it is possible to reduce the pile of messages and notifications clogging up your inbox by:

• Switching off notifications from groups that are primarily used for link sharing and direct marketing broadcasts.
• Switching digest notifications to individual notifications, because digests typically include ‘still active’ discussion notices, which are often more distracting than useful.
• Using a social bookmarking service to direct followers to your preferred networks and groups.

In the process of writing this post I have received membership approval for my 45th LinkedIn Group, I think it’s time to update my XeeMe groups’ page.

Update – 5th January 2012

When setting up filters for LinkedIn emails, it is very useful to set up separate filters for ‘New job’, New discussion‘ and ‘New comment‘ to direct them to individual folders. I updated my own filtering system after I reached the maximum of 50 LinkedIn group memberships and these work for me for three key reasons:

• I can automatically delete job postings when I am not working on a specific recruitment related project;
• I can ignore new discussion items until I have a block of time to sift through them for interesting threads. In fact, by delaying responding to a discussion item it creates a buffer effect to renew interest in a discussion item and serves to encourage more responses overall;
• I can easily pick up on and respond faster to comments on discussions that I have already commented on or started following.

Next on my agenda is to write a blog post on how to write good subject lines for new discussion items over at http://smespresso.co.uk

Finding More Help with Social Media

I’d love to hear from you, if you would like to:

• Leave a comment on this post
• Find me on through my social bookmarks on XeeMe
• Connect with me on LinkedIn
• Follow the #ssmm tag or my #ssmm list on Twitter for useful tips and connections
• AnjleeB

Applications on mobile devices – are they turning us into anti-social individuals? How many applications are there now? There is no point in counting, as more will be created before the day is out. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, FourSquare are many of the current forms of social networking mobile applications turning us into a group of anti-social individuals, lacking the proper social skills; similar to “hoodies” for the 21st Century. Head down, feverishly tapping away on your device, not paying careful attention to what you are doing, or what is around you, for the need to be kept up-to-date with the latest information. Companies, in particular, now see the benefit of being able to do business within the mobile marketplace in a blog written by Raam Thakrar, the CEO of Touchnote He raised a number of key areas of benefit for the SME marketplace in "Taking advantage of mobile phone technology" with one being M-Commerce. He believes it will only be a matter of time for customers to make safe transactions on their mobile phone as the mobile phone is the only form of technology they have close to them at all times. However the issue of security is raised as mobile phones does not offer the same level of protection as a computer when buying online is concerned, plus it needs individuals to be confident of making these purchases in this manner, despite high levels of physical theft or misuse.

The invention of Smart phones and variations of iPads means a new big juicy screen, clarity to write what you want when you want, turning individuals into mobile businesses, able to have the power of a PC in their hand. From a social networking aspect, people are able to interact through recording, uploading and updating information or content to view and receive vital information then comment on without the need of powering up a computer. However, with the ability to update details, are we missing out on vital information in the real world? Lets have a look at some o the drawbacks of the "social mobile devices":

Windows 7 Phone Ad

With innovations like FourSquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places people are eager to “check in” on a mobile device to a variety of places and venues to gain badges and rewards for unlocking new venues and places of interest. This could be a great thing until you start adding “friends” or worse the person in your “relationship” as they will be able to track you easily, especially when you have to “work late” on that “important brief for the boss by the end of the week”!

Spelling anyone?

Here’s a great test. How badly has your hand writing suffered over time since you have been using a computer? What about spelling? Do you find that you use more in the way of “text language” when talking to people instead of full sentences? (Cheers m8! C U l8r! ) ) Is this attributed to the amount of characters Twitter allows per tweet, or just a convenient way to get a long message across in abbreviations.

The “Cheers” Factor

Remember Cheers? The Boston bar where “Everybody knows your name”? Like any local, the idea of interacting with people from long-standing relationships has been replaced with requests from total strangers just because they frequent the same establishment. The idea of being socially accepted using this means your circle of friends has grown immensely, even though there is nothing in common with that person apart from frequenting the same venue.

So, what about the future?

Virtua Friends or “iM8s” may be a great acquisition in the short-term through these various applications, however there is nothing like leaving new mobile phone technology alone for a while to gain a sense of reality in the “real world”. Meeting someone in person provides a different set of emotions, a real relationship through having some kind of history or background:

Window 7 Phone

T-Mobile advert

Overcoming any stress-related mobile phone abuse

The number of mobile phone and hand related injuries will continue to rise from the extension of texting, so here are some exercises to overcome any pains that may surface

• Tap each finger with the thumb of the same hand. Repeat five times.
• Pull your thumb firmly with the other hand. Repeat five times.
• Wrap an elastic band around the tips of fingers and thumb and open your hand against the resistance. Repeat 20 times.
• Palms down wrap an elastic band around each thumb and force apart. Repeat 20 times.
• Tap the palm and back of your hand on your thigh as quickly as you can. Repeat 20 times.
• Massage thumb web, back of forearm and front of forearm. Two minutes.
• Press and rub in a circular motion the painful nodules in those muscles. Thirty seconds for each nodule.
• Reach up high with both arms and shake your hands. Reach down low with both arms and shake. Repeat three times.
• Arms at 45 degrees, squeeze them behind you.
• If it still hurts after a week of doing exercises, wrap an ice pack on sore hand and arm parts. Do not put ice directly on the skin but wrap in a thin cloth or piece of kitchen roll. Ten minutes on, 10 minutes off. Repeat three times.

More and more businesses are looking towards new technology to keep people informed of the latest news and information, possibly due to these devices being readily available for mass consumption. Most noticeably, the BBC wanted to close a number of their websites, and instead channel it through iPhone applications, in a blog created by Rory Cellan-Jones entitled “Governement apps: a case for the axe?” So, just as we are getting our heads out of the sand like ostriches, there seems to be a movement to get us looking down again to interact with the world.

With that in mind, I’m going to call my mate and arrange to meet up in the pub… then log in to Foursquare to “check in” to the venue we’re going to meet up in, and do the same on Facebook and Twitter. If I need people to know how popular I am…

Make sure you check in here when on the Search Social Media Marketing course

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