Posts tagged: social media marketing

Six steps to better social media engagement

1 November 2015

For any business using social media channels, it is important to know what makes your target market tick and to think about how you are going to engage with them.

I have recently completed the Search and Social Media Marketing course at Salford University which has given me more of an insight into digital marketing and some psychology behind the thought process of users on social media.

Social media engagement

According to Jonah Berger, there are six STEPPS to creating successful content that is more likely to trigger people to share or engage with your content on social media.

Read more…..

Social Media Marketing: The Making of a Brand

5 May 2015

Having spent my teenage years publishing an endless collection of holiday snaps, documenting my every thought and updating those somewhat embarrassing relationship statuses on Facebook, the role of Social Media Executive for an e-cigarette brand did not seem a mean feat.

The Art of Social Media (CC) by mkhmarketing

The Art of Social Media (CC) by mkhmarketing

But oh boy, was I wrong. I soon came to realise that those years of attempting to portray the perfect image of myself on social media carried far fewer obstacles and incredible opportunities than those available to a brand. With the help of social media courses such as Search and Social Media Marketing at the University of Salford, I came to understand the degree to which social media marketing had now become the cornerstone to every company.

Read more…..

Why I chose the Search & Social Media Marketing Course

27 November 2014

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.

salford university media city

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 pic

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

Social Media Marketing for the Haters.

27 November 2014

Tapping the Social Media apps on my phone has become more of a habit than a conscious decision. Whether it’s to check out the persistent notifications for a picture I clicked ‘like’ on days ago; or to answer a private group message about a friend’s birthday meal. I no longer need to simply wonder how an old friend is doing, as their profile picture and status updates will tell the story of their relationships, hobbies and interests. Status updates can be akin to a diary extract; often telling us a lot more than we care to know.

Everything is Good by David Shrigley

Everything is Good by David Shrigley

Pew Internet’s research has shown that, “As of January 2014, 74% of online adults use social networking sites.” Whilst we live our private lives in the public eye, it’s important to consider that a respective new employer is able to scope us out before that life changing job interview. They will have already have made an opinion based on our online public persona. Perhaps due to this ‘social’ nature of Social Media, some companies aren’t taking it seriously enough and are reluctant to use it.

If you choose to use it to your advantage, you could be just one social media campaign away from beating your competitor to the number one spot in Google rankings. You will be better connected to your customer base, promoting your business to a wider audience all whilst being inspired and quite possibly entertained.

Choose Life, choose a Social Media platform

Consider the strengths within your company and use them to your advantage, but firstly…

  • Who are your target audience?
  • What’s your unique selling point?
  • What objective are you trying to achieve?

Once you have established all of the above, you will be able to determine the correct Social Media platforms to use. Here are some of the usual suspects:

  • Facebook

Facebook is still, far and away, the most popular social media platform. According to Statista.com, ‘As of the third quarter of 2014, Facebook had 1.35 billion monthly active users’.  It speaks volumes really. You can set up your company and wait for the ‘likes’ to come in, or if you have the capital, use pay per click adverts that work on pay per interaction rather than pay per impression. This is a real advantage over some of the more traditional online advertising techniques, where Return on Investment (ROI) can be low.

  • Twitter

Despite being, arguably, the second-most recognized platform out there, Twitter is fourth in usage. The ultimate, real-time conversational micro-blogging platform; perfect if you like to keep your posts short, sweet and less than 140 characters.

  • Instagram

If you are an ‘image heavy’ company this is an excellent medium to use. It’s fun, requires little management, just maintain a good level of high quality images.

  • Tumblr

Hosting some 188 million blogs, Barack Obama took to the ‘micro-blogging’ platform to discuss issues such as national security, instantly dispelling previous perceptions that the site was little more than a hub for playground discussions between teenageers. Tumblr gives you ‘gofollow’ results, which is SEO GOLD! You can also use Google Analytics to track key metrics.

You can use ALL of the above, or just one, depending on how much time you available to dedicate. If you can spare at least half an hour a day to Social Media, make sure you use the platform that will create the most engagement. You can use a Social Media dashboard, such as Hootsuite to put out the same content  all the platforms at once, you can even schedule a suitable time in the day; reaching your audience in the USA when they are drinking their morning coffee. This will save you from setting your alarm for the middle of the night to send a Tweet.

To rank at the top of Google, you need to have a fresh unique website which is updated on a regular basis. A neglected page will make you drop off the first page on Google faster than you can say, ‘sneezing panda’. Set time aside each week to update the website. Try adding blog posts from guest bloggers, who have their own suitably engaged followers who can link back to your site.

Here’s a stinky statistic for you; according to Mashable, “There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. 5.1 billion of them own a cell phone, but only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush”. This shows how imperative it is to have a mobile friendly website, we are all using our mobiles to view Social Media.

Be a Smarty Pants

One of the many fun things about Social Media is you can be a bit of a smart ass. There are so many things you can do, beyond basic tweeting and using the correct hashtags. Google trends is an excellent way of engaging with your desired audience, this will help to stay on top of trends relating to your business. It will inspire you to write a tweet at the perfect time. The best timed tweet I ever did was for my DJ collective project, Dance Lady Dance, (shameless promo) during the World Cup which got us 52 new followers. Thank you Miley!

Dance Lady Dance July tweet

Albeit, more football fans than music fans followed us…. which swiftly leads me to my next point:

Find the right audience 

Buying Twitter followers, or going on a follow-frenzy, is not going to be beneficial to your company. Locate your audience, who do they follow? This may be your competitor; if so ‘follow’ their followers, they may soon follow you back. Use an appropriate hashtag # that relates to your business and follow the latest followers who are tweeting about related topics. You’ll soon have a relevant audience who are ready to interact with you.

The best Social Media Marketers are creative thinkers who take risks. SEO and Social Media Marketing is ever changing, so there really is no guidebook on how to do this; its trial and error. Youtube hosts countless videos on unsuccessful marketing campaigns. Only the very best campaigns will go viral via Social Media (or ones with cats playing instruments).

You are ready!

Remember that your profile picture and cover photo is the first thing your audience will see, you have about five seconds to win them over, so make it count. Use something that represents your company and what you have to offer; always have a link to your website in your profile.

Follow the steps, keep your content updated and you’ll soon find that people will follow you whenever you go.

Connect with me @louloupembers

Using social media to advertise boring products.

7 May 2014

Cones as you may have realised aren’t interesting, they’re not funny, sexy, or appealing in any way, how then do you market one to the general public?

Cones

As a manufacturer of traffic management products we’re not exactly on trend, or in high demand. Basically cones are boring, and as a business to business company we didn’t think social media would benefit us in any way. After starting the Search and Social Media Marketing course though I thought why not try setting up a twitter and see where it gets us.

Before I set up the account I looked into other social media campaigns for boring products. The most successful one I could think of was Will It Blend?If you haven’t seen the videos, they’re advertising blenders but instead of just blending food or showing you a picture of a blender, they blend tablets, phones, toys, marbles, and a big mac, almost anything you can think of to show the power of the blender.  The campaign really took off and the guy behind it all became somewhat of a minor celebrity in America. There’s also the Got Milk? campaign, Milk has got to be the most boring product imaginable but the campaign was so successful that it has been running for over 20 years, there’s been celebrity endorsements and even merchandise, who knew an advert for milk could be so successful!

Another really good social media campaign is that of Vitamin Water, they asked people to tweet them with what’s currently boring them, then Vitamin Water would come back with a response to make it brilliant. They even went to a town In Oregon called Boring and put on loads of events and gigs, the whole thing went viral and there followers on twitter went up 100%.

There was more of online presence in our field that originally thought, so we set up our twitter account, @MelbaSwintex, designed the page around our theme from the website, followed the relevant people and waited for a miracle, but as we quickly realised, planning needed to go into running a social media platform.

We currently have three people with access to our twitter, a designer, a sales rep and me, so a wide variety of people, luckily we all have our own personal twitter accounts, so we knew the basics, we just didn’t know what to tweet about! Firstly we laid down the rules of what can and can’t be tweeted, we decided to discuss tweets before we posted them so we didn’t get any repeat tweets and so that non of the tweets were offensive, spelt wrong, or incorrect.  For us humour seemed to be the best way to go with, nobody wants to follow someone on twitter who blurts out facts about the first road cone or how to properly lay your road cone on the road. After only a couple of tweets we had a council ring us up and want to start a 2 year contract with us, just because I’d followed them on twitter, which is very encouraging.

Currently we’re tweeting about new products that we have coming soon, innovative design ideas that we are pursuing, particular tools that people can use on our website, and re-tweeting local news. We’ve currently got 31 followers, which doesn’t seem like many but to be fair it is a twitter account about cones.  According to our Google analytic’s profile, the twitter account is already generating more views to our website. Hopefully this will generate more interest in us as a company!

Thanks for reading and if you need any cones Melba Swintex is the place you need to call!

 

Melba Swintex

 

 

 

 

Why Community Counts!

28 November 2013

As a Marketer working at Magma Digital Ltd, a PHP Web Development agency building bespoke business critical systems, the power a Community has, is becoming increasingly apparent . One of the greatest aspects surrounding the programming language, PHP, is the Community that it has created – across the world there are many user groups organised to support PHP Developers.

Magma Digital play a key role in the organisation of the annual PHP Conference in Manchester, PHP North West (PHPNW). The Conference is run by developers, for developers, the aim of the Conference is to improve the web industry through new innovations and the improvement of developers skills. PHPNW is one of the largest PHP Conferences in the UK alongside PHPUK in London and PHPNE in Newcastle.

We gain a large amount of kudos through the recognition of our efforts for the PHP Community. This enables Magma Digital to further reach our audiences through our various social media channels. Many of you may wonder how reaching out to more Developers may benefit us? Well, Magma Digital have recently embarked on a significant growth plan, where we have been on the lookout for talented PHP Web Developers to join our team. Many of our followers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+ have shared our jobs with their followers which has enabled us to reach our target audience by doing nothing more than putting the time into creating the social messages.

As one of the least ‘geeky’ people within Magma, I often find myself getting excited by the results of our social media communications to the point that many of the Developers in the office have labelled me as ‘Data Nerd’. To ensure you really see the return you’re getting from your social communication, track anything and everything possible. At Magma, we use the URL shortener bit.ly to shorten our links (less characters, yay!) but this also enables us to track the amount of shares and clicks for any particular link.

When we first embarked on our growth plan, we needed more developers and created the ‘Magma Hiring’ bit.ly link. The first broadcast of this link over social media saw a return of over 200 clicks in the first two days. Over the last two years we have used this link for all our job advertisements and have seen over 2,000 clicks. There are a number of ways to check the statistics of a specific link, the first which I find the most simple is to add a + sign to the end of your bit.ly link. So in this example it would be http://bit.ly/magma_hiring+.

Since we began to use the bit.ly hiring link in December 2011, we have recruited nine new developers most of which have come from our social media. In addition to the recruitment success, we have seen several recommendations to adopt projects that have come from other developers within the PHP Community.

We believe that supporting the communities we are involved in by giving a helping hand, has enabled us to make Community count! Our communities have seen the effort we put into making the web a better place and consequently they want to do their bit to help us out.

When you’re engaging on social media don’t forget that if you help people, they are more inclined to want to return the favour when you need it!

ABOUT Heather Taylor

Heather is Marketing Executive at Magma Digital Ltd specialising in business critical systems to help improve business processes and efficiency. Some examples of systems include payroll systems, pharmacy systems and legal trade systems.

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

Social influence: this time it’s personal

10 April 2013

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.

Social Media In Business – 10 Social Media ‘Do’s & Don’ts’

24 November 2011

Social Media in Business - do's and don'ts

Social Media Today

There are some big brands that are still getting it wrong in social media today, with everyone looking for a new way or new ideas in social marketing and ‘getting their brand out there’. Sometimes this can cost them dearly and be damaging to their brand. Here I just wanted to share with you interesting points I have read and also share my thoughts on social media ‘Do’s & Don’ts’.

1 – Don’t just create a business page in social media for the sake of it – have a purpose

Having a Facebook or Twitter business page just because your competitors has, isn’t always the answer. Have a clear marketing purpose and ‘Do’ have a plan! Evaluate what you want to get from it and set clear goals.

  • Think long term
  • You want to attract your customers
  • Do your research

Once you have a page, do you have a plan to maintain that page? Have you designated someone within your company to maintain the page?

2 – Don’t use the wrong URL for your Facebook page

You no longer need 25 fans to help create a custom business page. Obtain a URL for your page that has your company’s name in it. For example, it can contain your brand name be www.facebook.com/yourbrandname instead of the former random number URL assigned.

3 – Don’t leave large gaps in posts!

Make sure you post often, without it being too spamy! To post frequently and then to leave your pages for a week, would be bad practice you want to keep your followers/public involved and engaged. Without consistent and regular posts they won’t have a reason to follow you or your page, give them new regular content and a reason to keep reading.

4 – Don’t spam

You might not think your sales messages are spam, but posting the same message too many times, could really upset your followers. They like to be spoken to, not shouted at – BUY! BUY! BUY! – constantly can get boring and result in people giving up following you! Have a good mixture of content include your sales messages but integrated within the grand mix! Remember to word it so it isn’t to sales targeted or aggressive; include call to actions – but don’t go over the top!

5 – Don’t be a robot – have a voice

If your social media presence is for your brand and not you personally, you may find you are more successful when you bring in some personality into your communications. This can be as simple as thanking people for retweets or offering your expertise to help others, whilst sharing a little of your personal side. It is good to have an opinion and being a human voice rather than a robot is what people will relate too.

6 – Don’t self-promote all the time

This again could come under spam, I know self-promotion is why you are originally on social media but these networks are vastly different from other marketing tools. A good rule of thumb would be to balance your self-promotion by promoting and helping others, connected to your business/market. Find similar pages/markets to share content, this is another way of varying you’re content and keeping your audience captivated.

7 – Do use the right social media channels for your business

There are loads to choose from and not every social media site is right for certain business, do your research. LinkedIn might be the obvious place for B2B but does this also fitting for your market the obvious choice isn’t necessarily the best choice! Wikipedia has a list of all the good social media sites. Do you research; find out who your competitors are using and if they are using them successfully – take note!

8 – Don’t outsource your social media to someone/companies that do not know your brand or target audience

If there is a team responsible the social media or you are out sourcing it to an external agency/company make sure you ALL share the same tone of voice as not to confuse your audience! Remember one wrong message will go noticed and could spoil years’ worth of brand building. Make sure you are all giving the same messages.

9 – Don’t avoid reacting to negative feedback

One of the downsides to social media is the uncontrollable element of it. While you can’t control every detail or who they share it with, one element you can control is how your business responds to their feedback. With the right social media tracking you can respond to these comments and if they are negative look how they can be turned into a positive. Depending on the subject matter would depend on how you would respond. You could get the user to email you to sort out behind the social media scene or respond directly to them online. You’ll be surprised how responding as a voice can help or win over a lot of customers, just knowing they are being listened to or getting a response, could go a long way. (Be careful though not all instances can be turned in to a positive but the fact that your brand is saying – ‘Hello I hear you’ can help!).

10 – Do use it as an outlet to amplify a message

Don’t over-focus on social media’s ability to amplify a message and create awareness, always remember it is also about engagement and connecting with customers. You can retweet a message several times, if the message isn’t something interesting enough for them to care about it will not matter! Make sure it is written well and even add some humour to it if the subject is apt.

There are no hard and fast rules in social media

There are no hard and fast rules of what you should or shouldn’t do, so these I would only see as best practices to help create successful engagement on social media sites. I would also say read the official guidelines for the particular social media site you are using and keep reading them they can and do change and are always a good place to start, for example:

The Power of Social Media Today.

This article was unbelievable it is a true story about a man who takes a hostage for 16 hours and announces it on Facebook only to see the his friends and the police join in negotiation. This to me shows the extent in everyday life (not just in business), in which we are using it or how is it being used. Last month saw ‘The Drum’ (marketing and media magazine), cover an article about how Seabrooks crisps broke the rules with their competition on Facebook.

Social Media news

10 Best Social Media Campaigns of 2010

2010 saw some great social media campaign’s on the link above it has the ten best success stories that brands have had with social media marketing, one of my all time favourite was the ‘Old Spice’ campaign, I remember wrapping up ‘Old Spice’ for my dad at Christmas as a little girl – this really was a great come back for them, getting across that this brand is not just for old men – more spicy men!

Thanks for reading my blog, please share your comments about your social media ‘Do’s & Don’ts’ or have you seen anything about social media that has shocked you or made you smile, we would like to hear your stories!

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