Social Media Consultancy
Social Media is currently a very hot topic on the web with everybody talking about it and many companies trying to utilise it to develop their business. As with many emerging technologies some people are using it in the right way and some people are not.
First of all do you know what social media is? Wikipedia describes social media as follows:
“Social media are media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable communication techniques. Social media is the use of web-based and mobile technologies to turn communication into interactive dialogue.”
In a nutshell social media is a two way conversation between you and your customers to try to achieve an objective. The objective may be a sale or increased brand awareness. Social media is as much about listening as it is about talking.
You will need to plan a strategy for your social media campaign and Michael Walmsley can help you with this. Things you might like to consider:
- Who are your target audience
- Where can they be found on the web
- What is the purpose of the campaign
- Generate leads
- Increase sales
- Increase brand awareness
- What is the best medium to use, Facebook, Four Square, Twitter etc.
- What message do you want to share with your audience
- What benefit is there to your audience of being involved with your campaign
- What is your content strategy
- When are the best times for you to send your message out
- How will you engage with your audience
- How will you handle negative comments
- How will you measure the success of your campaign
With clearly defined aims and objectives your project is far more likely to succeed.
Here is a quick rundown on some of the more popular social networks and how you can utilise them in your business.
Blogs
A blog can allow you to share information about your company or business sector. They can also help you with search engine optimisation because regularly updated websites will rank more highly than sites that are not updated regularly, all things being equal.
Facebook is currently the most popular social network in the world. Facebook can help your business in a number of ways. First of all you can create a Facebook Business Page, this allows you to interact with your customers in the same way that you would with a normal personal Facebook account. You might also consider Facebook advertising, these are the small ads that you see on a Facebook page. The beauty of these ads is that they can be more accurately targeted than any other form of advertising on the web, e.g. age, location, gender, interests.
Four Square
Four Square is the most popular geo location service. The way Four Square works is that users “check in” to locations such as your business. The person with the most check ins at a particular location is “The Mayor” of that location. Businesses can offer incentives such as discounts for being the mayor or for visitors who have checked in X number of times on X number of days etc. Four Square is particularly good for traditional bricks and mortar businesses to use.
Flickr
Flickr is a photo sharing website that allows you to post photos and short videos. Flickr can be used to publicise events that you have organised or attended.
Linked In
Linked In is a social network for professionals. It can be a very good way of generating useful leads as you can make contact with the decision makers of an organisation. The community includes a group discussion feature that enables you to interact with your target audience.
Twitter is the social media medium of choice for celebrities, it provides an easy way to send out a message and more importantly it is easy to monitor Twitter for mentions of your brand or competitors. This allows you to gauge how people feel about your brand and enables you to engage with the people that are talking about you.
You Tube/Vimeo
These are video sharing sites that enable you to host videos that can offer product information, how to guides etc. There are more searches on You Tube every month than on the Bing search engine.
Social Media is a great way to build contacts and generate targeted leads that produce sales. Michael Walmsley has a blog that reaches well beyond his local area of Blackburn, Burnley and Preston. The blog has regular visitors in the UK from Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, London and Newcastle. There are also international visitors from as far afield as The Europe, the USA, Asia and Australia.
If you would like to find out more about how Michael Walmsley can help your social media campaign then why not call him, free, on 0800 779 7829.
