social media essentials - west kent b2b

Why Social Media Is Important to Your Business

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ClientsSleeping Giant Media

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Why Social Media is Important to Your Business March 2015

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Introduction

- Why social media matters.

- State of the media landscape.

- Why customer complaints on social aren’t bad.

- What tools you can use to help you effectively run your social media.

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Feel free to use social throughout!

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Your social activity

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- What social channels are you using? Are there other profiles that you would like to use?

- How much time is spent on managing the company social profiles?

- Have you had any difficulties in managing or planning the social activity?

- Do you use any social tools?

- Do you leverage your social activity alongside overall marketing activities?

- Have you ever had to deal with complaints on your social profiles?

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Why does social media matter?

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Benefits of social media

Here are a number of ways that you can use social media to support your overall marketing efforts:

- Buzz monitoring (discover the latest trends and what interests your followers).

- Customer service (engage with current and future members)

- Digital PR and building relations (create a positive and inspirational brand image)

- SEO (improve your search engine ranking with increased social activity)

- New Ideas and services development (generate ideas and new opportunities from your social contacts)

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Social media landscape - Trends to watch out for in 2015

- The rise of Instagram. Instagram will continue to grow and brands are now starting to post more to Instagram than Facebook. Why? Instagram is better for telling a brand’s story. It is easier to create engagement on Instagram and to attract new followers.

- The majority of social networks are accessed via a mobile device. The number of people doing so will continue to increase. It’s really important to think about this when posting content to your profiles and to make sure that you have a mobile responsive website.

- Multimedia is key. Good quality imagery and video content are essential to have in your social media marketing.

- Ad hoc content is king for SMBs. It is good to plan for social, but topical content can’t always be foreseen and so you need to keep an eye on current trends.

- Building relationships with bloggers and vloggers for brand awareness, reviews and exposure. Vloggers will become more important for brands to collaborate with in order to reach out to the younger generation.

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How to plan for social

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Where does this engagement come from?!

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“Where do I start?”

“Can’t I just Tweet?”

“No-one’s engaging with me!”

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Social planning - The Process

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Establish persona

and brand rules

Research and target

influencers in the market

Create content strategy based on

assets

Build followers

and influence

Target with offers and promotions

Evaluate and adapt

Provide relevant

content and topics

Engage with users,

answer questions

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How to plan for social

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- Choose the appropriate channels to focus on and dedicate time to social media.

- Make sure your content is Engaging and is being shared regularly.

- Add Personality to your profiles by including photos, videos and a people element. This will help to create a positive brand image.

- Think about the messages that you want to communicate. Use social as an opportunity to tell your brand’s story.

- Re-share the content, don’t post and forget!

- Use it as an opportunity to engage with Followers/Influencers.

- Increase followings (follow partners, suppliers, customers, journalists).

- Always think about the benefit to your target audience.

- Continue to be Topical/Current.

- Remember to reflect your USPs in posts, videos, and imagery.

- Use free tools to monitor channels and track success.

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1. Products, services, news and offers (articles, events, features in magazines, gift vouchers, the launch of a new range, competitions etc..).

2. Clients (reviews, case studies, testimonials, photos, and videos).

3. Experienced staff (interviews, tips and advice, videos, profiles, photos of staff at the office).

4. Industry news (latest updates and trends).

5. Seasonal posts / special holiday greetings (Spring, Easter, St George’s Day, Father’s Day, Summer ).

6. About (history and expertise - demonstrate your knowledge).

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Focus on the following social content areas when sharing posts on your social profiles:

What should I post? Social content areas

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Creating posts - all profiles It is important to consider and include the following when creating content and publishing posts on your social media channels.

- Use appropriate hashtags and keywords.

- Encourage followers to join in the conversation by using positive language.

- Ask questions and reply to comments.

- Add a call to action and where customers can find out more.

- Share testimonials.

- Cross promote social profiles.

- Tag influencers in posts.

- Use positive language and a friendly persona.

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Common mistakes

Here are some common mistakes that are made when creating posts.

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- Length

- Graphics

- Self Promotion

- Call to action

- No story/flow

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Hashtags

- Add hashtags to your posts and test which ones deliver the most engagement.

- Use hashtags to increase the reach of your posts.

-Think about creating your own hashtags for awards, events, competitions, special occasions, and offers.

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Post frequency

- Try to post to Facebook at least 4-5 times a week. Increasing the number of posts shall help to encourage engagement.

- Increase the number of tweets on Twitter to at least 2-3 tweets per day.

- Consider making a weekly or monthly social plan.

- The best times to post are in the afternoon and the evening. Try various times to see which posts deliver the most engagement.

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How to leverage social profiles

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-Make it clear that you have social media profiles by adding social buttons to the website. This shall help to create awareness about the profiles and encourage clients to follow.

-Feature the social profiles and links in articles on the site. This shall make it easy for people to find the profiles.

-Include the social profiles in brand materials. This is especially important when attending local events or conferences.

-Add the social profiles to email signatures and to the newsletter. Think about including; “Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn” on a newsletter.

-The following points are important to consider, as the more promotion and awareness that is created, the better the social media profiles will perform.

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How to handle complaints

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How to handle complaints

5 tips for handling complaints

- Be prepared (responses, identify team/person responsible).

- Determine the type of complaint (product related, constructive, deliberate).

- Offer a timely, legitimate public apology. Let people know that their feedback is important.

- Move the conversation to a private place.

- Follow through (replace faulty product/offer discount).

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Statistics via @eskimon

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How to handle complaints - examples

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What tools can you use to help you effectively run your social media?

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Social Tools - Manage your profiles

- Using Hootsuite and Buffer to monitor and manage your social profiles.

- Buffer allows you to post photos to Twitter without adding an ow.ly link.

- Customise streams for each social profile.

- Schedule messages regularly on Hootsuite and make sure to add multimedia by clicking the attachment symbol.

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Social Tools - Build your followings

- Boost your follower numbers with followerwonk.com.

- Search Twitter bios, enter in keywords, and location.

- Followerwonk will generate lists based on your search terms.

- You can choose who to follow and save time by not having to manually search on Twitter.

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Twitter tools - Create reports

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-Using Twitter tools can help with managing engagement and analysing your own and competitors’ profiles.

Twitonomy- http://www.twitonomy.com/

- This can be used to analyse competitor profiles.

- You can find out who they interact with the most, the hashtags they use the most and who they mention the most.

Twtrland- http://twtrland.com/

- This can help with analysing your profile (looking at top tweets, finding out your follower demographic and seeing who your top followers are).

- You can also use this to find potential new followers who could be influential in your sector.

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Social Tools - Produce engaging images

- Make your photos and social covers stand out with free photo editing tools. Good quality photos are vital to increase post views and engagement. Posts with multimedia achieve greater reach than plain text posts.

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ipiccy.com

picmonkey.com

canva.com

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Thanks for listening, any questions?

Next workshop - 2pm Can you use YouTube to drive sales? with Charlotte Street

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