You’ve probably been there; you’re at a party and there’s a doctor or similar health professional there and as soon as people find out their profession someone’s got a question for them. I am guilty of this myself, even blagging a free chiropractor session a couple of years back which made me feel like a new person! I’m increasingly finding nowadays, however, it’s me, the social media consultant, which people want to get free advice from at parties.
Back in the day when I did purely traditional technology PR, no one was interested. When I responded to that whole “so what do you do?” thing I could see their eyes glaze over and drift towards the leggy brunette over my shoulder. Now, conversely, if I say “I’m an online PR consultant, you know, I do a bit of social media training, a bit of search engine optimisation, heaps of blogging blah blah”, suddenly their eyes light up and a volley of questions come my way. This week I already committed some free advice to an Argentine beef baron and managed to commit myself to setting up a blog for a vicar with basic WordPress training to boot (!).
My lesson for this week, therefore, is not only that everyone from small business entrepreneurs to maverick clergymen recognise the value of social media, but that as a skillset social media is highly sought after so don’t give away your secrets for free!
I’m too nice for this business…
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There is plenty of hype around about social media marketing for small businesses, but it’s key to remember that social media is not the Holy Grail for marketers, although when used correctly it can generate leads and help grow business.
One firm which has seen tangible benefits from social media engagement and marketing is Web usability specialist Webcredible. In this podcast, we talk to the company’s head of marketing, Claire Savage, about how the company has successfully exploited various social platforms, particularly Twitter, not only to generate leads but also for market research purposes.
[NB – audio quality is not the best but it is well worth listening to throughout, there are some great tips in this cast]
Download this episode (right click and save)
Further Reading
Useful Twitter tools
More social media tools
Som cracking buzz monitoring tools
Further listening
Podcast: Social Media for Small Business
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Generating buzz is not so black and white
I spent this morning at the excellent Measurement Camp meet-up in London, which got me thinking about a great social media oversight which I’m going to call the “Hidden Herd”.
For the uninitiated, Measurement Camp describes itself as a “monthly meet up for people to discuss different ways of tracking social media campaigns and activity. We compare tactics, think of ways to improve it and wonder if there will ever be a standard set of metrics against which to judge success by.”
We kicked off with today debating “what the most important contribution herd thinking makes to social media”. The general consensus was that herds can quickly generate momentum on social media, especially if the right “influencers”, such as the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker or Stephen Fry on Twitter, are identified and engage in the debate.
However, I think that there’s a tendency to believe that a lot of noise is a good thing overall in social media marketing, when actually there may actually be a seething, silent majority sickened by the wall of monotony coming towards them on social platforms once something really starts trending, that will react negatively against it and the brand behind it.
I’ll use the great social media experiment of the UK Christmas No.1 2009 battle between Someone McSomething from up north versus Rage Against the Machine as an example. Two herds really went to war over that one and, although I was quietly grazing in the social media savannah, I actually got so sick of being bombarded with pro-Rage propaganda that, while I frankly haven’t cared less about “the charts” since about when Rage were around first time, I may have afforded a wry smile had Simon Cowell’s latest protégé made top spot.
That’s the thing with “herds”. There are millions out there and we all overlap like Venn diagrams. I’m in a cricket herd, I’m in a social media herd, PR, football, cycling, technology, you name it. It’s a question of tapping into those herds and providing interesting content and stimulating debate. At the point at which it becomes unpalatable and overbearing to the hidden herd, well, let’s just hope that the positives have outweighed the silent naysayers.
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I receive a number of press releases within my capacity as a contributor to New Media Knowledge and, as you’d expect, at the tail end of last year I received a hatful of emails about New Year’s resolutions and many putting the case for firms to embrace social media. I was hit by a sudden bout of déjà vu, they sounded all very 2008 to me. Surely the debate now is no longer “companies should engage social media this year” but “how should companies embrace social media?”, “what’s working?” and “who’s doing it best?”
I thought the prior argument had more or less been put to bed. Afterall, Econsultancy’s thorough survey on brand’s projected investment in social media in 2010 found that an overwhelming 81 per cent planned to commit bigger budgets to social media.
As with all new developments, it’s a work-in-progress at the moment, as exemplified perfectly by Mashable’s recent story about the rapid increase in self-styled ‘social media experts’. Everyone seems to consider themselves a specialist as there’s no clear yardstick by which to measure an “expert” by. What interests me most is who’s doing social media best and with what resources. I’d love to hear from people – especially small businesses – on how they’re using social media to engage with customers and reach new audiences, and how their measuring it.
Here’s our podcast with Jenni Lloyd of social media agency Nixon McInnes on perfecting your social media strategy.
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Social networking is critical to businesses of all sizes and offers small business in particular real opportunities to shine. Social media marketing includes a whole host of marketing tools, which includes social networks such as Facebook, and other areas such as blogging, microblogging, audio and video content syndication, a whole manner of things. RunMarketing has put them altogether in a simple guide to help small businesses make sense of it all
Download the free white paper guide to social networking.
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Blogging, Tweeting, Digging, Trending… So many new terms have sprung up in the last few years that marketing managers could be forgiven for slipping behind. Listen to our podcast interview with Jenni Lloyd of social agency NixonMcInnes as she tells us how small businesses and start-ups can benefit from social media.
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