Social Media Webinar - UKNetWeb and Tonick Media - Aren Grimshaw presenting

The Social Media for Business Taster Webinar delivered by UKNetWeb with Tonick Media was an outstanding success. This was the first in the series of taster courses to be entirely delivered through a webinar platform following a series of physically located seminars based in St Agnes, Cornwall.

The event was almost entirely marketed digitally with over one third of attendees discovering the course through Twitter. Most attendees were located in Britain and the United States of America although there were attendees from Finland and Canada.

The event was designed to be a small more intermit style of webinar with a target of 20 guests keeping a Social Media Webinar – UKNetWeb and Tonick Media – Aren Grimshaw presenting
more informal and discussional feel. Normally, such webinar events expect to convert 25-35% of registrations to actual attendees. This event actually attracted 25 attendees out of 38 registrations (65.8%).

Audio and screen presentation recordings were made and is available as a video at this address: http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/social-media-taster-webinar-recording/

Similarly, the simultaneous chat amongst between attendees was also recorded and is available for review at this address: http://www.uknetweb.com/blog/technology-and-commentary-blog/business/social-media-taster-webinar-chat-recording/

The main presentations are viewable below or on Slideshare:

This channel features footage of our presentations to local groups, interviews carried out at the Cornwall Twestival and links to other videos we think you may find of interest. 

Please visit our channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/uknetwebsm.

It can help you understand the changing marketplace, provide a route to inform and educate your target market as well as drive new and returning business.

It is not just about technology. Social media may rely upon it, but the value is created in the exchanges of information, the conversations taking place and the relationships formed over it.

Reducing social media to a particular platform or technique is to misunderstand the underlying ideals that separate this medium from more traditional marketing approaches. It is about creating mutual benefit – not the age old targeted message delivered through the appropriate channel.

In fact, social media isn’t just marketing at all. It goes way further, taking on areas of PR, business strategy, market research, customer service and sales. Understanding the operating mechanisms and principles behind it can unleash whole new worlds of possibility for those businesses that understand them.

Let’s take networking as an example to start with.

Good networking is built on getting to know people and building rapport with them. It is built on mutual respect and a desire to help each other’s businesses grow. Through helping each other we foster good will, which over the longer term is rewarded by trust, referrals and new business.

Bad networkers treat the experience as an opportunity to hunt new business. They bore those around them reeling off their achievements. They try to dominate and push people towards doing business with them, with no interest in returning the favour. They operate on a ‘numbers game’ philosophy, thinking that as long as they keep trying some business will come out of it.

Eventually, people become wary of the bad networker. They don’t really want to talk to them. They cannot be confident referring business to them as they themselves feel intimidated by them. They do not feel the need to pass business in their direction because they never really did anything for them.

Good networkers see their credibility increase over time. Other business people know what they can do for them as they have heard first hand how they have worked with or helped others. They get recommended with confidence because they have taken time to build rapport with those around them.

Now think about your approach to social networking. Does it sound more like the first or second approach? Are you after the quick buck or in it for the longhaul?

OK, so what about the other uses of social media?

Market Research

Whatever business you’re in, there is sure to be some need to research your market, the competition or another facet of your business.

You can take time to compile industry statistics, read the latest trade magazine or conduct your own research into previous buying habits. However, it may all seem a bit flat and logical without a more human aspect – a more qualitative element to your research.

By understanding the opportunities created by social media you can bring your customers and potential customers into the process from the very beginning.

Take Walkers Crisps in the UK as an example.

They recently invited customers to suggest new flavours. People responded with their suggestions and eventually the most popular were launched in shops across the country. Not wanting to stop there, they invited customers to review the new flavours and vote to keep the one flavour they felt passionately about.

So what?

Well think about this. The customer did the work of the R & D department in suggesting flavours. The data recorded in the first process showed the most popular suggestions eliminating the need for focus groups or other surveys. The customer tested the products during the first release and recorded their findings by voting for their preference.

The customer felt ownership throughout the process. The customer engaged with the campaign, in many cases offering up their email addresses, phone numbers and other contact details in the process. The customer will have discussed the campaign and choices with others creating valuable word of mouth marketing for the company.

Win – Win – Win.

Walkers Crisps created a new product with an established market ready to adopt it.

The Customer got a new flavour of crisps that they had a role in deciding upon.

Suppliers and retailers could have confidence that demand for the product already existed.

Customer Service

There is a statistic repeated the world over which goes something along the lines of ‘A happy customer will share their experience with one other. An unhappy one will share it with ten.’(The numbers may differ but the idea’s the same)

Identifying the unhappy customer before it’s too late has always been a difficult task.

In a world where everyone has the tools to communicate their dissatisfaction with many others, finding them has never been more important.

For example, say I have a gripe against Company X which has just sold me a faulty widget.

I outline my gripe in a short message over Twitter which automatically updates my Facebook status. Some friends join me in berating Company X with comments on my Facebook status and a couple of reply Tweets.

Soon my complaint with Company X has been shared with not 10, but moving on for 1,000 (Total of Facebook Friends and Twitter Followers).

Add in, that my complaint is now supported by others, who have added their own perspective and shared details with their own networks, Company X is now facing a lot of negative attention.

By understanding the principles, you can seek to identify and address customer service issues before they get out of hand. You can turn those negative comments into positive ones, retaining the original customer and demonstrating to others your focus on customer service.

Business Strategy

Getting to know your way around the emerging digital landscape can open entirely new models of doing business.

We are no longer constrained to working in the same office, or even the same continent.

Take the recent Twestivals held across 175 separate locations across the globe. Although not strictly a business event, the Twestivals highlighted how the tools used within social media could be put to use in making funds for charity.

The process began with a single message shared over Twitter and led to volunteers organising their own teams to put together an event in their city with sponsorship, food, drink, live streaming of footage over the internet, local and regional news coverage and event bookings.

In many cases even the local teams had never met before, nor did they know the guests that would be attending on the night.

I was lucky to be involved as the Cornwall Twestival organiser. I had a rare chance to watch all this come together in just 4 weeks. To see organisers collaborating on a global scale. To see people coming together locally with pride in their local event.

If all this could be achieved from a message over just four weeks, what could a business do with the same tools over the space of a few weeks, months or even years?

PR

There are many different aspects to public relations, some of which will have been covered in the previous sections relating to networking and reputation management. What remains to be mentioned is the role of blogs and other internet news or article sites.

Getting media attention for your company is no longer just a case of firing a press release off to the local hack and ensuring you buy him or her lunch once in a while. The media is now in the hands of millions of individuals acting outside the constraints of the traditional press, TV and radio institutions.

Bloggers, are independent commentators reporting on or discussing events, launches and other matters that they believe to be of interest to their their audience. Many are not restrained by the presence of editors or advertisers. They speak to build their own credibility, to generate revenue from advertising (often in the form of Google Ads) and in many cases just because they like doing it.

Bringing bloggers into your marketing mix can be powerful for your business. Acting more like a word of mouth referral than traditional news coverage, bloggers can shine a light on your business should they decide to mention you or write a post about you. Understanding their motivations and engaging with them is like the other areas of social media, more about mutual respect and a win-win approach than the age old, message – channel – target market.

Coming back to where we started, social media is a lot more than just marketing. It is a lot more than the latest platform or service offering – those are just fads.

What matters are the changes taking place in the way we communicate and manage our businesses. The conversations initiated, the relationships formed, the new models of business and the emerging possibilities created as we move forward in an ever more connected, ever more sociable world

A copy of the slideshow and video footage of the presentation are included below.

UKNetWeb will be running a free follow up taster course on using Social Media for Business on the afternoon of the 2nd of April. For details and booking for the event please click here.

Well there a number of different areas that the use of good technology can bring about benefits to your business and it’s bottom line. To make it simple we have broken down the areas into the following list or sections to be covered within this guide:

• Improving Efficiency
• Marketing Effectively
• Cutting the Costs of Communication

Each section provides you with our take on how technology could aide your business during troubled times. Where possible we have provided links to more information, advice and tools.

Over the coming days, weeks and months we will continue to build on these areas with information on how to set up any systems referenced, as well as any additional uses for the tools available.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to our RSS Feed or go to www.uknetweb.com/keepmeposted and sign up for email updates.

One major area to consider if you have a website, and let’s face it most of us do, is search engine optimisation (SEO).

There are two forms of SEO to consider; natural search listings and pay per click. The first of these is driven by a number of factors relating to a mysterious algorithm used by major search engine, Google. The second is a pay for service where companies bid for clicks on keywords or phrases associated with their business.

Chances are you have received literally hundreds of spam emails and telesales calls from agencies promising to get you to the top of Google but don’t be fooled! Unless you operate in a niche market, work within a small specified boundary or have a massive advertising budget, getting to the top of Google is not an easy task.

You need to start the process of optimising your site by making a list of all the words and phrases people are likely to associate with your business. Include all the variations you can think of and play around with regional identifiers as well i.e. soap, organic soap, natural soap, beauty products, soap Cornwall, soap UK. If you get stuck try out Google’s Keyword Tool.

Once you have your list, you need to start working out the competition for each of these words or phrases, after all, the phrase may attract 1,000 hits a day but there could also be 2,000 companies fighting for each and every one. The best way to track the number of searches performed against the competition for each word or phrase is to use a service such as Wordtracker which collates searches and the competition for them.

So now you have the list, what next?

This list of keywords or phrases now forms the backbone of your SEO strategy. They can be used to target customers through pay per click or written into the content of your site to improve your natural rankings. Further still, they may even affect the structure of your site with you deciding to dedicate whole pages or sections or your site to a particular area highlighted as a good search term.

The benefit of the SEO approach to marketing your business is that it gives you tangible, measurable results to analyse. This will mean having a suitable tracking code installed on your site, such as Google Analytics, which not only tells you how people arrived at your site by keywords or phrases but also how long they spent there, where they went, who referred them and much more.

This section is only an introduction to the subject of SEO. It is a big area on its own and you should take time to study the process in more depth if you plan to carry out the work yourself. Alternatively, you should consider hiring the services of a professional SEO consultant; recognised by Google and carrying the ‘Google Adwords Qualified Company’ mark shown above.

A weblog, or blog for short, is a website with regular posts or entries offering commentary, descriptions of events, advice or other materials on a regular basis. They can work for a business on a number of levels.

Firstly, they provide companies with an area to post regularly updated information as it becomes available in a way that traditional static websites just wouldn’t allow. This can be extremely helpful in building a dialogue with your market and will help optimise your site by proving to Google that you are keeping your site up to date and using lots of those lovely keywords and phrases you identified earlier. What’s more, many blog systems are geared up for anyone to use, thus you won’t need the help of your web developer every time you need to make an update.

Secondly, blogs become a means to open up conversation with your customers or potential customers. Many allow for comments to be made by the people accessing them, enabling them to interact with you and your organisation on a whole new level; posing questions, offering up testimonials or adding insight to your post.
If you don’t fancy writing or managing your own blog it maybe worth considering bringing in a professional blog writer, copywriter or marketing agency to help. If you want to have a go yourself why not try WordPress, a simple, free package available here.

Opting to send promotions and information to customers via email is a not only a very cost effective and measurable way of marketing it also helps protect the environment by saving paper and ink.

We wouldn’t recommend spamming (sending bulk unsolicited emails), but creating a list of people who would like to receive your information should be a top priority for any modern business.

There are a number of methods to start capturing interested people; however, the most popular is to offer newsletter / promotion sign ups on your website.

When it comes to actually sending and tracking your emails you can choose between: a back-end system on your website, an off-the-shelf package or hiring a dedicated email marketing company.

A popular low cost option for sending email communications is Constant Contact. This is a great way to test the opportunity this form of communication can offer and a 60 day free trial is available here.

Remember, don’t forget your existing customers. Retention of the customers you attract during these times is of great importance. Ensure you send regular information and promotions to your existing customer database, after all in many cases these are the people most likely to do business with you again.

The task of building the perfect website is an ongoing one. Continuous monitoring, tweaking and updating is the only way to ensure your site is the very best it can be.

Here are ten tips to improve your website…

1. Understand the customer – sounds simple but so many people get it wrong.

Get all your great products together with a clearly defined and communicated brand message and you’re on to a winner!

2. Make finding things easy – some sites are just so damn complicated!

Provide easy to use, fast and accurate search facilities as standard. Ensure that navigation is simple and easy to use – no hidden or difficult to find buttons or tabs.

3. Once you have their interest why not show them what else they want?

Upsell, cross-sell, showcase promotions, offers, best sellers and new products. A sure fire way to increase basket size and average order values is to show similar or slightly better products at the checkout.

4. Understand your performance.

Use analytic tools to ascertain what’s going on with your site. The information gathered could unlock areas for additional marketing, enhanced usability or missed opportunities to tap into.

5. Let them see all you have to offer.

Use rich imaging (a fancy way of saying zoom and alternative views) with professional, clear photographs throughout.

6. Tell them what you have to offer.

Make the words on your site interesting and engaging to your target audience as well as optimised for good search engine rankings. Don’t bore them with drawn out technical specs and data which could be summarised in a table elsewhere.

7. When you offer help – give it.

Don’t you just hate the little button that says ‘Sizes Explained’ (or something equally promising) that then links to a nightmare table of numbers with no explanation or help in sight?

8. Get the customer to tell you you’re good.

Positively encourage your customers to leave and publish reviews.

9. Offer other information options.

Newsletters, promotional emails, catalogues or store information should be offered for those who want it. You could make a regular customer instead of a one off sale!

10. Offer something different.

In a world where everyone has a store online being different to the competition will help your site stick in the mind of the customer and could make the difference between a sale or not. Check out your competition and see what you could do better.

The general concept is a never ending flash based site featuring hundreds (maybe thousands) of little gadgety things to share, embed or whatever you please. With easy ‘share’ tags on most animations featured, they offer easy forwarding to blog pages, del.icio.us accounts and much more.

This feature rich site fully embraces the web 2.0 principles offering engaging and interactive content that weaves effortlessly into the social bookmarking and online sharing communities.

Well done Orange – I look forward to wasting hours lost talking to little robots, cutting the hair of weird birds or inventing my own brands of ice-cream.