Making the most of social media

Getting started in social media can seem like a very daunting task - I am often asked for advice or tips on how to make the best use of this valuable marketing tool. Following on from my post translating Twitter terms, here are a few pointers to help you make the best use of your social media activity to raise the profile of your business:

* Watch & listen before you “speak” - you don't have to join the conversation straight away.
* Integrate with your current website - using links to your current website is crucial if you want to use social media to drive sales - www.bit.ly and www.tinyurl.com are great space saving link tools.
* Competitions and offers - use social media to publicise special offers or run a competition for everyone that shares or retweets (RT) your post.
* Encourage and engage conversation – it doesn't cost anything to be helpful but users will remember you for it.
* Market research - social media is a great place to get up to date with your industry and find out what your competitors are up to.
* Select your tone of voice – keep it consistent with your brand. That means you can't use frequent foul language if you work for a very straight corporate company.
* Don’t be too “salesy” – communicate not broadcast. People hate to be sold to on Twitter as much as they hate it elsewhere.
* Time-saving tools – Use applications like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck etc. to save time and schedule your activity

What is marketing?

When I'm delivering my training courses on marketing for small businesses and start ups across Norfolk, we usually start with a fairly simple question - "What is marketing?" I ask everyone to jot some ideas down to try and get a picture of the level of knowledge in the room (and also to give my voice a break from talking all day!) This exercise is also hugely valuable to get people "into the groove" and "thinking marketing". I truly believe that marketing is so much more than just a process like accounting or administration, its a whole way of thinking. Those that srtuggle with the concept will often start by putting advertising down on the blank sheet of paper but marketing is so much more than simply advertising.

Some of the most successful small businesses and start ups are those which think marketing all of the time. By this I mean that they are open-minded to creative ideas - anything from giving some products away to a charity to forming alliances for referrals or collaborating to host an event. So here are a few of the more unusual things that some of my training course delegates think are marketing that you might not have thought of:

1. Giving away free samples of your product - this could be at an event, in the street or even mounted onto the front of a magazine
2. Holding an open day
3. Writing an article in a magazine
4. Writing a blog or using other social media
5. Setting up a customer loyalty scheme - use a simple business card to collect stamps and give loyal customers a free drink etc on their 6th visit.
6. Clever packaging and point of sale (POS) - a dull product can look totally different in a clever box or display stand
7. Incentive schemes - encourage word of mouth from existing customers by rewarding them for referring a friend to you
8. Giving away branded promotional gifts such as pens, stickers or carrier bags

Can anyone suggest any other smart marketing ideas?

Translating Twitter Terms

Twitter seems to have spawned a whole new language, somewhere between text speak and auto-shortening, which can leave us all a bit perplexed at times! Here's a glossary of some of the key terms to help you make head or tail of it all.


Twitter helps people communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent, 140 character messages. Its like a mini blog.

Tweet

A tweet is a Twitter message (140 characters max.)

Tweep

A tweep is a person who uses Twitter. Every tweep has a username and a unique url eg http://www.twitter.com/activemdkate

Following

Following someone on Twitter means getting their updates in your personal timeline. If you follow Tina, you'll get her updates on your homepage when you log in, or on your phone if you've added an app. To start receiving messages from a person, visit their profile page and click "follow" or send a text message to Twitter with the words "follow username" from your phone. You'll get messages from the people you've followed as soon as they update, and you can stop following anyone at anytime. There is a general courtesy to follow people back who follow you, but you don't have to follow everyone who follows you and you can follow and un-follow who ever you want whenever you want.

Followers

Followers are people who receive other peoples' Twitter updates.

RT

RT is short for retweet, and indicates a re-posting of someone else's tweet. This is a key part of Twitter’s viral nature. RT isn't an official Twitter command or feature, but people add RT somewhere in a tweet to indicate that part of their tweet includes something they're re-posting from another person's tweet, sometimes with a comment of their own. It’s a bit like an endorsement or a recommendation and is an important way of “sharing the love” and making friends on Twitter.

@reply and :D direct messages

An @reply is a public message sent regardless of follow-ship that anyone can view. An @reply can be used to ensure that someone specific sees a tweet or to draw someone’s attention to a tweet or retweet of particular interest to them. A :D direct message can only be sent by someone you follow, and is a private message that only the author and recipient can view.

Examples

@activemdkate Enjoyed your tweet about Beckham and branding http://tinyurl.com/kqtu62

:Dactivemdkate What time shall we meet for lunch?

Favourites

The star * is a way for you to mark an update as favourite. People can view your favourites, and you theirs, by clicking on the Favourites link in the profile page.

# hashtags

Twitter hashtags like #followfriday help spread information on Twitter while also helping to organise it. The hashtag is a favourite tool of conferences and event organizers, but it’s also a way for Twitter users to organise themselves: if everyone agrees to append a certain hashtag to tweets about a topic, it becomes easier to find that topic in search, and more likely the topic will appear in Twitter’s Trending Topics. In some situations a hashtag can become part of a brand and may even feature in other marketing environments such as your website.
Lists

Twitter Lists are a relatively new feature which allow Twitter users to group together people they follow or are interested in hearing from under one simple heading. Twitter lists are integrated Twitter streams from a specified selection of users.

Follow Friday

#followfriday (#ff) is a “game” in which people suggest who to follow on Twitter. It helps everyone find interesting Twitter users. You list the users you recommend following and add “#followfriday” anywhere in the Tweet so others can find it. The “#” is very important – don’t forget it!
Example

#followfriday @mashable @adamostrow @sharonfeder @jbruin @adamhirsch @benparr @brett @tamar

#followfriday can be enhanced by giving just one name per tweet and then a brief explanation of why people should follow them

#followfriday @lambdafilms – great local video company and fun fellas too!


Interesting people to follow – Norfolk

@activemdkate
@lambdafilms
@elaine_maslin
@edpmary
@enjoynorwich
@sarajgreenfield
@chris_greenf
@norwich_broker
@brays_cottage
@Breckland
@BBCChrisgoreham
@LCDParkHouse
@redwingsHS
@lucieMD
@thewindowcoffee

Making sponsors feel special

I recently responded to a forum post from someone who was worried about losing her corporate sponsor. Its something that is absolutely critical within public relations activity, not least in the current economic climate where corporate cash is very hard to come by. The example related to a show-jumping rider and her sponsors who run a video company, specialising in stable CCTV but these principles can be applied in other scenarios too.

Here are a few thoughts from my experience of looking after both companies and riders public relations campaigns. You need to think carefully about embedding the sponsor into your business so that the two are inter-linked and therefore they feel more engaged and are much less likely to pull out. It should be quite easy as this sponsor is so closely related to the business. Its far more tricky if your sponsor is in another sector eg insurance!

For starters, the rider should be using their video service and it should be live on both rider and sponsor websites. The rider could also post clips from this free of charge to youtube and other video sharing sites. Have either party got a facebook page? They are free for businesses and you can then post links and video clips etc here promoting both sponsor and rider.

Pitching a news story/feature about using their video service within the rider’s business will also be much more interesting to papers and magazine editors than something overtly commercial like "I'm really grateful to my new sponsor...".

Mention them in your blog. This sounds much more natural and less sales-like so adds value for the sponsor if its in context eg "The stableview video captured Coryn doing something naughty/unusual/snoring etc..."

Send the sponsors a nice framed photo (or a canvas print is cheaper and more trendy) of your top horse with a caption like "Team X sponsored by Stableview" to display in their offices if applicable. Add a lock of the horse's hair to make it really unique.

Can you arrange any hospitality through any shows where you compete etc? If its smaller local events that don't have sponsors areas then consider doing a posh picnic by the lorry or invite them to stay over at a show for a real experience if they are quite practical people. All stuff that money can't really buy but that can make the sponsor feel really important and won't cost the rider a fortune either if you are smart about it.

Kate Elliott is Marketing Director of Active Marketing & Design Ltd which specialises in delivering practical marketing solutions for the rural sector. Kate is also a keen rider and regular contributor to leading equestrian magazines including Horse & Hound.

Examples of work we don't do!

I recently spoke at a networking event whilst feeling a little overwhelmed and frazzled with our current workload. As I sat and waited my turn to speak for 60 seconds I started to anxiously jot down my to do list for the day. This resulted in a slightly humorous pitch in which I detailed all of the things I hadn't done that week to give an illustration of the sort of work we are involved in. I finished the pitch by saying: "My name is Kate Elliott from Active Marketing and Design, but please for this week at least, we don't do marketing and design!" This presentation actually attracted a lot of interest in our work by default and a lot of people seemed to get a better understanding of what we do and started to trust us more.

I suppose its all part of the know - like - trust - buy idea. That is people need to first get to know you, then begin to like you and finally grow to trust you before they will buy from you.

So in a continuation of that theme here are some examples of the work we have done in the last few weeks:

Branding and Postcards for The Business Base












Design and produce spiral hats for Easton College to distribute at Royal Norfolk Show















And here are some of the things on the to do list:

PR plan for animal first aid products
Social media activity for healthy furniture store
Write text for a website of a repair company specialising in emergency vehicles
Design a poster in Polish about onions
Design packaging stickers for pest control products

What on earth is ambush marketing?

It's almost as (un)popular as the vuvuzela and its certainly got the media talking: mission accomplished! Why has a couple of dozen pretty girls in orange mini-dresses caused such an almighty stir? As the official beer of the 2010 World Cup, you can't really blame Budweiser bosses for being a little put out that the efforts of the Bavaria Brewery to "highjack" publicity for their mini-dress stunt have proved so effective when they have spent millions on an official sponsorship deal.

Ambush marketing in its broadest sense means piggybacking a brand onto the back of an event for which the brand is not an official sponsor. As in this example, it can be more effective than official sponsorship or it can completely backfire. Some would argue that the fact some of the minidress-clad girls ended up in front of a South African court is negative for the brand but in many respects it just gets more column inches for the story.

Sports events seem to be a magnet for this type of campaign - I experienced ambush marketing at first hand when I visited Wimbledon Tennis Championships a few years ago. Tabloid newspaper The Sun had printed a few thousand flags of St George (complete with red and white Sun logo) onto A4 card and were handing them out with bottles of sun cream to the assembled Henman fans in the Wimbledon queue. On entry to the All England Club we thought our bags were being searched for bombs - in fact the stringent security staff were confiscating these promotional flags along with almost anything else with a logo on it.

The London Olympics will no doubt bring this type of marketing to our attention again - I suppose my challenge as a marketing person is to come up with a superbly creative way to get my clients' brands in front of this global audience without the hefty sponsorship deal. Better get my head down for the next two years to come up with some ideas...

As reported in many places, but you can read more from the BBC on the subject of Ambush Marketing here

Competition for Publicity

I'm often asked for some (free) marketing advice and find myself giving out tips and ideas readily. I gave a talk on PR to The Business Club in Norwich recently and one of the ideas I suggested seemed to spark a lot of interest so I thought I would expand upon it here.

I really love using reader competitions to generate PR coverage for clients and projects. Printed publications (especially newspapers) are getting a bit less keen on this type of coverage as their staffing is limited with marketing posts often made redundant, but there is still plenty of scope for this type of promotion through online and offline outlets.

Competitions offer many advantages to companies looking to raise the profile of their goods or services:
* Usually free to insert - cost is only in prize value
* Opportunities for data capture - every entrant is expressing an interest in your product or service and can therefore be considered a warm contact
* Impression of kindness and goodwill bestowed upon your company for giving away stuff
* Editorial style coverage which is a lot more discreet than advertising
* Implication of endorsement by the magazine etc by association with your product/service


Many publications will have a minimum prize value which can often be in the region of £500 - consider though that this is the retail value and the cost to you as a company is only perhaps half of that. Offering a money can't buy prize such as a VIP experience can also negate this prize value. Competitions are often given a generous amount of editorial space and frequently a full page of coverage plus front cover teasers so this still represents excellent value for "money".

Entry levels for competitions vary by publication - we only had one entry to a competition to win a martial arts lesson some time ago but we had 150 entries to another to win a hamper of spring bulbs from a garden centre.

Top Tips for Running a Reader Competition
1. Give plenty of notice to the publication - magazines are often running 2+ months ahead
2. Don't bother with BBC radio stations - they no longer run listener competitions since the bad publicity surrounding fake entries on Blue Peter etc.
3. Commercial radio stations will generally charge a fee to run a listener competition - expect to pay £300-500 plus the prize value.
4. Check with the publication to make sure they comply with Data Protection laws and ensure that there is a relevant tick box to allow you to share data captured.
5. Use Twitter to run a competition by asking people to spread the word about you by re-tweeting (RT) your message in exchange for a free entry into your competition
6. Follow up, follow up and follow up

You can arrange a competition yourself with some research or we would be delighted to help you to arrange a reader competition. Speak to Kate on 01603 716700 or email kate@activemd.co.uk for information