How to make social media work for youGloucester CIM 15 March 2012

Delivered by Matt Anderson (@mrmattanderson on Twitter and also on LinkedIn)

Main points To have good content takes time You much have objectives that show a return on investment Everyone needs to be involved Avoid mixed messages Training is key

Good examples Zappos, show company in America – all 1400 staff have Twitter accounts including the CEO.

They respond to customers and have 10,000 hours of video content mainly staff talking about the shoes

Brabantia – they have multi- channels and use them to drive traffic to their website for sales.

It’s all about building relationships, don’t expect to do business on Twitter or Facebook but use them to send users to website or e-commerce platform where they can buy. Integrate your communications/sales and build the story on Facebook etc and direct people to your landing page where they can buy.

Internal barriers Use free or cheap tools Create a social media policy Incentivise employees to come up with ideas that can be used Show customer service – treat social media as you would any other contact from customers

so if they ask a question answer it as you would normally – don’t leave it for 2 weeks

AnalyticsFree – Topsy, Facebook Insights & Google AnalyticsMiddle – UberVu, SWIXExpensive – Radian6, WebtrendsSocial mention also goodYou can use Topsy to look at competitors and see how they are doing.

Engagement“talk to people about themselves and they will listen for hours”

Find out who the influential tweeters/bloggers are in your field and start a conversation – around 10 or 15 will be plenty.

Can you band wagon on what others are doing but remember you will need to return the favour.

Talk to your customers and ask them questions. Think about the problems they might have and write content to answer that – Brabantia do this all the time.

Social proof your messages! 90% of people react positively to a comment from a friend on social media 78% from a stranger!

Give reasons to engage but don’t just do competitions

Have a fan of the week

Tell people what to do – tell them to retweet or share

Do what you would do in other communications, grab attention – have a good headline

Build it into your editorial schedule; if you plan it won’t happen

Other things that might be of interest/use Instagram Scribd Slide share

Be realistic about sales – it takes time

Hashtag msfrf – if you need something ask for a recommendation using the hashtag – it’s worth searching it. Also do searches for “looking for”

How much timeYou will need time at the beginning to find out who to follow.

One post a day on Facebook and 3 to 4 tweets a day will be good. 73% of pages on Facebook have less than 1000 fans. 300/400 followers on twitter is enough to start doing business – you just need to make it easy for them. To launch twitter, use your other mechanisms, FB, e-newsletter, website etc

If you are doing sales related things, do it time for payday!

A copy of the slides will be saved into the folder when I get them.