Category Archives: social networking

So, does Social Media actually work?

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I came across a great tweet today by @KellyShibari who posted a really great snapshot of the web stats of a website showing the effect of some Social Media promotion she did. Here’s the schematic:

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Notice the stats for August are way higher than any of the other months. This was accomplished thanks to the work Kelly put in (which you can read all about on her post), but it’s a really good example of what can happen when you start using the tools at your disposal.

So, how can Social Media help a business? Well, building a business online is no different to opening a retail outlet. But when opening an outlet you get to choose where it’s going to be. Location is paramount to getting the traffic you need and that traffic is the lifeblood of your business. The situation online is totally different. All websites are born intrinsically equal; it doesn’t matter if you’re a purveyor of fine office furniture or if you sell real estate on the moon. Traffic is still the life blood of the business, but the rules are different. You need to pump effort into getting people to your site, building up relationships and making sure they come back. Social Networking gives you those tools, so make sure you get your hear around them today.

Networking opportunity in the Isle of Man

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If you’re reading this blog, I can only assume that you’re interested in blogging, and possibly other forms of user-generated content and social media. If so, and if you’re based in the Isle of Man, you might be interested in coming out to network with the Social Media Club who meets on the Third Thursday of every month. Here are the details:

Next week is the third Thursday of August and that means that the Isle of Man Social Media Club is getting together for lunch at Paparazzi in Douglas.

Maybe you are trying to figure out Twitter, of have just established a Facebook Fan Page. Or maybe you’re a seasoned blogger with a long history in Digg. Everyone is welcome to come out and chat about the online world and how it’s affecting how we live and do business.

We meet at 12.30. Everyone buys his own lunch and we are usually all back at our desks by 14.00. It doesn’t cost anything to join, (but the price of your meal) and there are no forms to fill out. All you need is an interest in social media and the online world.

Everyone’s welcome to come and while you won’t get any health insurance leads, you’ll certainly get some pointers on how best to use Social Media and get to meet people living in that space.

More details on the Facebook page

A closer look at your information channels

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How do you communicate with your clients? Your suppliers? Your stakeholders? If you take a look at your organisation, you’ll see a very different picture to the one you would have seen 10 years ago, heck, even a couple of years ago. The world around us is changing and the way we view and consume information changes even more rapidly than ever. I came across a really good post that talks just about this information consumption pattern with respect to consumers and the different channels they have been using to consume information. Here’s a graphical view of what the post talks about:

One particular aspect is the prediction of how things will change over the next 10 years with a greater push towards social channels and the demise of traditional media. The net effect, however is that organisations need to take a long hard look at the ways they disseminate information to their stakeholders and how this trend is going to affect them. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling garden planters or ballet shoes or golf clubs, interacting with your customers on the channels they inhabit is critical to the success of your company, service or product. That’s why this information is so poignant, which is put quite succinctly in the opening paragraph of the piece:

These days, everyone is trying to figure out how to connect with other people. It used to be simple, you just placed some ads in whatever newspaper that was most suited to your product, but now that world is becoming ever more irrelevant. So how do you connect with other people today? And more importantly, how do you do it tomorrow?

Read the complete post here: Where is everyone?

Social Media helps you drill down

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I was reading an article called A Business Marketer’s Guide to Social Media which has some interesting thoughts. It’s almost a year old, which is a very long time in an emerging market, but it puts forward an interesting point. Social Media helps businesses get more granular in their approach to customer service.

This increased granularity is extremely important in today’s marketplace. There’s no debate that the market has moved from mass markets to mass customisation to personalisation of products and services. Social Media takes marketing down the same route. The article raises 4 questions that marketeers need to ask to any social media site they plan to target:

  • What proportion of the site’s content is community generated versus content generated by the site operator or third parties?
  • Does the community create quality content and how is that quality guaranteed?
  • Will my existing online campaigns work on a social media site?
  • What technologies or services does the site offer to help marketers target specific demographics or sub-groups?

The wholesale adoption of social media without the necessary analysis and introspection can carry a significant risk of failure. These questions need to be addressed and answered before any successful campaign can be launched.

Participating in online conversations

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I came across an interesting post on Allan Paterson’s blog (he’s the head honcho at the client I’m working for). It’s a government-related post with guidelines about how civil servants should approach social networking. Here are the points:

  1. Be credible
    • Be accurate, fair, thorough and transparent.
  2. Be consistent
    • Encourage constructive criticism and deliberation. Be cordial, honest and professional at all times.
  3. Be responsive
    • When you gain insight, share it where appropriate.
  4. Be integrated
    • Wherever possible, align online participation with other offline communications.
  5. Be a civil servant
    • Remember that you are an ambassador for your organisation. Wherever possible, disclose your position as a representative of your department or agency.

What struck me about them was how easily they can be applied to any sector trying to educate it’s members on social networking (okay, the last one would need to be reworded). At the end of the day, it’s all about credibility and transparency, if you lose those, then social networking will only cause you more pain.