Social Media – who’s doing it?

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I went to a Social Media Marketing day at Essex University the other day, I went because they were showing a lot of my social media examples of how you can use different platforms for your business, but I also went to see who was there and how people were reacting to social media. Plus, I am by no means a social media guru and wanted to learn something from the day. The session covered Twitter, Facebook fan pages, Linked in and Blogs amongst some technical information, SEO, keywords and how to track your social media success.

The course was aimed at all levels of social media knowledge and what I found interesting was the diversity of people there. There were some who couldn’t really let go of the old school techniques but were obviously there to give it a go. There were the people who didn’t know what a blog was or the point of it and when it came to a tweet, it really blew their mind. Then there was the majority that had heard it was a good way to promote your business and wanted in.

On all levels people were there to learn more and see how it can be used effectively and the outcome of the day was that there was so much you can do and albeit everything is free to use and to sign up to there was a significant amount of time investment to get started and make it work. It’s not a case of sitting back and watching it grow, you do have to put in some effort. On average people tend to put in approximately 1-5 hours a week devoted to social media to grow their business but if you are writing blogs, tweeting, facebooking, tracking your posts and tweets, updating your website to optimise your keywords and SEO then you can be putting so much more time into doing so and you have to see a return on that investment for it to work for you effectively.

I think this is the thing that scared or shocked the majority of people there, they could see how it worked, they wanted to be part of the social media community but where were they going to get the time? A good point was made by one of the trainers who said, you don’t have to do everything all at once, choose what will work for you and for your business and concentrate on building that aspect up first and I think that is a really important point. You would never jump into an advertising campaign as a small business and do a billboard, leaflets, brochures, press, inserts, direct mail etc. all at once, you would do a couple of things, measure response, make sure you were targeting the correct audience, maybe do some testing then roll it out on a larger scale. The same can be said for social media, do what works for you, measure your success and then roll it out on a larger scale if it is working.

One person made a comment saying, it’s not all free is it? You still have to promote the fact that you have twitter, facebook etc. This is true if you were re printing all your stationary and adding a link or icon, but that can be done as and when you run out of letterheads and business cards. Simpler things can be done by putting a link on your website or putting links on your email, these are the things that your audience are going to see before your letterhead arrives on their doorstep anyway and you can build up your community by finding your audience through so many pieces of free software available so that people know you are actively involved in social media.

We also discussed that social media isn’t just about getting new business in for you, in fact you have to be careful with your posts that you aren’t spamming about your product or service. A lot of people didn’t know how it could be used to their advantage to follow people who post hints and tips on a particular subject that could interest and benefit you, that you can send out a post asking for advice or help, that you can be a source of knowledge by answering a post that’s gone out and that you can be a sales person for someone else’s product by retweeting a post which in return they may do for you. It is about building up a relationship online with your community and prospective customers.

I enjoyed observing people and listening to what they had to say in the breaks and how they were reacting to the amount of information they had been given over the course of the day and it has proven to me that social media is here to stay and is only going to get bigger, which is comforting to know in my little ongoing experiment with Simple, I can’t wait to measure the success of that campaign, I just hope I have done enough to be part of it and prove that social media can promote a brand. That said (shameless plug coming up) please vote for me http://www.simple.co.uk/simple-stars/i+am+emily.aspx and pass on to your friends and family (end of shameless plug).

And thank you to the University of Essex Business Hub, Business Link, Dean Baxter from IT Buddy and David Goody from Alpha Tuition for a well thought out course that covered off everything you needed to know to get you started and to continue using different areas of social media from both a technical and practical view, I know they received good feedback from people that attended which was well deserved, it was certainly the most informative social media courses I have been on.

Emily Hewett

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About Sarah Arrow
Sarah Arrow is the managing editor of Birds on the Blog, in real life she is the communications director of a same day courier service. She is an enthusiastic UK based pro-blogger and co- author of the soon to be published Zero to Blogger
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