Social media: In Context for business

www.mediamatters-pr.co.uk

Social Media

In context for business

Karen McNulty

14th September 2011


What is “social media”?

Websites with user generated content:

• Discussion boards• Tools for customers to upload photos,

videos, reviews• News, status updates• Usually FREE


Social media for business

?Blogs

Podcasts

Forums


How popular are they?

• Twitter - 200 million users worldwide• Facebook - 750 million active users

worldwide• LinkedIn - 120 million users worldwide• YouTube has more than 300 billion

views a day• Google + already has 20 million users


"Right now we're very much focused on optimising for the consumer experience, but we have a great team of engineers building a similarly optimised business experience for Google+,"

Google's product manager, Christian Oestlien July 2011



Aren’t these for young people?

• Over 40% of 55+ social networkers have been registered on the sites for less than two years

• 28% of Facebook users are over 55.


Where do consumers get information?


What is social media good for?



Facebook is the second most visited website in the UK after Google, accounting for 6.89% of all visits from UK internet users in September 2010.


Reasons to use social media


1. Low cost


2. Raise your profile with thought leadership and knowledge sharing



3. Improve relationships with your target audience



4. Bring more traffic to your website


5.Monitor and enhance your brand


6. Research


Reasons not to use social media


1. Your customers are not using it


2. You don’t have the time or resources to manage social media

“45% of business using social media do not have social media guidelines”

Econsultancy Survey 2010


Negative feedback

Brandwatch.com


3. It doesn’t give you the ROI that other marketing activity will


4. Your business culture does not lend itself to social marketing


Other potential pitfalls

• Content• Comments• Customer service• Spamming• Social crisis management• Time


Case Study – good practice



Social media success

• Wiggly Wigglers have built their business on social media

• Blog – Used to share gardening tips, events, interesting content and offers, this rural store is very active on its blog.

• Podcasts – Stay tuned to the Wiggly team every Monday on the Wiggly podcast!

http://wigglywigglers.blogspot.com/

http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/podcasts/index.html?-session=shopper:DCFF07C6160c50D94FNkLL4EA719


• “With thousands of listeners from all around the world, and over fifty 5-star reviews on iTunes, it seems that our audience enjoys listening to the shows as much as we enjoy making them. Join us every Monday as we cover the environment, wildlife, gardening, farming, biodiversity and the things we can all do to make a difference.”


• Facebook Group – The Wiggly Facebook group now has over 2000 members.

• Twitter – Heather tweets really often on Twitter about

latest offers, free stuff and tips.

• The Wiggly Cinema The Wiggly Cinema is filled with high quality videos about everything gardening with videos on their YouTube channel as well.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=3120520301

http://twitter.com/wiggled

http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/cinema/index.html?-session=shopper:4E20A7AA0cead27753OvQ1894F8D

http://www.youtube.com/user/michaelatww



1890 followers

3843 followers



Case study – bad practice




Habitat



Karen Dykes

Recruitment Partner, Anne Corder Recruitment


Our website

www.annecorder.co.uk


Engagement through our website • E-newsletters• Blogs• RSS• Podcasting


Analytics – know your customers in the past 12 months

• 48,261 total visits

• 24,194 absolute unique visits

• 2 minutes 28 seconds average time on site • 5.67 pages viewed per visit


Aim to increase website traffic

• Improve website ranking • Regular content updates


www.twitter.com/ACRPeterborough

Launched April 2009

Engaging with job seekers

• 690 tweets

• 218 followers


http://www.linkedin.com/company/anne-corder-recruitment

Launched December 2009

Engaging with business contacts

• 381 connections across the ACR team of 11 Linked-In users

• 41 followers


Linked-In Groups


http://annecorder.blogspot.com

Launched January 2009

In the past 12 months

• Average 2 blog posts per month • 593 absolute unique visitors

• Average time on page: 34 sec


Launched March 2010

To interact primarily with job seekers

• 47 people ‘like’

• Articles posted attract up to 300 impressions

http://tiny.cc/ACRfacebook


Cost

Social Media

v

Traditional Print Advertising


Time

• Initial set up

• Maintenance

• Training

• Research

• Ideas

• ACR team engagement


Return on Investment

• Clients

• Competitors

• Can you afford not to?


Measuring ROI for Social Media


What are your objectives?


1. Raise awareness

2. Engage with customers

3. Research

4. Sales

5. Visits to website…


Measurement in Twitter


Measurement in Facebook


Search


Other Tracking

• Addtothis and addtoany• URL Shorteners• Google Analytics• Tagging URLs• Tweetmeme.com




Driving people to your social activity

• Via your website• Business cards, stationery• Email signatures• QR codes



What are Q R Codes?


http://www.marshallweb.co.uk/jaguar/peterborough/defaultmobile.asp


• QR codes are measurable too• Most social media provide analytics for

free• You decide what to measure and select

the tools to suit your objectives.


Social Media

In context for business

Karen McNulty

14th September 2011