Social Media Management

I had to share this video with you today as it’s made us all smile in the office.

Henri is a philosophical, slightly depressed, French cat reflecting on his own existence. As more people discover Henri and become enchanted with his conflicted feline musings, the viewing figures are growing every day. I’m sure it won’t be long before the one million target is past and Henri becomes the next YouTube sensation. I just hope that manages to cheer him up a little but probably not!

Knowing why users are following your brand on Twitter helps with creating engaging social content.

Research is your best option. Don’t be afraid to ask your followers what they want to hear. By doing so you’ll be starting conversations, which is key to Twitter success. Always remember Twitter is a two-way activity. Your followers will soon disappear if you treat the social network as a news feed, not to mention the negative impact on your brand.

Research by Compete last year unsurprisingly revealed discounts and promos to be the most popular reason for following a brand on Twitter. After all everyone loves a bargain! Customer Service was bottom but don’t discount using Twitter for this purpose. By listening to the chat about your brand on Twitter and resolving the issues of disgruntled customers can really boost a business’s social profile. And now more than ever customers expect to be able to contact a brand about any issue and have an immediate response. The days of being put on hold by a customer service call centre are fast disappearing.

Experiment with your Twitter content to find out which type of tweet works best for your brand. You’ll be able to gauge their success with the number of retweets and @mentions your brand gets. I expect most brands will find their greatest success is achieved with a mix of all the reasons mentioned above.

Let us know what type type of content works best for your brand on Twitter.

Promotional activity such as this ad by Frontline is a fantastic way to create massive exposure for your brand through social media.

Images of this 225 square metre sticker on the floor of a busy mall were soon being exchanged, retweeted, pinned, plus’ed and liked across the Internet, all from a few mobile phone images taken by the mall shoppers.

Get an advertising campaign or publicity stunt like this right and social media will take care of globally distributing your brand message to millions on a relatively small budget. But getting it wrong can have disastrous effects so as simple as viral advertising may seem, take care to do it right. There is no second chances when social media takes over.

This graphic by Buddy Media highlights how crowded the social media scene is at the moment, which can be a daunting prospect for many SME’s. Pinterest has not even be included!

But don’t be put off. There is no need to be familiar with the all the featured apps and software to have a successful social media strategy for your small business.

At Mudddywall we focus on two networks, Twitter and Facebook, to maximise the benefit of social media to your business without the need of a marketing budget in the millions. Twitter has proven particularly successful with targeting new customers and communicating with existing clients. So our advice is start small and be focused when introducing your business to social media. And as your business grows so can your social media activity and spend.

A motivational video about how social media is becoming an important part of our lives. We should play this in our office in the morning to get us fired up for the day!

There are some staggering facts on the video such as:

By the time you’ve finished watching the video (just over 4 mins), 100+ hours of new video will have been uploaded to YouTube.

And:

Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher have more followers on Twitter than the entire populations of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama.

But if you are a small business owner then don’t be put off by all these big numbers. At Muddywall we will help get your business socially active and reaping the rewards without any of the jargon and hype. Contact us to find out how.

A funny video from the How It Should Have Ended team highlighting how not to write your Twitter updates.

However good it feels regularly posting your achievements to Twitter or Facebook this is a surefire way of distancing your audience. Although your wonderful skills may be temporarily appreciated, your followers will soon tire of reading about them and hit the unfollow button.

Of course do post the occasional achievement but always try to keep your updates fresh and different. Don’t stick to a formula such as publishing a quote a day unless there is a real demand for this from your target audience. By keeping your followers guessing what sparkling gems you’ll be tweeting next is the best way to keep them interested and engaged.

This helpful infographic by Hubspot highlights some of the key features of the the Facebook Business Page timeline.

Facebook Page Timeline Design Cheat Sheet

From: HubSpot Marketing Software

A number of companies have sprung up recently offering to increase your Twitter Followers or Facebook Page Likes for a relatively small fee.

So is it worth using this service?

Yes and no.

The main value in gaining a large number of followers and likes in a short amount of time is because of the social snowball effect. Getting people to follow a new Twitter account can be difficult when they see you only have a few followers. But if they notice 500 plus followers then the automatic assumption is that your tweets are obviously worth following.

The other plus about buying Twitter followers is that you’ll not need to follow anyone yourself. For example, a Twitter account that has 2000 followers but also follows 2000 is not as appealing as an account that has 2000 followers but only follows 50- much like celebrity accounts. Again the automatic assumption is that you must be tweeting information worth following.

But this is about as much value as you can get from buying followers and likes. The downside is your new purchased audience will have little or no interest in your business. In fact many of them might not even be real people! So the money you spend will be purely for image.

So our advice would be if you are considering buying followers or likes only purchase the minimum amount- usually 500. From this base start to build your social audience organically using a combination of interesting content and engaging with other like-minded social media users. This may take a little longer but the value to your business will be so much more by communicating with people who are genuinely interested in your company or your brand.

An excellent infographic by J6 Design highlighting some of the reasons why the growing online culture should not be ignored.

The one that stands out is 71% of complaints on Twitter are not responded to.  With our social media management packages we include reputation monitoring so if your business name or brand is negatively mentioned on Twitter or Facebook, we will forward that complaint on to you for further action.

Don’t be one of those businesses that ignores social complaints. Many companies now harness the power of social media to react quickly to negative comments and turn them into positives, building their online brand and company reputation for excellent customer service.