Another Twitter Blog! Using it for your business in the right way.

Its becoming more and more apparent that Twitter is being used as another site to 'catch up with gossip'. Thats all very good and well and its great to interact with others on a more personal level at times, but lets not lose focus here and forget the real reasons why businesses should use Twitter. 

Don't get me wrong, i love a good chit chat and its great for building new business relationships, but do you think it can go a little too far sometimes?

I don't know about you but i feel as though businesses are missing out on getting key information out to their audience because they're too busy 'talking' to other accounts about irrelevant subjects. 

Everything in moderation i say! Yes, keep in touch with your followers, interact and engage with your online community, but remember to promote your services and products, after all thats why they followed you in the first place, right? 

Lets look at a few things how Twitter should be used in the right way:

1) Your competition - Keep an eye out on your competitors, what information are they sending out? who are they talking to? what are they doing differently to you and could you improve in any way? Try and find out if customers are having issues with them and use that to your advantage. 

2) Market research - Do a bit of research! Which tweets are your followers more interested in? What devices are they using to view your account? What products are they liking the most? Use this information in your business strategies. 

3) Networking - Connect with other local businesses around your area, build new relationships, good relationships can lead to purchases. 

4) Branding - Get out there with your brand, make yourself known/heard/seen - use informative tweets, interesting visuals, and engaging videos (but not videos which are too long, its a known fact the human concentration span doesn't exceed much past 90 secs)

The right use of hashtags and Twitter handles will increase awareness, and in time the consistency and quality of your tweets will develop familiarity and trust. 

5) Events - keeping up to date with whats going on in your area. Is there anything you could be apart of or get involved in? Jump on the back of the truck! 

6) Promote/Advertise - Use your account to push traffic through to your website. It can be a launch of a new product or service, or perhaps its particular news that you want your customers to see. This will also increase your website visibility and improve the SEO which in time will rank you higher in Google. You can also transfer them to other social media platforms such as Facebook, Google +, LinkedIn etc. 

7) Employees - Use Twitter to find new potential job candidates. But also its a good way to follow your current employees - where have they been? who have they seen? did the 'other person' leave good feedback about your employee?

8) Complaints - Twitter is great for finding out any issues or problems that customers are having with your company. Use this opportunity to regain trust and loyalty. Never ignore comments left whether good or bad, you don't want to look like you don't care!

Hopefully, you've found this blog useful - Its come from changes in activity over the last few weeks, and comments mentioned to me. If I'm seeing it, you may be seeing it to. 

If you need more help with any of you social media accounts you can see what services we offer here: www.marketing-geeks.co.uk

Connect with us:

Twitter @marketinggeeks_
FB www.facebook.com/marketinggeeksdevon
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=199185842&trk=spm_pic

Marketing Geeks on #TorbayHour Radio

If you're interested in learning a little more about what Marketing Geeks do and the services we provide you can listen to us here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68WvKKXeQkk&feature=youtu.be

www.marketing-geeks.co.uk

#Hashtag

Confused about Hastags? Not sure what they mean or why you should use them?

Hopefully this blog will make things a little more #clearer - Get it? (yeah very good Kay)

Anyway...

A hashtag is a word or phrase put together to form a 'kind of' label that will trend within the social media world.  

For an example lets choose the word #Fashion 

Anyone who searches for the hashtag #Fashion with the search tool, will see every tweet ever posted with this particular hashtag included - there may be a few so you'll have to scroll down :) See photo below.

So as a business it is imperative to include Hastags to ensure your message gets seen by as many people as possible. You can include specific key words relating to the industry you're in, the areas you cover and products you sell. 

You can also create your own hastags for specific events for instance. 

Say you're planning an open event for a new hair salon which is opening in the next couple of weeks - lets name the salon..... ' 'Fringes' 

To the run up of the launch you could create your own tag #FringesOpenEvent and every time you tweet about the event you include this hastag, and also ask your followers to do the same.This is a good way of monitoring your brand and how well your online presence is doing. You can also get involved in conversations with is great for interacting with potential customers that may want to come along to the launch.

You can overdo the hashtags though, you don't need to fill an entire tweet with them: heres an example of a bad one, well what i think is bad anyway:

New #design of #shoes on our website now, available in all #sizes & #colours. #fashion #buyonline

Example of a good one:

We've launched a new design today see our website www.... #shoes #devon #fashion 

Keep it simple and relevant and you can't go wrong. :)

So hopefully this has give you a little more understanding about Hashtags and how to use them.

For more information and advice you can contact us through www.marketing-geeks.co.uk 

Understanding Google +

Ever sat back and thought 'Whats with all the social media platforms? Ive got Facebook and Twitter, why do i need anything else?'

I've met a few people now that really don't understand how Google + works and why 'as a business' you should have one. 

Google + in a nutshell is an embedded connection with Google itself (the search engine) and is designed to expose businesses and increase brand awareness. 

This social media platform is imperative for helping your website get ranked high on Google and by using key words specific to your industry/business it can boost your visibility dramatically. 

You can pretty much use it in the same way as Facebook, but one of the main great features of Google + is that it has a tool called 'Authorship' so basically if you've written a blog for instance, Authorship will prevent your information from being used elsewhere and sees you as the legal owner/author - So thieves be warned!! 

You can create circles in Google + and bundle businesses/people together so that you can target them specifically with messages about particular topics.

For example if you have a group called 'Networking Businesses' and you want to inform them about an event you're organising then you can send a message directly to them - Simples! 

If you'd like more information on Google + or setting up an account Marketing geeks can assist you.

We specialise in Social Media Management and are based in Torquay but cover Torbay, Exeter and all surrounding areas in Devon.  We also offer Twitter advice, Facebook help and advise on which media platforms would suit your new business for maximum impact. 

www.marketing-geeks.co.uk

Hi, im Kay

Hey,

Thanks for taking the time for visiting my blog.

Im a Marketing Consultant and Social Media Specialist living in the beautiful county that is Devon.

I'll be writing about all things digital, social, business and a few random bits here and there - whatever takes my fancy on that particular day :)

Im a bit of a geek when it comes to social media and i love to learn and develop my skills whenever possible.

If you want to take a look at my website, clickety click here www.marketing-geeks.co.uk

And if you need help/advice or a management service for your social media platforms then give me a call.

Kay

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

CRM is all about focusing on building good relationships with customers. It is key to developing a successful service where the customers are loyal to you and the organisation.

It involves all types of communication – it can be managing the sales, offering technical support to build good relationships or using marketing skills to get your messages across.

When you put the effort in to get to know your target market and customers on another level (and I don’t mean in a naughty way, but friendly yet professional) it enables you to develop strategies which will target their specific needs and requirements. By building a good working relationship with them will help you understand what your customer likes and dislikes, what kind of spending patterns they have – where they shop online, how much they purchase per month, their favourite items etc – so basically their buying habits!!!

Once you’ve established what type of customer they are, you can market specially to them – target them with offers and promotion designed specifically for them. Hopefully they’ll bite your hand off and sales will increase – This is how CRM supports marketing.

Here is an example of a business using a CRM system.

Local Florist

A husband uses a local florist to buy his wife flowers every year for her birthday. 

The local florist could use their CRM software to remind him a couple weeks before her birthday THAT HER BIRTHDAY IS COMING UP woohoo, either by an email or a phone call (preferably a phone call).

They could ask if he’s planning on buying some flowers again for his beloved wife and if so would he like the same bouquet as previously bought. Whether he would like them delivered or if he’d like to collect? Would he like to include a card and some choccys?

Happy customers, happy business

Services like this make a customer feel valued and important, why would they possibly go elsewhere? It’s like having their own personal assistant to remind them of the most important day of the year, THIS WIFES BIRTHDAY, but not forgetting anniversaries, mother’s day, valentine’s day and well…you know random days just to show her that’s she’s so so special and that she’s appreciated for everything she does like working, taking care of the kids, keeping the house clean etc etc etc (I MUST send this blog to my husband)

Tweet Me Tweet You

Twitter: This social media site is all about Tweeting. A Tweet is an expression of a moment or idea which can contain text, photos, and videos which can be shared in real time, anywhere in the world, on any device. 

The whole aim of Twitter is to follow people, and when you do so their tweets show up in your timeline where you can reply, retweet, share or favourite them. You can follow those you are interested in, whether celebs, foodies, friends, news, businesses or just anyone who you find enjoyable to hear about. Used by 15 million people, 80% uses the site on their mobile devices.

This site is huge for supporting marketing, if you take a new start up business for instance.

• They create a Twitter account, start following people/their target audience (who in turn will probably follow them as it’s good for networking).
• The new company will start tweeting, maybe they have a special offer they’d like to promote to draw attention, and those who follow them will retweet to their followers.
• Those who have seen the retweet may then like what the new business is saying, follow them and so on and so on, this is how information is transferred from tweet to tweet and your community will grow, hopefully resulting in new customers.

The famous Facebook

Facebook: ‘To give you the power to share and to make the work more open and connected’ Facebook is all about keeping you up to date with the latest news, product announcements, events and stories. Used by 31 million users in the UK alone and 802 million around the world.

The largest demographic remains with the 25-34 year olds, most think it’s the teens who are spending hours upon hours on the site each day, where in fact it’s us ‘late 20’s early 30’s’ that need to put the phone down and get out in the sunshine more often..…or rain if you live in the UK ;)

It’s one of the biggest tools for marketing in this current time, millions of people all over the world publicise themselves or their businesses all over social media and it’s having amazing effects.

Each day you can post comments/information, images or videos about your businesses and gradually it’ll be liked, shared and commented on which will had a knock on effect throughout your community, giving your business more exposure.

A business can also create an ad. They choose the type of audience they'd like to reach. If you're in that audience, Facebook shows you the ad.

Another option is to become a sponsor where your ad will appear down the right hand side of a profile. By doing this you can increase the reach of your audience but you have to boost your most recent activity (obviously at a cost) and Facebook will distribute it to your target audience. 

Social Media - Or is it more like 'Unsociable Media'?

Ahhhh social media, the one I look at before I go to sleep and the first one I see when I first wake up!!!

What is Social Media? Silly question? Yes, even my 2 year old knows about Facebook and snapchat!!! (Maybe I need to get out more)

‘Social media is the social interaction among people where they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities. Communities are built in Facebook, LinkedIN, Twitter, Youtube, Snapchat, Pinterest and many many more.

All of the above websites have had a massive effect on the world – they are imperative for getting information seen or heard virally. To market to social networking sites correctly you need to
1) choose which site you feel would benefit your business the most
2) research your target audience carefully
3) create campaigns and monitor the outcomes – whos viewing, buying habits, from which area etc

These sites are used as a marketing tool for many different reasons, some use them for gain information of their target market and gather feedback about their service or products. Some research their competition and some just to promote their business.
These sites allow millions of people to come together to network, meet others that may have a positive effect of their business and also meet those who may want to purchase or use their service.

The most important thing to remember about social networking is that it allows organisations and people to market their service free of charge. It’s a no brainer!

The Importance of Digital Marketing

It is undeniable that the world is shifting towards the digital age in every way, all around people are using digital devices each day of their lives, whether with phones, tablets, or computers, either at home or at work.

So why is digital marketing so important you ask? Well, its not only growing rapidly in the marketing industry but soon it will set out to take over the old school ways of marketing. Would you rather request a brochure or go online? I know what i'd do!!

Digital is definitely more affordable than traditional marketing methods, for example creating a social media campaign can transmit messages to people at a fraction of the cost of a large print run and potentially can hit a much larger audience, it makes sense for any business to use this form of marketing. Why wouldnt you!

There are lots of different ways to use digital marketing:

• Websites and SEO content
• Digital screens
• Blogs
• Videos
• Internet banner ads
• Email marketing
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.)
• Mobile marketing (SMS, MMS, etc.)

Planning a digital strategy is major for helping a business to be successful online.

Im not saying the old methods of marketing are dieing of death, there are some businesses out there that swear by their folded leaflets and full colour brochures, buts it just so much easier to pick up your ipad and google what you want to look at. We live in a world of speed and convenience, and whats great now is that you can measure responses so effectively through technology.

However, its not to say that there arent negative factors when it comes to digital marketing, because although its great for direct contact, product development, monitoring campaigns as well as being cost effective with great viral exposure, you could bump into some really negative people whos comments will spread like wild fire, there is A LOT of competition out there and also some consumers may not be ofay with using tecnhnical devices - if you're willing to accept these weaknesses then go for it.