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Blog posts tagged LinkedIn
Using social media to target your customers
September 20, 2010
Targeting customers through social media has become more and more prolific over recent years. Household brands through to much smaller start-up companies are using tools such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
However, it is vital that when selecting the social media tools you intend to use to target your audience, you are selected the correct ones. For example, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn users all have very different demographic profiles, so there is no point using a tool like Facebook to reach a target audience of professionals aged 40+, when statistics show that around over 80 per cent of UK Facebook users are under 40.
Once you’ve decided which social media tool or tools you are going to use, decide how you’re going to approach it carefully. What are you saying and to whom?
There have been numerous examples of major brands attempting to conduct social media campaigns or stunts, which have badly backfired and resulted in a consumer backlash, and ridicule aplenty.
No brand can afford that kind of damage, no matter how large or small.
Always have the consumer at the centre of any social media activity, and think as they would. Add value for your consumer, and always think of how they will gain from your activity. For example, a Facebook page that offers discounts and information about your product or service is innovative and is likely to increase brand awareness virally.
Be different and try to make sure that your social media campaign is one that will get people talking and one they will remember. No matter how simple.
And last, but by no means least, encourage your consumers to engage with you through social media activity. Simply talking at them by posting regular updates sends out the wrong message entirely.
Social media is all about engagement and interaction, and is not a passive process.
If you can actively encourage consumers to get involved in these campaigns, for example by posting suggestions for new products ideas as part of a competition, they will feel that they have some ownership of the brand, and this is vital.
Consumers engaging with each other through social media and sharing brand opinion has a favourable reaction, not only because these consumers feel they have ownership of the process, but also because they are more likely to relate to others’ opinions about the brand as they seem more ‘real’ than direct marketing messages.
Finally, don’t forget that many mobile phones today have powerful interactivity and will be linked to platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. You can take advantage of this by developing a downloadable application, which can be done on a relatively low budget and connects you directly with your consumer. Just remember that an app needs to add value for your consumer. That way it will make their life easier and cement their relationship with your brand.
Howard Scott is digital marketing director at Sequence Digital. The digital marketing agency’s clients include the BBC, S4C, The Welsh Assembly Government, Storm Model Management and Rachel's Organic.
Do I need social media monitoring?
May 13, 2010
So you want to get involved in social media – you’ve read about it, about how it’s going to help your business, and you’ve got some time at the end of the day to do something with Twitter and Facebook. But now the guy says you ought to be monitoring – and that could well cost you money. Do you need to do it? I say monitoring of some sort should come before you make your first post, and this is why.
A while back, there was an idea going round that social media was like a cocktail party, and you had to find the right people and talk to them. But when you got in front of the girl, it was like speed-dating with the next guy trying to muscle in on her – you had to act fast. Though I haven’t heard the analogy in a while, it is as true now as it was two years ago – if not more so, as the number of people on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn has grown, and the forums and networks have multiplied.
In today’s crowded online space, it’s more important than ever that your message goes to the right place. But when you are starting off, how do you know where the right place is? You may join Twitter and Facebook, but how do you know who is interested in what you have to say? Who is blogging about your particular area of business?
And that’s where monitoring comes in. When I go to a function, or a networking event, I stand in the doorway for thirty seconds, looking around, checking who’s there and who I want to talk to. In the same way, with social media, you should listen first – for mentions of your business area, for people talking about your subject.
Online there isn’t a doorway that you can hide in and watch; you need a tool. Plenty of others have listed the wide range of social media monitoring tools, from Social Mention, Giga Alerts, or Google Alerts, which are free, through Simple Web’s MediaGenius, Alterian SM2, and all the way up to Radian6, with many more on the side. These tools – to carry on a tired analogy – will help you to identify which part of the cocktail party to head to, and who to talk to when you get there. But without them, you’re going to be standing around, a lost and confused Billy-no-mates, on your own.
- Nigel Legg is an independent social media monitoring and marketing consultant based in Bristol, UK.
LinkedHow?
February 27, 2009
I joined LinkedIn a few weeks ago. I have a mighty 11 'connections' at the time of writing and, truth be told, haven't been taking a very serious interest in the site. Until I happened to log in yesterday and did a double-take at one of the 'people I may know' listed on the right. The site had helpfully directed me to connect with my brother (and yes, I do actually know him).
Logical enough, you might think, except that there's no direct link between my brother and me on LinkedIn at all. My only 'connections' at the moment are current colleagues and a handful of friends (none of whom he mutually shares). The single thing linking me and my brother is our surname, and when I did a search on his name on the site it turned out there are another 132 Brother Knights on the system. I don't know how many SomeOtherFirstName Knights are out there too in LinkedIn world, but I imagine it's not an insignificant number. I haven't let the site access my address book, email account or anything else and to be honest I've been pretty cagey about any of my details from before I started working at BHP (not listed any schools or former employers). My brother lives in a different town and works in a different industry. So HOW DID IT KNOW?
Is it a magic psychic ability? OK, probably not. My brother wondered if it has a clever cross-referencing system with Facebook, which is the only option I can rationally understand which doesn't make me look over my shoulder nervously trying to spot the LinkedIn spy stalking me. It's a bit Big Brotherly, if that is how it works, although it's clever stuff (though if that is how it works, they don't advertise it - I can't find any sources yet which mention Facebook as anything other than a competitor to LinkedIn).
Anyway. I still don't know for sure how it did it, but it impressed me (while simultaneously freaking me out a little bit). My point is that clever technology on a website or anywhere else is only going to work if it's not just flashy, but intrinsically interesting and/or (preferably 'and') useful. LinkedIn naturally wants me to use it more and more, and I have to reluctantly admit that it's got my interest for the time being (even if, by the looks of it, my next connections will be my hairdresser and my next-door neighbour). We've all had conversations about work projects where someone's gone "wouldn't it be brilliant if this did that?" And while it's often tempting to respond "ooh, cool idea!", think about what you'd actually achieve. Is it just something that's flash but ultimately meaningless? Or does it achieve what you actually want (be that users engaging with a website, people buying your products, brand awareness or anything else).
Questions like these have come up time and time again on the Marketing Donut, and hopefully we'll have answered most of them correctly when you get to see the site. We're creating a site which we think will be useful, informative, attractive and engaging for SMEs with an interest in marketing. It is going to be clever and it is going to look amazing, but what we're aiming for is a site that businesspeople actually want to use. In a couple of months, you can let us know how we've done.
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