5 Things You Missed Out On From the Social Media Workshop

For those of you who didn’t make it to our Social Media Workshop, here is a little recap of what you missed out on. The workshop was a huge success. The workshop started out with a few examples of how social media has helped businesses grow. After that, Brian went on to cover the four major social media platforms for business, which include Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn.

Social Media Examples:

One example was for Headrush Hair Salon in the UK, which uses social media to inform its customers as to who is available daily for hair styling as well as a messaging system to decrease cancellations by 70%! Another Great example was how H&R Block uses twitter to reach out to potential clients to get them to set up an appointment at their local H&R Block. In return, H&R Block receives feedback on their twitter, generally in the form of thanks, which is great publicity for their twitter profile.

Brian then went on to show us a great video of the Digital Story of Nativity. What does the Digital Story of Nativity have to do with Social Media you ask? Well the company that created the video, ExcentricPT of Portugal, nearly doubled their sales leads from the exposure of this viral video. It costs roughly a $1000 to create and its exposure value was over 40,000 Euros!!

Benefits from Social Media

After a short break to grab some delicious cookies and a cup of coffee from our new machine, we resumed the workshop with talks on the importance of Content Development. We asked the attendees about the benefits gained from using these four platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Here are some of the responses that we got.

Content Development Questions:

After, spending some time on the benefits of each, we discussed Content Development according to the following questions:

Who Are You? – What makes your product/business unique and interesting?

Identify what previous customers like about your business and/or your products? If you don’t know this – think about what could make your business different.

Who is your Ideal Customer?-  What customer segments are you serving? Who is the most profitable customer? What customer segments are you serving? What products do they prefer? What life cycle events bring customers in to your business? 

What do customers want to know about you?- What questions are your customers asking you and/or your competitors? What can you simplify for customers? What content works for competitors? What level of expertise is expected by customers?

When do they need information?-What do they need to know about the product they purchased before, during, and after they do business with you? How can you prepare customers for their first meeting with you or visit to your business?

Who will develop content?- Who is already answering your customers’ questions? What skill sets do your employees have? What training do they require? Will your business model require financial rewards for SME’s?

How will you stay up-to-date on industry topics?- What industry associations are important for you business? Are there any personal connections that will help your business?

Where are your customers (each segment) online/offline?- Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Linkedin, MySpace, etc? Are they attending events online/offline?

What type of content is preferred by customers?- Do they watch a lot of video? Prefer to read research / case studies? Want quick tips & advice from a pro? What “tone” should the content have – should it be humorous, scholarly, casual, brief advice or well-thought out?

 Employee-driven content: How will you reward employees? What level of public exposure are they comfortable with? Will their content require editing, legal review, external help (video)? Do they know how to get something posted?

Content Development/ Time Saving Tools

By answering  these questions we were able to help Rod the Chiropractor in determining where to focus his efforts while forming some sort of content strategy for his social media campaign. From here we focused on Time management tips and how to use resources to better manage your online campaigns and time usage. Here are three good resources for monitoring, analyzing, and content posting. They are SocialMention, Google Alerts, and Hootsuite.

After showing  some of the tools that make scheduling and monitoring easy, its was time to discuss the benefits of planning ahead and creating a content calendar. We went over some of the benefits of having a content calendar and how it can actually save you money. Time is money so we want you to use your time efficiently in your social media efforts.

Content Optimization Steps

Lastly, we discussed the 5 steps in Content Optimization, which begin with goals and objectives, then move to planning, then execution, then analysis and monitoring, and finally adjusting accordingly based on your analysis. Robert took over and went through each of the steps using an example from one of our most successful clients as a case study, to show the benefits of following these steps.

We ended the workshop with a Q&A session to provide answers to questions people had about what they had just learned. Also we handed out our Branding Personality Daily Checklist as well as a worksheet with 20 ideas for content creation. The workshop was an overall success and we look forward to hosting more events like this, with new and interesting topics.