Social Media Masterclass Notes – March Chamber of Commerce

I recently presented at a Social Media Masterclass for March Chamber of Commerce, a group of around 25 local people in business came together for this presentation and I promised I would share the notes from my presentation. I have uploaded these notes as a blog post so these top tips and pointers could be shared with everyone. 

Here are the top ten ways in which you can give your social media a kick up the bum;

One: Chose the best platforms for you, you can’t do Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and more so chose the best social media platforms for you. Basically speaking Facebook is ideal for Business to Customer companies, LinkedIn for Business to Business companies, Twitter and Google+ can be very useful for all businesses as Twitter has the search facility and Google+, being owned by Google is superb for SEO (search engine optimisation), helping you get higher on search engines, like Google. YouTube is great, if you have videos that people want to see while Pinterest and Instagram are ideal if you sell multiple products and have photos of these products that you can share easily.

Two: Update your profiles; if you set up your accounts years ago, chances are they are out of date. Make sure your contact details, website address and email address are correct while making sure your keywords are on your profile. Having fancy lines like ‘I help make your life better’ are wonderful and flowery, but they’re not what people are searching when looking for an accountant in March, for example. Make it clear what you do in your profile to help potential customers and Google.

Three: Use Hootsuite (or similar scheduling websites), these are great for scheduling your social media updates days or weeks in advance but make sure you still follow up with engagement. Talk to people that respond – nobody wants to talk to a robot.

Four: Check that the links from your website to your social media portfolios work, the ones you need to really check are Facebook to make sure it goes to your business page, not personal page and do the same thing for LinkedIn and Google+ too.

Five: When we set up LinkedIn years ago we accepted anyone and everyone, with the thought process that the more friends you had the better. This is not the case, go through your connections and make sure you know them / they are relevant to your business. If not, get rid.

Don’t worry – you’re half way!

Six: Use Twitter to find influencers, follow industry specialists and engage with them. This could be someone in your industry that had a large amount of followers that are your potential customers of target audience. Forge a relationship with these people and over time they will share your articles with their followers. When you follow people tell them why you are following them and they’ll be more likely to follow you back.

Seven: Newsletters are a really good marketing tool. Share links to join your newsletter on social media platforms. We recommend MailChimp as it’s free; you can schedule newsletters and create lists too, to make it very easy to keep at the forefront of your contacts minds.

Eight: Go through your connections on LinkedIn; contact those you have worked with and ask for a testimonial, make sure you say thank-you afterwards. You can then use these on your website and other social media platforms.

Nine: Blog, Blog and Blog so more. Use social media platforms to start conversations and trial titles and then send links of the blog posts to the people you have previously discussed them with.  Remember, blog posts need to be more than 300 words!

Ten: Stalk your clients on social media platforms, by connecting with them on social media platforms you can then stay at the forefront of your client or suppliers minds so when they need your services you are the one they chose.