Live Blog - February Social Media Surgery - 9 February

[Chi-chi Ekweozor]

This is a live blog of the February Manchester Social Media Surgery event at Innospace, Manchester Metropolitan University's business incubator on Chorlton Street.

If you were there and read something you remember different, please shout out in the comments!

Note that Ning has an annoying habit of barfing and losing content so some of the content posted earlier appears to have disappeared!!! I've tried to recapture it from memory....

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We’re doing introductions....

A mix of attendees, from new starts at creative companies needing to use social media in a business
context to those running business and wanting to use it to promote services.

Social Media Surgeons:
Adrian Slatcher (@adrianslatcher, Senior Digital Development Officer at the MDDA)
Chi-chi Ekweozor (@realfreshtv, social media consultancy, Real Fresh TV!)
Dave Mee (@davemee, digital interactive solutions company, Tandot)

Adrian now defining Social Media:

Media - news, content, data, media that comes from 'the crowd' ; hundreds, thousands, people online
Social - user generated content... e.g text, images, video that is created by others...

Dave adds that whilst 'torrents' or P2P video files are by definition social media, due to shared nature, it's a single user video experience and not necessarily 'social'.

Now onto the social media 'needs' of the audience.

First we hear from 360selection.com, a recruitment company trying to use social media to build up contacts
and people that would be of interest to them. LinkedIn and Twitter tools being explored. Adrian asks 'who is your client?'

What do you need to build that network, what would people want from you?

In answering, Adrian suggests:

1. You have to be clear with your profile on sites like Twitter. Make it clear who is twittering even if from an official 'company' Twitter profile. 'Be the person behind the brand'
2. What does your company want to do to interact in this space? LinkedIn is the best network for you, it sounds like... Facebook probably not as suitable. In the LinkedIn space it's about being careful not to sell to people who don't want to be sold to. 50% of jobs are never advertised...

Adrian adds that he knows a project manager who is offered jobs all the time through LinkedIn. There's an opportunity, you've got to be in that space but you have a real challenge to make your engagement in that space valuable to people.

Dave adds:
One way of creating value is setting up a Group on LinkedIn, identifying yourself as being the people to deal with if you're looking to do business with in that space.

Adrian interjects: A successful example is Chinwag, almost a digital 'chamber of commerce' even if very London-centric.

They invariably have lots of job advertisements for that community. People aware of Chinwag, pick up with that association...

Adrian adds that he is often passed on information for web briefs and job adverts from organisations in the arts and cultural sector who are aware that his network includes several hundred individuals who might be able to respond.

Dave ends by advising it's worth using the 'free infrastructure' available on LinkedIn, it's about adding your individuality to it.

Twitter? Is it worth it?

Dave says it's about managing your 'inbound' stream... you can be very tight about this... you don't have to listen to everyone... You can also have two accounts.

Your outbound stream.. if you play it so that you follow everyone who follows you, if there are specific messages you need to catch, you'll be able to catch them using a tool like Tweetdeck. Establish different hashtags.

Chi-chi gives the example of a client, iknow-uk, who established use of 'city hashtags' to promote the caravans and holiday homes after attending the social media training courses her company runs.

Wired City Reconnected an example of using Twitter & LinkedIn to connect with small business.

Adrian adds that he finds Twitter most useful for receiving information. You may use it as a way of pulling in information that you can share with your network. Business intelligence... such as the Trinity Mirror Group buying the Manchester Evening News.. came to him from Twitter.

Heaven Spa, online beauty product and spa company now contributing:
Interested in the e-commerce, selling online. The company has a Facebook group, still trying to find the value.

How's the e-commerce going? Adrian asks.

Quite well. We sell on Amazon, have a full time person. Wants to know what can be done using social media. Also interested in the Search Engine Optimisation from social media.

Dave answers:
Google is treating social media sites like Twitter very kindly... In the first instance though, it's about knowing your audience. Start getting those conversations happening, start engaging people.

It does take a lot of time.. start identifying where those conversations are happening online. Find existing hashtags on Twitter within the areas of your interest. As you start adding followers you'll see the same names keep popping up, try and connect with them.

360selection asks what a 'hashtag'?

Adrian explains... it's a series of characters preceded by the # symbol. Gave the example of the #smc_mcr Twitter hash tag. (Editor {Chi-chi} adds: Twitter hashtags make searching for conversations around Twitter possible.)

Dave adds that the convention of adding the hash '#' makes it more concrete but Twitter also returns 'words' as #hashtags.

Back to Heaven Spa's question:

The issue is about increasing the brand awareness for your service in what can be a crowded market.

There is also the issue of trying to create Heaven Spa as a premium product.. Gucci-fying the product/service.

Adrian adds that it's also a case of ensuring that you monitor your progress. Track follower numbers on your Twitter account/Facebook group, measure how this affects your sales...

Encourage online magazines, beauty bloggers to write about the brand so that people think it is a trusted brand. It's about using blogs and rich media and online to grow your credibility as a quality brand.

SEO reach: it's worth looking at what people are doing in America. We are a lot more reluctant to use Facebook for marketing. However it may be that women's magazines may move on to Facebook in the next 18 months...

A group of potential customers may have lots of friends and may be a good place for advertising for you.

Dave adds:
It's about putting a human face to the organisation. People can see how personable you are, how quickly you respond. This can be a very powerful way of differentiation. Rather than going down the 'exclusive group' route.

Adrian adds: we use social networks to associate with people in our own locale. Ask people to join your Facebook group, follow you on Twitter.

Dave adds that most of his network on Twitter is people he knows or people whose networks are close to his.

What about social media overload, a gentleman from Sustained Theatre asks, says he’s had enough!

Dave says it’s less about promoting to lots of social media platforms and more about selecting the ones that are appropriate for your audience.

Twitter better for ‘grown-ups’, Facebook for ‘tweenagers’...

Adrian shares about how Manchester's The Warehouse Project successfully used MySpace for early promotion. A lot of this communication is not about doing things differently, it’s about doing things right. Know your audience.

Don’t just think of the social media tools as ‘more noise’.

It’s about productivity tools. Adrian uses Eventbrite as an online events management tool. Drop out rate at events almost non-existent as a result.

A lady from Chethams School of Music shares that she is here to learn about how to use social media to extend the reach of the organisation.

Future plans to offer more to visitors. It's about anchoring the Chethams' story, dealing with negative perspectives and then harnessing all this using digital and social media.

Considering using social media to connect groups, alumni, friends and supporters going forward.

Adrian advises them to look at creating the content now and plan for a long term process of using social media tools for outreach. Facebook a potentially very helpful tool for Chethams, for example.

It's about exploring the different tools and seeing what works.

Dave adds that it's also about trying to guide and connect people from the various different networks who associate with Chethams. It would be interesting to see how people move on from the Facebook page to the Flickr or YouTube page, for instance.

We stop for a comfort break and return to discuss the social media plans of Emerald a creative agency that works predominantly in the housing sector.

Whilst they have had success with social media, they are struggling to connect with clients who are not on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. He shares about how they've found URL shortening tool bit.ly very useful for posting information to Twitter.

The surgeons go on to add other advantages of using bit.ly:

+ link clickthrough stats

+ real-time link sharing data

+ personalisation of names shortened URLs e.g http://bit.ly/my-shortened-link

Some housing agencies are successfully using Twitter to manage customer service, he adds.

Adrian adds:
This makes sense. There is an opportunity to use digital technology to manage 'tele-health' 'tele-social-care', have things in the flats that can be useful for monitoring.

This cuts down costs, adds value to the properties. This must be done in the view of wider public engagement.

Emerald add that they have been helping a client to attract entrants to a business plan competition. Will be launching a e-cookbook competition to engage with their audience...

It's hard to involve those not on Twitter, though.

We then talk about the comment Jon Clements left below...

And a brief plug for next week's Connecting 2.0 Communities event at the MadLab.

And it's a wrap!

Thanks to everyone that came and also to our excellent surgeons.

If you were there and would like to add something to the conversation, please comment below! If you weren't and want to contribute something insightful, please do so too.

[Jon Clements]

Hello all at the #mansms!
On the Heaven Spa example, as they are geographically-specific (ie, located in West Didsbury and Manchester), it's worth using Twitter search to find other Manchester/Didsbury-based organisations and people that can help to spread the message via retweets. Useful when promoting special or new offers. If Heaven Spa was following local Twitter people (and being followed in return) they stand a better chance of reaching the right audience.

[Chi-chi Ekweozor]

Hi Jon! Thanks so much for that.

We’ve all read your contribution and are discussing it now!

Here comes the responses:

From the lady from Heaven Spa:
The issue is that I may need more than one Twitter account. I’m concerned that I’d need to manage sending tweets to both people in Manchester and Ireland, for example.

Dave says those followers in the ‘other’ regions will ignore those tweets.

In addition it will build your credibility as a service provider, you can deal with a variety of customers.

The gentleman from Sustained Theatre adds:

“How seasonal is your market?”

She says busiest time is in July. We then discuss seasonality of online audience.

[Jon Clements]

Again for Heaven Spa: here's a link to Twazzup, showing what you can find simply by searching for keyword on Twitter. It not only shows tweets, but also those considered to be influential (therefore worth following) under that key term.

[Jon Clements]

And this time with the link: http://www.twazzup.com/?q=Didsbury&l=all

[Chi-chi Ekweozor]

@JonClements:

That's excellent, thanks for that. Hadn't heard of Twazzup.

Hopefully the lady from Heaven Spa will read that and thank you too!

[Dave Mee]

Great write-up, Chi-chi. I knew that relentless tap-tap-tapping was going somewhere!

Following on from some of my points: it's critical to empathise with your audience, align your vocabulary with theirs - I've written more about this at http://www.slideshare.net/davemee/holistic-engagement . Also, don't forget the temporality of live media - whereas an email can be sent, and is queued up for response, tweets and live social posts don't - once they've scrolled by, they're gone from most people's eyes (even if not from search and search engines). So think about the time you send messages, who they will hit, who they will be seen by. Will your audience be more responsive at lunchtimes - do they idle then? Or are they more likely to be looking at 7pm, after they've got home and had a chance to kick off the office mindset? If you're selling product, you may get better message traction at weekends, or in the evening than during office time. If you're selling take-aways, get people before lunch or prime them in the morning when they hit work. Just don't forget that social media works best at hitting the immediate aspects of people's consciousness.

[Chi-chi Ekweozor]

@Dave Mee:

Thanks so much for your comment. Apologies for the delayed response, been in meetings all day...

Yes, I like how you draw attention to the time-sensitive nature of publishing content on Twitter.

The upside is that once you get it right, you can almost guarantee a healthy response rate to time-sensitive information like event sign ups and one-off special offers.

The downside is that you have to put significant effort into engaging with your audience on Twitter to find the best time(s).

You get out what you put in...

[Rachael Williams]

Thank you for this session it was very useful and i intend to attend in future!
I was wondering about multiple twitter identities within one company, is this possible if so how do i set it up?

[Chi-chi Ekweozor]

Hi Rachael,

Yes, it’s as easy as creating different Twitter accounts. I’d advise you inform people about the person behind the tweets by describing their association with the company either in the Bio section of the Twitter profile page or by using a descriptive Twitter background.

Hope that helps.

[Jon Clements]

Rachael
You can also manage multiple Twitter accounts easily through "Twitter clients" such as Tweetdeck and Hootsuite. It's much easier that logging in and out of separate accounts on Twitter.com.