What is social media?
Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last 5 years you will have heard of social media.
Although we all think of Facebook and Twitter, social media is any website that doesn’t just give you information, but interacts with you while giving you that information. This interaction can be as simple as asking for your comments or letting you vote on an article, or it can be as complex as Flixster recommending movies to you based on the ratings of other people with similar interests.
Think of regular media as a one-way street where you can read a newspaper or watch to a report on television, but you have very limited ability to give your thoughts on the matter. Social media, on the other hand, is a two-way street that gives you the ability to communicate too.
Whether you like it or not, social media is here to stay and is becoming a real force in the way we communicate. It’s importance as a business tool should not be overlooked. If you’re not using the various social media tools that are available (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr and more), you’re missing out on a prime opportunity.
Why would ‘real, professional’ businesses get involved in something so silly as social media?
No matter how intelligent or busy you think your customers are, they’re using social media.
Our job is not to convince you that your business should be engaging in social media – you either get it, or you don’t.
Deloitte say:
- Companies investing more than 30% of their marketing budget in social media marketing can foresee a 6% increase of their gross operating profit.
- Social media is much cheaper: the cost per 1,000 could be 700 times cheaper compared to other traditional marketing tools.
- Web and web 2.0 have become the premium tools when looking for product information.
- When asking “How much do you trust the following information sources” social media obtained 77% while TV and radio scored 39% and direct mail only 25%.
- Social media is the fastest way for market research, product testing, and allows measuring results easily.
- Social media is the only way to create a close relation with your customers; moving away from one-way messaging to real customer endorsement and brand advocacy.
Google loves social media!
Not only does Social media spread your message to a global audience, it’s also having a massive impact on how we search the web.
Google and other search engines have begun to put more emphasis on social media and how it drives traffic to your site. The tools are almost all free but like all publicity opportunities, it needs managing and need to be an integrated part of your marketing strategy in order to reap the maximum benefit.
Why get Cloud 9 to manage your social media for you?
Social media is not something to dip in and out of. It needs a long-term commitment to engage with your customers to build stronger and more loyal relationships.
When a brand engages in social media it needs to re-allocate resources, or quickly recruit someone to manage it. Recruiting a new member of staff before there is any concrete evidence of its success is often a difficult gamble to justify.
As the role of a Community Manager is relatively new, it is also difficult to ensure that the person you employ has the right combination of skills. To complicate matters, experiences are now fragmented across a range of mobile, tablet and non PC devices. Distributing content across a wide range of interfaces will require a highly skilled Manager.
Your time is valuable and social media can be time consuming, so letting us manage this aspect of your marketing can make sound financial sense. We know from experience that clients often start off with the best of intentions to maintain their own social media presence but before too long it ceases to become a priority as other business demands are made. When we’re contracted to manage your social media marketing, we ensure it happens and is done to its full potential!
At Cloud 9 we have a healthy mix of formal social media training, creative thinking and experience in building brands’ social media presence.
We can work with you on a level that best fits the level you need, allowing you to maintain flexibility in your workforce.
We optimise activities and really leverage the value of your investment.
What will we do?
Our expertise includes:
- Bespoke Facebook and Twitter pages
- Updating feeds to Facebook and Twitter
- Custom Facebook apps
- Monitoring of mentions and posts on Facebook Twitter (and Tripadvisor if relevant)
- YouTube company channel creation, video uploads and optimisation
- LinkedIn company page setup, updates and monitoring
- Dealing with negative feedback notification & response
- Facebook and YouTube spam control
- Monthly review/metrics reporting
Some of the brands we work with
