interesting bits and bobs about design, web and social media, the useful, the useless and everything in between.

Social media research and training.

I recently attended 2 training days held by Social Media Knowledge (SMK). Billed as Australia’s only dedicated social media research and training business, it exists to try and help people become more effective users of social media.

Here at philter we like to make sure we are up to date with all train of thoughts within our focus of web design and development, branding, print and digital marketing. Being the strategic type I take an avid interest in the rise and rise of social media and the many new ways that are constantly evolving to engage with people.

In the first installment of this 2-part blog I thought I would share my key take-aways from the first day. Sharing is caring kids!

• Think about lead-times: a campaign’s social media engagement can begin months before an above the line campaign. Drip feed information and have a listening period to do any tweaking that may be required
• Do a landscape analysis and listen to what people are talking about, build your content strategy around that
• Get out there and find where your most influential stakeholders are, who's your audience's audience and what will make them pass it on?
• How often do you interact with your social media communities rather than tell them information?
• The average age of a Twitter user is between 34 and 38 years old. 11 Twitter accounts are being created per second and 40% of those accounts don't tweet
• There are 500 tweets per minute containing a YouTube link. Good video can be the difference between the success and failure of a campaign 
• Be sure to join up cause and effect. If there isn't a particular metric for you to monitor then look at sentiment or drive them to a particular spot
• Don't get swayed by vanity metrics like 'likes', what are the business goals?
• Social media needs budget for assets (content) and activity (someone to do the do)
• Use above the line to get people to social media where engagement can take place in a much stronger way
• Companies that get the most cut through are those that have the most relevance. Do you have a local approach?
• Burberry's marketing spend has 65% in digital and they are as much a media company as a fashion house. The platforms are secondary to the content strategy! What are you saying to whom and where are you getting the content from?
• Designate an editor for your social media content strategy to ensure regularity and quality. What is your target market interested in; will your content resonate with the audience rather than push your sales message?
• Think about what you want to say about your company, what your audience is interested in and then layer over an activity schedule, giving a focus to resources and content.
• Understand there is a lead-time to creating good content.
• Experiment, learn and refine. What blog posts/social media content get better views and/or engagement? 
• People like people, not faceless entities. If you can get personalities on your twitter account do it, take a look at the Bank of America page.
• What’s the stimulus for the chatter on social media? The key to any campaign needs to be to create value for the end user
• Social media is a leveler and can let you do a lot with a small amount of budget assuming you have the resources

Jo Gossage
The Strategic Type

• Cam Gleeson | 27 June, 2012
  "500 tweets a minute containing Youtube links". That shows how important videos are to your web presence. If you are not presenting your business on video then your competitors will be.