Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Facebook advertising can be one of the most effective forms of digital marketing there is, and certainly one of the best choices when it comes to creating and using social media ads. But before hiring a social media advertising company and handing over your credit card details, it’s best to just stop for a moment and understand exactly why it is that Facebook advertising is so successful, what it is that makes it stand apart from other social media ads, and what it is that you need to do before hurling your brand’s reputation and budget at the first social media advertising company to come along.

First of all, let’s consider what it is that makes Facebook advertising different from other social media marketing platforms:

1. Demographic targeting. Unlike other advertising platforms such as Google’s Adsense platform with Facebook you can use a whole range of demographic tools to target a specific niche market. If you’re a florist for example you may decide to target a wedding bouquet advert to only females between the ages of 25 and 35 living within 50 miles of your shop’s location, and who are either single or engaged. You really can be that specific.

2. Reach. Whether you’re looking to reach people on your doorstep or on the other side of the world you have an excellent chance, since 70% of Facebook users are outside of the US. Facebook is not just a US platform, meaning that global opportunities are very much available.

3. Brand awareness. With most social media ads your brand often lies distinctly separate from your advertising, but with Facebook the two can work hand in hand. By using friends and fans alongside wall or status updates, your advertising can become an integral part of your overall social media marketing campaign, having much more impact than a standalone advert with no extra brand support.

So what do you need to do to make Facebook advertising work for you in increasing sales, boosting brand awareness and generating more leads? The answer is to sit down with your social media advertising company and decide exactly, and very specifically, who you want to target and why.

Knowing this gives you a huge amount of power, both as far as demographic targeting is concerned and also how to phrase your advert so that it will have the right effect, encouraging people to click, rather than ignore your message. A compelling, engaging and stimulating message is more effective than another run of the mill call for a person’s cash.

Thought Leader and Social Media Pioneer

Interesting video on open ID

Peter’s profile http://bit.ly/69qjc2

Social Media Consultant

Peter Wilkinson social media consultant explains.  The AIDA formula stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

The AIDA formula stands for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

It is an approach to understanding how advertising and selling supposedly works. The assumption is that the consumer passes through several steps in the influence process. First, Attention must be developed, to be followed by Interest, Desire, and finally Action as called for in the message. Another, but similar, scheme was developed by Lavidge and Steiner in 1961, later to be dubbed the AIDA: Hierarchy of Effects Model by Palda in 1966. This approach involves the hierarchy of effects: awareness, knowledge, liking, preference, conviction, and finally purchase in that order. Note the similarity to the adoption process Now let me explain each of the point above.

1. Attention You need to write a killer title that stops your visitors and tells him: “read this article/copy right now”. For example, if you are trying to sell an ebook that helps athletes to run faster, your title could be: “4 Simple Tricks To Effortlessly And Naturally Always Be In Your State Of Peak Performance.” Do you think that a title like this one will work? The truth is that you won’t know until you split test this headline with a second one a finally find the winner.

2. Interest Now that you have got your visitor’s attention, be sure to write an interesting article on the topic. If you are not an expert in your niche market, you have two solutions. a. You can make a quick search about your topic on Google, and read whatever comes on the first and second page of results. b. Hire a ghostwriter to carry out the research for you and write the article on your behalf.

3. Desire Now you want to speak to the readers emotions. You want to put him into the emotional state that will make him click the link in your box.  It’s not easy.

4. Action Naturally, this is where you want to lead the reader. You want him to click on the link and finally visit your website. Let’s try and put this in terms of web marketing and websites and bring in some marketing basics

**********

1. Attention In order to catch the prospects attention you must first get them to visit your web site. This can be accomplished by listing your web site in directories, taking out ads in trade magazines, using banner ads, and writing articles that contain links to your web site that prospects would find helpful in solving their business problems. Your web site must hold the prospects attention at the home page long enough to see what else your site has to offer. This can be accomplished by:

a. Create a very strong headline, one that explains exactly what benefits your product has to offer potential prospects. How about this for someone looking to design a new showroom for their business? “How To Design A New Showroom: A basic guide to creating efficient and profitable showrooms.” In order for you to create this headline you must know exactly who your prospects are, and what they needs and desires are.

b. Promise to give something at a discount or for free. Giving away free information or an accessory product that can help your client will get the attention of prospects. You should also explain or demonstrate how this discounted or free service can benefit your client with the solution that they are seeking. An example of this would be “before and after” photos. You should never promise to make a promise that you can’t keep.

c. Give real examples of how your product or service solved a problem for clients. Provide stories on your web site of how clients used your product or service and the benefits they gained by doing so.

2. Interest Once you gain your prospects attention, you must gain their interest. You can do this by:

a. Communicate with your prospects in a simple way. Use short simple sentences that are very clear in meaning and easy to read. Talk to your prospects as if they were sitting next to you.

b. After your headline, list any additional benefits. Prospects want to know as soon as possible all the benefits that they will be provided with. These additional benefits that you offer should be exactly what will aid your prospects. Explain in detail, and provide examples of how these benefits will help them.

c. Offer a guarantee. By offering a guarantee you are sharing some of the risk. Make sure your guarantee is clear to the prospects.

3. Desire Telling your prospects that you can solve their problems and satisfy their needs is not good enough you must prove that you can by:

a. Offer advice and tips. The advice and tips that you give should be backed up with examples of some of your past work. You should state the potential results of following your advice. You should provide your email address or feed back method so potential prospects can ask specific questions, and ask about specific concerns they may have.

b. Provide information that will help the prospects. Show your prospects where they can find articles, case studies, information on leading developments in their business area. By providing this information you will allow your client to have more consumer trust, and increase your own credibility.

c. Using testimonials: Testimonials can add credibility to the product. Testimonials should be used explaining exactly what was accomplished by using the product, it should not be vague.

4. Action You should always tell your prospects what to do, to assume that they will know can lead to lost sales opportunities. To make it easy for the prospects make sure you:

a. Provide an e-mail address, contact form or feedback mechanism. This allows the prospects an easy way to respond to offers, request more information, ask you a question, and respond with any concerns that they might have.

b. Protect the prospects information. You should always state that you are a secured server. Display “We are a Secured Server”. This ensures the prospects that their credit card number is kept confidential and encrypted before it is sent over the internet. This is extremely important today with the increase of identity theft.

c. List your street address, telephone or land number and fax number. This will provide clients with an alternative way of sending information as they may not feel it is safe if sent over the internet. This gives them the ability to phone, fax, email, or mail their personal information. d. Limited Time offers. Offer them a premium if they respond by a certain date, or special package deals that have been put together with the knowledge (research and planning) of what the prospects needs are.

Social Media Consultant and International trainer

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

With the growth of the digital world newspapers books have become a thing for leisure time only. Everyone wants to get information quickly and the answer is online.  Now in these tech-savvy times social media allows you to chat, take advice and discuss what you are looking at online. Features of the social media networks provide easy communication and sharing of ideas which is liked by the people immensely. Soon a large part of the online traffic got routed to these popular social media channels. Understanding the opportunity of social media to their business prospects, the business owners have started putting extra stress on social media advertising.

But before immersing yourself in the social media advertising world you need to have a sound social media advertising strategy in place. While planning for your social media campaigns an indepth understanding of the social networks is of utmost importance. You should know the various pros and cons of each act on the social networking sites. First thing to consider is the time frame. Though many marketers expect to see magical results overnight with their social media advertising, but this is a myth and not a fact. Like in all other advertising platforms you have to be patient. The time frame for getting measurable results varies from sector to sector.  But all the while you should keep working on building relationship with the visitors. Social media can provide you the opportunity to make friends who have the prospects of becoming your long term customers.

Just building a profile is not enough. Social media is a place for updated information. You can learn about any latest happening as soon as it happens on social media. Thus you should maintain and update the profiles on social media regularly. Social media advertising works best when they deal with some current information or deal with the latest schemes in your company. Companies are stacking their profiles with all the relevant updated information about their products or services so that the users do not have to visit the respective website to get information. One of the long time observations about the online surfers is that they have a least patience to go through sites, thus you should keep that in mind while setting the social media advertising London strategy.

Another key consideration about social media advertising strategy is to set the right budget. The popular social network Facebook charges marketers only when their advertisement has been clicked on. Thus, the budget should never be kept too low. You should be ready to spend some money to get good returns. You should also decide on the target for your advertisements. You may segregate the users according to age, region, gender, etc. When you pin point the target group there are higher chances of getting customers.

So carve a social media advertising strategy after much thought because this is your gateway to success in social media campaigns.

There is no reason why internal recruitment shouldn’t fit into the same mould as external recruitment. And in the “external world” recruitment is done through a mixture of channels. Some are specific to job types or positions. Others are default fall back channels. And no successful HR department ignores any of them.

In the external recruitment model, HR departments are increasingly using social media channels to find and mould talent. And to give that talent time to prepare for a move into the company.

The drive may be candidate led or company led. With HR representatives and key department figures utilising social media groups to find candidates; and with candidates joining the groups that are most closely aligned with their perception of how their career might evolve.

Social media can be set up for use in the same way internally.  Here’s how it works.  By setting up social media networks for departments within the company, the HR department can encourage existing company employees to start defining their internal career paths.

Rather than internal recruitment being largely a matter of chance, social media allows candidates to get to know what goes on in other areas of the company – and to align themselves with the right people to move across at the right time (i.e. when a position becomes available). It can be seen that this leads to a higher degree of job satisfaction, a higher retention of talented staff members – and most importantly, a natural gravitation over time into the positions within the company that are best suited to the candidates in question.

The company attitude to internal social media recruitment is still sceptical – or rather, it’s still in a phase of being uncertain how to manage the idea that internal candidates may be working in one department but actively grooming another to take them on.

You have to think in big picture terms here. Internal recruitment has a self-selecting component to it, which you should not to ignore. That is to say, everyone in the company can see how a candidate works in his or her current department. If he or she wanes in enthusiasm and application, he or she clearly isn’t suited to any role in the company and so isn’t going to get the job he or she is grooming for.

The candidate in question won’t ultimately be leaving the company (assuming he or she is successful in his or her move) – and so a valuable espouser of company and brand values is retained.

Thought Leader and Social Media Pioneer

Map your Marketing Message – The communications Map

I have outlined below some of the basics about communications maps that we discussed today.

1. What is a message map? A message map is a communication tool that acts as a messaging framework and assists in the creation of simple, concise key messages around a specific topic area such as corporate messages, brand messages or issue messages. Using a hub-and-spokes architecture, message maps set out one central message which is supported by a number of key messages, which in turn are each evidenced by proof points (quantitative statements).

2. Why are message maps useful? Message maps give a quick, visual representation of key messages in a way that allows the messages and the interrelationships between them to be easily understood and remembered. This provides, at a glance, the hierarchy of key messages that is both memorable for spokespeople and meaningful to the audience.

3. Why are message maps important? To ensure key messages are communicated correctly and concisely in every communication opportunity, and to keep all company spokespeople ‘on message’.

4. When should message maps be used? Message maps can be used in every instance of communication about the topic area that they cover to ensure that key messages are communicated strategically in each communication opportunity. It can be used as a guide to ensure the correct messaging is used when preparing content such as product brochures, speeches and web site content.

5. Who should use message maps? Anyone who is communicating with an organisation’s stakeholders – customers, partners, suppliers, staff, etc. For example, a corporate message map can be used to develop answers to questions from customers, the media, shareholders, colleagues and just about any other stakeholder.

6. How do you use a message map? Message maps provide a flexible framework for messaging and, as such, can be used either starting from the central message and then working out to the supporting messages and proof points, or from one of the key supporting message areas or proof points back to the central message. The message map can also be used as a checklist to ensure that all relevant messages are included. For example, if giving a media interview on a company’s latest product it may be relevant to include information about the organisations high quality products and customer service but irrelevant to include information about the company being an employer of choice.

7. How often should a message map be updated? Once a message map is created and approved it still functions as a living document because it evolves as new proof points can be added or substituted for those in the original message map. New proof points or supporting key messages may need to be added if a new product or service offering is released, and if the organisation has any significant messaging or branding changes the central and key supporting messages may need to be re-examined.

8. Who should create a message map? The best way to create a message map is via a structured session in which each of the internal messaging stakeholders are represented with a PR or communications specialist facilitating the brainstorm session. This ensures that all aspects of the messaging are included and that there is ‘buy-in’ from all of the organisation’s different areas.

9. What should the messages emphasise? The messages should be phrased in a way that helps the organisation’s communicators organise their thoughts and answer questions in ways that focus on how what the organisation does benefits people, not just on what the organisation does. Additionally, the messages should emphasise the organisation’s unique differentiators – the areas in which it stands out from competitors.

10. How should you train spokespeople to use the media map? The message map can be used as part of spokespeople media training. During media training, spokespeople can be trained how to navigate the map during interviews and use examples strategically to emphasise the organisation’s key messages.

If you’re looking for marketing jobs or social media jobs why not visit our job site dedicated to social media marketing jobs. http://www.socialmediamarketing.eu.com/job/

Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions, one of the leading social media training courses providers in UK offers new upgraded social media promotion packages. Their latest course offerings are the Twitter marketing training courses. Twitter has come up as the biggest and best source of viral marketing. Businesses can earn significant profits with the proper implementation of the Twitter marketing strategies. Thus Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions has come with their own pocket friendly Twitter marketing training courses. With the help of these courses, Panther intends to cure the headaches experienced by businesses when they engage in Twitter marketing.

There are various packages for Twitter marketing training courses aimed at both B2B and B2C businesses. In the B2B package the participants can gather information about how to build company’s image amongst its competitors and partners.  Recognition within the specific industry is very important for the business growth and with the help of Panther’s Twitter marketing training courses  business owners can get easy solutions and new marketing strategies. The second package for Twitter marketing training courses is B2C. In this package company owners are taught the tricks of promoting their products and services amongst the huge number of prospective customers in Twitter. How to get retweets, testimonials and rapport building are some of the components discussed in this Twitter marketing training course.

Though there are many social media training courses providers in the UK Panther always remain a step ahead striving to make their social media training UK always up to date and relevant to today’s business environment.

For more information about the Twitter marketing training courses and other social media for business  courses visit: http://socialmediatraining-uk.co.uk/

About Panther Internet Marketing Solutions:  Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions is a UK based social media training and marketing services company known to offer latest media marketing courses. They are offering pocket friendly Twitter marketing training courses that help the businesses best utilise the advantages of Twitter.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Plenty of social media advice dished out to brands recently has been of the “join in the conversation” variety – and up to a point that’s a perfectly valid thing to suggest. Social media has provided an invaluable platform for brands to talk directly to their consumers, to foster friendships and relationships with them and to influence them to buy. Social media training courses, though, are pointing out that there’s a whole neglected area of the social media conversation – what’s being said about the brand.

Twitter training courses and Facebook training courses are now dishing out some new and extremely valuable advice. Don’t talk – listen. That’s where, say the social media training courses, the really valuable interface between customers, stake holders and brands lies: not in persuading people into new sorts of relationship with your company, but in sitting back and really listening to what they say.

It makes sense. Every brand that follows the new advice played out in Twitter training course and Facebook training courses is experiencing a paradigm shift in the way that they view their interaction with their market. Suddenly social media is less about finding another platform to do a flashy dance on, and say “everyone look at me” – instead it has become about finding a way to listen carefully and directly to the opinions that really matter. Those of your end user, about your product.

Careful tracking of social media chatter about brands, products and initiatives accounts for a whole new industry – bespoke gadgets designed to trawl chatter for references to your brand message. According to the latest social media training, that’s an excellent idea. Listen first and speak later: that’s the message. Are you receiving?

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

There are many reasons why adding social media to your marketing mix is a good idea.  It allows a company to talk directly with existing and potential customers, which builds a brand in a way advertising in traditional media simply doesn’t allow.  It allows a business to act quickly in response to negative perceptions by having its finger firmly on the pulse of consumer opinion.

Another key advantage is that social media is the perfect platform on which to create brand ambassadors, who will spread the word on behalf of your business – and word of mouth recommendation is still the most powerful tool in marketing.  With the wealth of knowledge about customer demographics and opinions, social media is also a powerful tool in understanding what your target market wants.

Not least among the benefits of having a presence in social media is that fact that consumers increasingly expect brands to be active in this space, as more of their lives move into the digital space.

Nevertheless, while digital marketing is growing faster than advertising in traditional media, it has not taken over completely.  A truly successful marketing campaign will usually involve many different approaches – such as digital marketing, direct mail, TV and press campaigns – that work together.

The key is to build a social media marketing campaign that brings to life a brand identity that has been established using these many different tools.  Digital marketing will rarely function in isolation, and a company’s social media must be the interactive, personal face of the company values that have been built up using many different marketing tools.

There is a strong imperative for companies to embrace social media, but it must be done thoughtfully, carefully and wisely.  If it is, then it not only becomes a powerful marketing tool in its own right, but through the ability it gives to companies to listen to their customers’ conversations and, in many cases, improve customer service, it also provides valuable information that can feed into and inform many other elements of the marketing mix.

When adding social media into a broader marketing strategy there is no need to throw out the baby with the bathwater.  Instead, it should be used to complement and improve existing PR and marketing campaigns.  Social media is the most powerful tool to create more value from the investment a company has already made in creating and spreading its brand identity.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.  This is a logical and sensible way of thinking, but it can also be restrictive. It is the kind of thinking that can cause a company to miss a new opportunity that involves a new technology, or a new way of doing business.  All too often, unfortunately, it is the approach that senior management takes when considering new phenomena like social media as a component of a marketing strategy.

On the one hand, it may derive from senior managers being of a generation that has not grown up with social media, whereas younger generations cannot imagine life without social networks like Twitter and Facebook.  On the other hand, it could be hesitancy about a relatively new and still evolving method of marketing, which for some senior managers may still have to prove its worth. In other cases, it could be the fear of negative publicity rapidly building momentum in a forum that seems hard to control.

Such concerns may seem valid at first glance, and it is certainly true that using social media as a beneficial tool in a broader marketing strategy takes time, effort and focus.  But if a corporate presence on social media networks is well managed, the advantages can be huge.

Social media networks are evolving rapidly, mainly because they are so popular. They are the forum through which many people organise much of their lives and, therefore, give businesses an unprecedented opportunity to engage with customers on a personal and interactive basis. Traditional marketing rules still apply in this new space, but they must be applied in a different way.

When social media marketing is successful, it builds brand evangelists who spread positive recommendations through word of mouth, and brings a corporate brand to life. Social media interaction can give a company a human face, show it is listening to its customers, and disseminate news about product development quickly.  It also gives businesses a wealth of information about customers and their opinions, which means they can act swiftly to head of any negative opinions before they get out of control, and can spread positive news fast.

Concerns among senior management about social media may be driven by the best intentions, but by not embracing this exciting new marketing tool they could be missing a trick.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Many businesses question why should they be engaged in social media and what would their social media presence earns them? Panther’s Social media advertising London is a hit concept and marketers are dedicating time and money to their social media campaigns. Their only wish is to get more business leads. Social media ads provide opportunity to company owners to convert large traffic into customers.

Most social media ads have mini tabs that resemble a mini website. When users click on the ad they are led to Twitter or Facebook messages posted by the company. They may also watch  YouTube videos of the company without leaving the page. It is known that many users rarely click on ads placed beside their search results in major search engines, but the scenario is quite different for social media advertising. Users are interested to see what’s going on in the company and learn more when they click on an ad.

According to the latest survey consumers spent on average of 30 seconds interacting with the social media ads which is way beyond the time spent looking or interacting with a Google ad (which is 11 seconds). It has also been seen that more users click on the social media advertising than on other online ads. In a case study a cleaning company had 35 out of every 1,000 users clicking on their “Learn More” button as opposed to 1 out of 1,000 for general online ads. What is more,  social media platforms are creating new ways to make social media ads more engrossing and accessible to their users.

Now that the value of social media advertising is established let us take a look at the potential of two leading social networks in boosting your revenue:

Facebook

In the recent statistics Facebook claimed to have more than 700 million users. There is huge potential from using Facebook ads:

• If your product is innovative and useful, has been based on some ground breaking idea, or requires concept selling then Facebook is the place to promote it. People coming in to Facebook are more open to educate themselves.

• If you have released a new version of any product and want to ask the users about their views then Facebook is a great medium. You will get feedback directly from the customers using your product, thus you can completely rely on the evaluation.

• You can share useful tips through articles and blogs posted at Facebook. This will let the users know you are knowledgeable and an authority. It will keep the follower engaged and also enrich the knowledge of users.

• If you want to get closer to customers then social media ads on Facebook are a great way. You may redirect the users to your contacts or enquiry page where they will be able to clarify any doubts.

Twitter

Twitter offers much scope to  social media users to convey a message to a large targeted audience. You can use the social media advertising for the following purposes:

• Announce the release of new products, special offers, deals, collateral release, etc. Social media ads on Twitter have enormous potential of reaching out to a large pool of audience within a short span of time. By using proper hashtags you can get maximum benefits.

• You can share interesting articles, news, blog posts, etc. and make the people aware of your expertise in the trade.

• Many companies  also use Twitter for their customer support. Provided the support staff are well trained in using various features of Twitter this can provide great real time support.

The chances of earning handsome revenues through social media ads abound. You have to just get started!

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Corporate energy is what your brand uses to drive itself forward. Lacklustre staff and off colour performances in your company lead to an anaemic brand and an inefficient use of your capital investments. Twitter marketing and Facebook marketing can have a direct effect on your corporate energy, both inside and outside the lines of the company.

Indeed, one of the biggest effects that Twitter and Facebook can have on your corporate energy is by blurring those lines. As soon as your brand starts to market using Twitter and Facebook tactics – which precludes actual advertising and instead requires that you listen, talk and influence your consumer – then it starts acting like a person, which makes it less distinguishable from the consumers you are talking with.

As a result, your Twitter marketing and Facebook marketing puts your brand on a collision course with real opinions and real emotions. Any positive opinion and/or emotion expressed as a result of something your brand “does” online is actually an expression of approval given directly to an employee, who has listened and spoken on behalf of your brand. Ergo, the Twitter marketing and Facebook marketing campaign (as long as it’s a good one, backed up by a good brand) starts to bring direct validation to the people who are employed to spread your brand message.

Internally, social media tools and techniques can be used to break down the regimented structure of your office. You’ll start playing to everyone’s strengths no matter where in the organisation their official job title actually sits. That means making your workforce feel more empowered to really help the brand, by using skills that they’re already proud of. Employees who are engaging with your public because they are good at it automatically raise their game – and so your brand energy starts pumping again.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Social media sites are ruling the roost when it comes to gaining supremacy over the Internet. People just like to stay logged onto the popular social networking sites. They can spend long hours chatting and sharing with their friends and relatives over these networks. Though there are many social media sites but none can match the popularity of Zuckerberg’s brain child. Facebook is definitely the most visited and most popular social media site at the present moment. Though this is mainly a site to share personal views, opinions and feelings with friends,  Facebook has upgraded their options to make room for social media ads too. There is a large pool of visitors logging into the Facebook everyday and this provides the businesses with the opportunity to reach out to the masses quite easily. Facebook advertising is the call of the hour for all the marketers and business owners.

But why are the businesses so keen on Facebook advertising? Facebook allows the business not only to advertise their products or services but also gives networking and testimonial options. There are about 62 million subscribers of Facebook and the number is growing everyday. As a business owner you would definitely be tempted by the count of visitors. Facebook is also capable of producing options or methods to customize your Facebook advertising, so that you can reap the best results from your social media ads. But the concept of Facebook advertising being new you should look through some of the tips that are offered by the leading social media advertising agencies. With the help of these tips you will be able to take the best advantages of social media ads.

First step you have to take in order to succeed in Facebook advertising is build a great profile. If you have a great profile it will make more people come and visit, and most importantly read through your profile. When they read through your profile they will be inquisitive in learning about the products or services offered. Having a face for the company works wonders too. So do not be shy to use your photo. Your profile should also have a contact number, experience details and skills. Profiles do not merely market and serve as sources of information they provide a face for you business..

Once you have created a profile, next focus on having friends. Facebook is a social networking and it will provide you opportunities to make friends and construct associations. More friends you have on Facebook more chances are that you will have success with Facebook advertising. Suggestions from friends will also allow you to improve the social media ads considerably.

Now try to create some groups. You can join some groups that resemble your interests. You may try to join some groups directly related to your products or services or some which includes the leading names in your industry. By joining or creating your own group in Facebook you will be able to get the desired visibility required for success of Facebook advertising.

These are some of the tips that help you succeed in social media advertising UK. Most of the renowned social media advertising agencies take recourse to the above mentioned steps.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Reputation management has always been a critical part of a brand. That’s why PR people exist. As social media takes over the world, though, with its instant and all pervasive effect, the whole idea of reputation management takes on a much more serious and immediate connotation. These days, a flippant tweet can ruin a career and bring the reputation of your brand crashing down – in seconds.

Digital PR, as it is known, is there to guide your brand’s reputation – and to go into battle for you when you need it. The instantaneous nature of the web and the ease with which it is updated means fertile ground for attacks on your brand by competitors – without decent digital brand or reputation management you can be left severely damaged by a mistake you didn’t even make.

There are laws protecting you against this kind of thing – but without the services of a company that knows how to get erroneous tweets and comments taken down in a hurry, your brand can suffer the horrors of an ever expanding mesh of incorrect, malicious information designed to move you out the path of your competition. As such the key attribute of your reputation management partner should be 24/7 reactivity to any problem that lands in your lap.

On the proactive side, a reputation manager will be able to steer your brand profile by listening to the buzz surrounding your products and your campaigns. This is where the age of social media really comes into its own. All product manufacturers dream of being able to test the waters and deliver something consumers really want. With reputation management leading the way, you can decode the chatter and do exactly that. After all, what you produce is key to your reputation too.

Peter at Moscow conference

Have you ever been to a party and been cornered by a self-opinionated, self-centred bore? Take away the drink, the food on sticks and the bad music and you might as well be describing the experience of half the consumers in the world when they go on their social media streams. There’s something about the social media that lends itself to the worst kinds of interactions as well as the best – self-obsessed brands yelling about their new products all the time, the online equivalent of a noisy toddler in a theatre.

The thing is: there’s an art to communication. People who know how to talk and listen, to engage and interact properly, have a better time at parties than people who don’t. In the long term, they make friends and find themselves in a position to influence others.

So today’s unpalatable truth for your brand may be this: unless you are one of the few, you’re probably acting like the Ancient Mariner. Loud, self-opinionated and boring, your incessant wittering about this season’s shoes is driving everyone potty – and more importantly, it’s driving them away.

A conversation is an art form, a gentle play of give and take. Your consumer wants to take useful things away from his or her interaction with you. He or she wants to feel that he or she is contributing something, that he or she is being heard, and that he or she is valued for what he or she knows and represents.

The key point around which your branding worries should revolve lies right at the heart of this. It’s a question: how do you make something that doesn’t really exist, and certainly isn’t a real person, have meaningful relationships with actual human beings?

It is unfortunately a lot easier to point out what not to do than it is to understand how you should proceed. Don’t talk at your consumer. Don’t advertise. Don’t make everything about you.

So here’s a thought: with social media opening the gates for consumers to own and shape the brands they love, why not give them the opportunity to start the conversation? After all, it’s a lot easier to engage with someone when you listen and they lead. Social media surveys can impart relevant information about customers, which can be used over time to turn them into friends – for example, by developing product-relative services (like proprietary apps) designed to genuinely enhance your consumer’s experience of your brand.

Peter Wilkinson | Social media consultant, social media speaker and international trainer

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 31 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

Social media has completely redefined the way in which a brand lives. Reputation is earned, these days, and is no longer controlled by the powerful corporation in the ivory tower.

The news is littered with examples of companies whose poor practices, be they in terms of customer service or tax dealings or treatment of workers, come out in the social media wash. In the short term, the effect these tarnished reputations have seems minimal. Vodafone is still a huge company with millions of customers. Boots still gets the lion’s share of everyday pharmaceutical and cosmetic purchases.

The thing is, social media is a slow burning candle. They’re also a forum in which users wait to see how brands respond to revelations about their errors. By not coming out with huge apologies and showing all their consumers what they intend to do about (in the case of our examples) massive tax avoidance, Boots and Vodafone both drive a wedge between themselves and their markets which – over time – they may never manage to remove.

The point is, brands no longer own their own reputations – or rather, they are no longer able to blindly insist that their reputation is a when it is in fact b. A brand is in control of its reputation until the moment it decides to ignore the realities of that reputation – at which point the consumer, over time and in the public spaces of the social media, systematically destroys it.

It seems hard for us to imagine at the moment – we are all so used to the power of the corporation being unassailable. But the fact remains that the market is opening itself without reserve to the scrutiny of social media – not because it wants to but because it has to. Soon there will be no information genuinely unavailable to the consumer: and at that point, the brand that thinks it can create its own image is the brand doomed to die.

Nokia is a fine case in point, actually. The former mobile phone giant simply refused to acknowledge its slackening reputation, and woke up one day to discover that no-one cared about its phones anymore. In a last ditch effort, the company rebranded and got a foothold in the smartphone market, where it is now climbing laboriously back up to the top.

Nokia’s near death experience was created by its consumers, who walked away in droves while the company effectively convinced itself that they weren’t. Consumer opinion – that Nokia phones were outdated and boring – was in direct opposition to the company branding: that Nokia phones were still good. Reality prevailed. If everyone who used to buy your phones thinks they are now not worth having, then your branding (which clearly states that they are worth having) is wrong.

How long will it take for companies living in a branding dream world to wake up? To a large extent that depends on the architecture of the dream world in question. The broadest truth, though, is this: the brand no longer lives in a high castle. It’s come down to the people.

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

Street level advertising is the most powerful in the world. When people you know and trust put the word in your ear, you listen. Expert opinions count double, minimum, for the aspiring user of a certain class of product – whether that product is a phone, or a camera, or a surfboard, or a pair of shoes. Wherever there are experts whose use of a type of thing causes others to want to be able to do the same, there is fruitful ground for targeted brand advocacy.

The thing is, the advocacy you get from these people can be a two edged sword if you don’t start it right. So paying someone to do a bunch of adverts for you may cause some sales interest and may have measurable ROI. Money wise. But if you are adopting the paradigm shift and starting to measure ROI in your own reputation, you could be spending your investment capital more wisely elsewhere.

What people want is to see unsolicited testimonial, or to see people actually using your branded products in ways that inspire them. So rather than paying for an advocate to toe the party line, you need to start thinking outside the box. In fact, you might want to think about throwing the box away and getting a whole new set of terms to play with.

Here’s an idea: use your own customer to advocate your brand, through doing something with the products you produce. This doesn’t mean getting lame quotes from people to put on posters or on your website. Because the ugly truth is: no one trusts what they read on the web, cause everyone knows how easy it is to post fake stuff or advertorial stuff anywhere you like. Therefore: a few quotes from highly satisfied “customers” just don’t cut it anymore, specially where all the quotes sound suspiciously like they have been written by the same person.

No – what we are talking here is a whole new way of using the power of people. A random example: if you make anything that is used to make things, so a camera (which takes pictures) or music software, anything like this – stop advertising in the traditional way and run a nationwide competition for people who own your product. The best photos, the best tunes – whatever it is your real, people on the street customers are making with the products your brand supplies. That way your target market sees you reaching out; it sees real people doing amazing things with your products; and it gets them thinking “I want to do that too.”

At the end of the day – who cares what car insurance Iggy Pop has, or whether Gary Lineker likes crisps? These people may be loved and liked, but they’re not us and we know it. Even if a sportsperson did eat burgers (which most of us doubt), we’d hardly be likely to consider them expert witnesses when we know they’re being paid to rhapsodise. So instead, why not concentrate on liberating the joy of people who actually choose to use your products?

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

The concept of the brand advocate is gaining strength and currency as forward-thinking businesses realise just how little trust reposes in their relationship with their consumers. That’s a truth we’ve always had hovering over us of course – but with the dawn of the age of social media it has become something we can no longer afford to ignore. The brand advocate is not employed by the company, nor yet is he or she in any way beholden to it. So when he or she opens his or her mouth in praise of the brand and its products – people listen.

Now, there are advocates and there are advocates. Someone you have never met, for example, who tells you in a pub about this or that great item, is less trustworthy than a friend. Because humans automatically trust people they know over people they don’t and we also impart a good deal of trustworthiness or otherwise to encounters according to the environment in which they occur.

So for example – if you have an encounter with brand advocacy on a commercial radio or TV channel, in the form of an advert featuring someone famous (Iggy Pop selling his rock and roll soul to the corporate devil is a perfect example of how not to do this), you’re less likely to trust the information you receive, than if an actual friend of yours was telling you the same thing in your house.

Companies have long experimented with what might be termed weak brand advocates – either famous people, who can be seen as selling out and therefore no longer trustworthy; or “people in the street”, clearly actors and actresses pretending to be real people with real opinions. We don’t really trust either because we know a company is paying them to do the work.

Obviously the companies doing the paying are working on the right lines, though. There is already, and has been for some time, a recognition out there that brands can’t talk directly to their target audiences and be fully accepted.

The above isn’t to say that a famous person can never help a brand spread its word. It simply says that doing so in an obviously paid and advertorial way isn’t very useful to anyone.

What people really want, when they take a recommendation, is an opinion. Preferably, they want the opinion of someone they see as qualified to hold it – an expert, in common parlance, and a person of influence in the language of the marketplace.

Professional products, for instance software packages aimed at business, will be spoken of with most authority by other professionals. Unsolicited advocacy on the part of a successful person in the right field amplifies the advocate message for a specific professional product – to the point where the marketplace as a whole starts to pay more attention to it.

Bizarrely, the most closely related marketing practice to this is sponsorship. When people who do a certain sport see the best people in the world at that sport using a specific brand of shoe, they go and buy the shoe. Amplified advocacy works in much the same way.

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

A huge chunk of a brand’s consumer base is now connected to an endless world of information. He or she gets his or her information through the social media via a multitude of devices, ranging from a home computer to a TV package to a smartphone. Even some cameras are now connected directly to social media locations.

This has implications for branding that aren’t fully understood yet. Or rather the implication is clear – but the industry as a whole is reluctant to face up to its new responsibly, rather like someone who has just been told they are to become a father for the first time. The marketing and branding industry is going through a period of adjustment.

The truth it is trying to face is this: a multichannel consumer, always connected, means there’s nowhere left to hide. Price structures can be toppled at the touch of a button, even right at the point of purchase. A customer can look up prices for an item he or she is about to buy, put it down, and walk away – only to buy it somewhere else where he or she can get it cheaper.

This is one stop short of unfair, as far as the brand is concerned – specifically where that brand has traditionally occupied bricks and mortar locations, for which it must pay rent and upkeep. The price of running a store is reflected in the cost of items sold from those stores – and so purely online suppliers, backed up by 30 day no quibble refund policies, are in a position to take a huge chunk of brand business.

There are two ways to deal with this, and both involve paying attention to the best points of your branding.

The first way is to make your brand so exclusive that you can only buy your products directly from you. If your branding is strong enough this can work – though you tend to find it only works like this where you already exist in a luxury product or service segment, in which a raised price and exclusivity are part of the original brand proposition. Some upmarket department stores have incorporated this into their branding, as too have most luxury restaurants, hotels and car manufacturers.

The other option, ably exemplified by a range of modern brands, is to make your brand so cool that people would rather be seen shopping in your store, or buying from your site, than from third party distributors. Among the best exemplars of this kind of branding are (as ever) Apple – which has made its Apple Store such a hub of techno-cool that fans prefer to go there and spend more, than miss out on the experience by buying somewhere else; and Vibram, whose barefoot running shoes command a following so desperate to get the benefits of proprietary technology that they will pay much more to use the Vibram site and get the same product, than they will to use a third party distributor and worry that the product they get may be fake.

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

What is a brand advocate? In simple terms, he or she is someone who espouses he values of your brand through choice, with no payment and no financial connection to your company. He or she is trusted by his or her peers. So when he or she chooses to evangelise on behalf of your brand, people listen.

The brand advocate is the ultimate goal of all modern branding. Modern branding is about making people so excited by the things you do that they just have to tell their friends. When they do, the interest you generate is better than the hit rate for any advert or marketing campaign.

From the start, we need to do away with old words (like “campaign”) that make us think in the wrong way. A campaign has direct, measurable results with a core goal – like getting everyone to buy your latest smartphone. Branding is more long term, and has results measured not in units sold but in the raised profile of your whole enterprise.

In a straitened financial universe, companies are understandably obsessed with the immediate retrieval of their bottom line. Understandably but misguidedly. Because real business success is long haul success – and that means accepting gradual increases in interest to build a genuinely loyal advocate base over time, rather than going for a quick hit and walking away.

Without wanting to descend too far into crudity, the analogy that probably fits best is one of relationships. One night – or a lasting marriage? Sometimes by holding back and really getting to know someone, you can develop a relationship that turns into the best thing that ever happened to either of you. If you are able to go slow and take the time to smell the roses, then the end result is one that has more strength and potency than any flash in the pan passion.

A brand advocate is someone who wants to stick with your business as it grows. Someone who gets genuinely excited about new product or service releases – and who will happily tell all of his or her friends about them too. He or she has the tools to go out into the world and create whole new niche markets for you. With the one implement that no amount of advertising or campaigning can every really create: word of mouth.

It’s every advertiser’s dream to have people whispering enthusiastically about a client’s product. When people talk to people, things happen.

Of course there’s a whole world of conversation happening digitally now, all the time. It’s collectively known as the social media, and it is – among other things – the index at which the brand marketing and word of the mouth are able to interact.

Social media can be used to create brand advocacy – but it takes time. Again; you can’t expect a marriage to blossom overnight. Rather, you have to (exactly as you would in a courtship) take the time to listen, to remember and to put the interests of someone else at the forefront of your actions. Do this properly and you may get hitched for life!

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

There’s a lot of talk in the marketing world about “emotion”; “truth”; and “trust”. But can brands really spark fire in the breasts of their consumers – or do people just like owning some things more than others?

It seems unlikely, for example, that someone would die for a smartphone – whereas one can readily imagine the same hypothetical consumer throwing himself or herself in front of a train to save a child. So we have to ask whether the words we are using are the right ones. In a spirit of honesty motivated by the increased transparency of the modern branding world, it’s time to redefine our terms and find out what we really mean to the people who buy into our propositions.

There are gradations of feeling. A person can still get passionate about something he or she is not hopelessly in love with. It is this feeling that motivates brand preferences – and it is this feeling that can be channelled to create brand advocates.

Why? Because the kind of feeling we are talking about here is something more complex than love. Love is unthinking and almost without choice. As the old adage tells us, you don’t get to choose your family and you don’t choose who you fall in love with. What you do pick, are your friends.

The two sayings alluded to above have a common thread: choice. Both identify how some relationships and feelings in our life, normally the most powerful and overriding ones, are instilled in us without any request on our part that they happen. We have no choice, we have no control.

The brand message is aimed at the other part of the emotions – the bit that lets us choose what we like and what we don’t. To understand it best it is first necessary to recall a time when we were younger.

Teenagers are living examples of self-branding. It is, then, little wonder that the most obvious and powerful branding is aimed at teenagers and young adults – who are striving to identify themselves with a range of likes and dislikes that – if we are completely honest – are often quite arbitrarily chosen. Indeed one of the prime criteria for teenage obsessions is often simple reaction against everyone else’s likes – if the parent’s generation really liked x then it is practically guaranteed that their children will, instead, like y.

Why? Because everyone wants to be their own person. They want evidence that they are capable of choosing for themselves, despite the truths inherent in the two sayings we looked at earlier. So they build a personality by finding things to like and things to dislike.

This is where branding steps in. Because really effective branding isn’t going for blind love at all. For someone to click that like button on a Facebook page, we’re not looking for blind adoration but conscious choice. So the brand isn’t trying to live in the heart like a lover or a brother. Instead, it wants to live in the mind.

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

It’s a funny thing, branding. For decades, potentially for a whole century, businesses have sold to the public on the basis of a created persona – a feeling, if you like, which the customer is supposed to identify with. The brand develops itself as funky, or trendy, or reliable, or established and sophisticated – and the target market flocks under its banner accordingly.

So here’s the rub. In the social media age, if that branding is a lie then there’s nowhere to hide. The customer who buys into the branding, only to find that the proposition he or she thought was true is just advertising hoo-hah, is the customer who brings a world of bad publicity down on the head of the brand in question.

How a company responds to this unveiling can dictate the future success or failure of its brand. Apple, often wheeled out as an exemplar of great branding, is a case in point – on both sides of the coin.

Around six months ago, Apple started selling a new version of its iPad in the UK. This iPad was branded as “4G”. Which it was – if you lived in a country that had access to the 4G network – which the UK doesn’t. The branding was revealed to be misleading – and Apple, initially kicking, finally capitulated and offered a full refund to all customers in the UK who’d bought the product.

Expensive mistake or invaluable social media PR exercise? The truth is that instances like this are both – but well managed, they can buy PR capable of rescuing the brand from the flames. Over time, the value of such PR outstrips the financial outlay required to refund hundreds of customers the price of an iPad.

This is an archetype of something approaching good practice in the social media world. What it isn’t, yet, is ideal practice – which of course would be to brand truthfully and so not have to weather these PR storms. Bear in mind that Apple kicked and moaned for a few weeks before it adopted the hands-up stance. While its eventual capitulation earned it plaudits in the PR stakes, you have to suspect that over time attitudes like this aren’t going to be enough.

The truth of the matter is that the connectivity of our daily world leaves consumers with power at their fingertips. As yet it is a power they do not fully understand how to wield. But they will: and when they do, the brand whose proposition errs even slightly from its own reality is going to wish it hadn’t.

We are living in an age of real change. Marketing, which has always sought to positively spin mediocrity, or to make something that really ought to be taken for granted sound like a key selling point, is coming up against a glass wall, through which its every move can be seen and its every claim examined. Over time, the brand that really tells the truth will be the brand that rules the world.

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

History is littered with examples of messages that collapsed because their owners couldn’t let go of them. Political ideas; campaign promises; and most frequently the ideas of brands. A brand comes along with a proposition, on which it hopes to sell its product or its service. People buy into the message. But when they interact with the product or service they have bought, they discover that it doesn’t express the brand’s message in a way they can understand.

This is a crucial point in the life cycle of any brand. For a proactive, responsive and ultimately successful brand, it’s the moment where initial concept becomes consumer reality – and where feedback can start being incorporated into the future branding of a product, a service or a company. For the “knee jerk” brand, which can’t accept when its message misfires or its product fails to deliver, it’s the beginning of the end.

Let’s stick with politics or a moment to expand our example. In the UK, politics has become more of a branding exercise than ever – a process that really started towards the end of the 1990s when “Blair’s Britain” and “New Labour” became slogans – buzzwords with a selling proposition. The response, over time, of the buying public – i.e. everyone who voted – was essentially customer feedback; the failure of the governing party to listen to that feedback (the second Iraq War) caused the reality of the brand message to diverge from the requirements of the people who thought they owned it – the party in question. So they were voted out and a new lot stepped in to take their place.

There’s a key phrase in that last paragraph, and that phrase is this: “the people who thought they owned it”. Because the real ownership of a brand lies with its public, its consumers – the people who ultimately choose whether or not they are going to espouse the virtues of a company or publically deride it for hypocrisy/lack of value/a failure to stick to its proposition.

Here is the uncomfortable truth. If you are a company, you can no longer create the kind of brand you think your target market will feel a connection with – and then not follow through on your promise. This means, if you say you will deliver unlimited broadband speeds, then that’s exactly what you have to do. If you don’t, your branding diverges. You carry on belting out a message that is essentially proven to be a lie; while your public shouts the truth from every social media treetop in the street.

At this point, who owns the brand? Whatever the misguided hypothetical company here might think, it isn’t them. They are in the exact same position as the government that went to war – sitting in an ivory tower congratulating themselves on doing what the customer wants, when in reality that customer is sharpening its collective knife and preparing to revolt.

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for£120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 January 2013 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Peter Wilkinson, Social media consultant,

Social Media Papers Written By Peter Wilkinson

A series of papers written by Peter, the UK’s leading social media consultant

What Part Does Social Media Play in Innovation and Leadership of the Innovation Process?
Peter presented this at the House of Lords in London	Buy Now or contact us
INDEX   Introduction   1.0 Trends 2.0 What part does social media play in innovation? 2.1 How do we create a culture of innovation in our enterprise? 2.2 To help people innovate we need a social innovation network. 2.3 PACT: Process, advocates, culture, and technology. 3.0 The role of leadership and social media in the innovation process. 3.1 Leadership role in the innovation process. 3.2 Social media opens the scope of innovation and maximises the impact of leadership in the process. 3.3 Benefits of combining leadership, social media and innovation. 4.0 Risks. 5.0 Measures and benefits. 6.0 Summary. Introduction The following paper reviews the use of social media in innovation and the leadership issues that need to be addressed to reap the rewards of a social business. The following are the areas that this paper briefly covers: - - The place of social media in the innovation process. - How social media impacts the research that drives the innovation process. - Leadership and social media within the innovation process. - How management should harness social media to manage the innovation process and risks. - Can using social media in the innovation process provide competitive advantage? - Will using social media in the innovation process reduce time to market? - Impacts on ROI and risk. - The impact of the above on the brand both inside and outside.   The main argument in this paper is that social media has become an enabler and enhancer of innovation inside companies. To take advantage of this the organisation needs to change its culture and way of working. New tools and a new mind set are required. The status quo in management thinking has had a paradigm shift and leaders need to re-think their approaches and style to change and adapt their culture so it can take advantage of this opportunity.   The innovation process needs to be hard-wired into the digital and social media communication channels. This will allow companies to use the insights, structured and unstructured data, which is held inside of the employee, consumer and stakeholder spheres. Not so long ago, when communication was glacial in its movement the whole thing was different. We now live in the social media age. The innovation process should be viewed as enterprise wide social innovation. The new culture needs to establish an open environment that welcomes ideas, collaboration, contribution and evaluation.   - How does this fit inside of corporate portfolio management? - What changes in leadership style and skills are required? - How is this managed and facilitated throughout the organisation together with 2nd and 3rd party corporate suppliers involved in the innovation and delivery of any products/services? - How is the process wrapped together to create new products, services, systems and procedures that can be capitalised on. - How is down side risk managed? - What are the real threats?   The major risk of not being adaptive, engaging and developing into an enterprise 2 social organisation is that your competitors will. They will create more organisational energy that will flow to the brand and drive stronger brand advocacy. They will have an energised, lively and engaged culture that is adaptive and will out-innovate you in all facets of their business. Their time to market will be reduced and they will benefit from reduced costs and better management of risk through closer team collaboration and communications……………………. **price is inclusive of VAT ***A PDF will be emailed to you when you have purchased
If you need social media training look at the Panther online training academy online social media training Social Media Consultant and International trainer

Social Media Papers Written By Peter Wilkinson

A series of papers written by Peter, the UK’s leading social media consultant

Social Media, Organisational Energy, Branding and Programme Management
Peter presented this paper at the Association of Project Management (APM) conference in London	Buy Now or contact us
INDEX. Introduction.   1.0 Social Media. 1.1 Social Media Definitions. 1.2 Social Media Overview. 2.0 Organisational Energy and Branding. 3.0 The Social Media Framework. 3.1 Social Media Strategy Relates to Investment, Value and Culture. 3.1.1 Investment. 3.1.2 Business Value. 3.1.3 Organisational Culture. 4.0 Phases of Socialisation within the Organisation. 4.1 Early Adopters. 4.2 Socially Tactical Organisations. 4.3 Socially Integrated Organisations. 4.4 Fully Socialised Culture and Organisation. 5.0 Leadership Phases in Socialising an Organisation. 5.1 Leadership in the Early Adopter Phase. 5.2 Leadership in the Socially Tactical Organisations. 5.3 Leadership in Socially Integrated and Socialised Organisations. 5.4 Programme Management. 5.4.1 A Day in the Life of a Programme Manager. 5.4.2 Setting Some Guidelines. 6.0 Management Needs to Change in the Socialised Organisation.   Introduction. The following are the accompanying notes of the presentation given to the Association of Project Management on 30 June 2011.  They review social media in the context of organisational energy, brand and programme management. Organisational energy is the degree to which a company’s employees engage in helping the company achieve its goals and the level at which they are willing to contribute their intellectual power, skills, emotions and passion to help the whole organisation to succeed. Organisational energy has two measurable dimensions: level and direction. A headless chicken has energy without direction. A punishment work team has direction without energy. The high energy organisation not only energises its people but also channels that energy purposefully towards results. The flow of energy travels from the organisation to the brand, turning the organisation’s brand into aLe Manscar.  Lots of power, energy and controlled direction, well most of the time!  The higher the organisational and brand energy, the more profit will result. Social media networks can act as the arteries that let the energy flow through the organisation.  They are the informal and formal channels that will feed and connect all the disparate parts of the culture to their common goals.  This however does not come without risks, which need to be understood and catered for, in the evolution of the social media systems within the organisation’s cultures.  There are many organisations that offer ‘their solution’, but it would be a perfect world if there was a one stop solution for every culture, with all that culture’s nuances and idiosyncrasies, let alone the myriad of different channels and cultures you will find in the markets and marketing channels.  The key to success here is, understanding the security zones and the spaces that need to be created.  From a totally secure, behind the fire wall, through a middle interactive space, to the totally public space.  Understanding the flow of data and how that data is managed through those spaces. There are a number of dangers. That organisations do not seize the day but their competitors do and social media gives their competitors a competitive advantage that overwhelms them. That organisations do not control the socialisation of their culture and social media overwhelms them, possibly disastrously. That for organisations to seize the day there are changes they need to make to themselves and their culture, that go beyond social media. That organisations do not understand that social media is not just about technology, communications, data flow and risk.  It goes far beyond these areas.  It needs to be encapsulated and considered in all transformational change programmes and may warrant a transformational change programme in its own right. That organisations do not consider how social media impacts the overall return on investment blueprint. A simple change programme is a good place to pilot and prove the potential of using social media to create a flow of energy. To achieve high productivity in an organisation, its management has to create a culture that engages its employees and engenders a high degree of interest in the success of the programmes and company initiatives. This high interest will generate a high level of engagement and passion for the company’s success, which in turn will generate high levels of organisational energy. If we start from the point where we agree that helping employees manage their energy, not their time will reduce employee stress and increase employee morale, we can see how a socialised organisation will bring significant rewards.  The socialised organisation needs a shift in the way leaders manage employees.  We need to view employees as human beings not simple resources to be managed in a project or programme.  We need to invest time in meeting their core needs so we can harvest more of their energy towards a directed goal or outcome.  People feel more energised, inspired and are able to cope with their personal and corporate pressures when they are emotionally looked after.  Communicating and engaging with them on a social level will play a big part of this process. By addressing what people feel within the organisation and how that is channelling through the informal networks within your culture, you can identify and manage the organisation’s energy. To manage energy it is necessary for us to discover where it comes from, what influences it, understand how to focus it, and find ways to release it with control and direction. In the socialised organisation the silo barriers have been removed.  The trust and transparency that has resulted from the openness, dynamically evolving processes and easy flow of communications enables a positive flow of energy into the organisation and brand. Organisational energy comes from four sources, each with an emotional and rational element – Connection, Content, Context and Climate. Use the social media channels to identify your organisation’s energy and, re-direct it for better performance.  The socialised organisation will use social media to break down the barriers, build cross silo teams and encourage innovation and collaboration outside of the formal organisational structure. Social media has, metaphorically, removed the corporate wall and the brand image is growing into a reflection of the people and culture of the company or organisation.  The brand energy is channelling from the energised organisational culture.  Markets and customers interacting with social media messages will re purpose the messages adding additional bits, that they wish to add, passing the message on to their herd or tribe within the internal and / or external markets.  In essence the markets and customers are now creating the brand and this is directly linked to the emotional energy flowing from the organisation. Every transformational programme needs to consider social media.  How it will help at a project and programme level and moreover how it may contribute to the organisation becoming a fully socialised culture. ………………….. **price is inclusive of VAT ***A PDF will be emailed to you when you have purchased
If you need social media training look at the Panther online training academy online social media training Social Media Consultant and International trainer

Social Media Papers Written By Peter Wilkinson

A series of papers written by Peter, the UK’s leading social media consultant

Engaging the Social Culture to Drive Brand Advocacy in the IT Sector
Peter presented this paper at a major IT conference in Moscow	Buy Now or contact us
Index Introduction 1.0 Key trends in social media – Social media is here to stay 1.1 Statistics and observations 1.2 Key findings from a recent 2011 Nielson US report 1.3 Russian statistics from TNS Digital Life 1.4 Other general Russian trends – General comments 2.0 The social media brand 3.0 Social media and channels to market 4.0 What should a brand look at when considering social media? 4.1 Brands need to make sure the basics are covered 4.2 Brands need to engage with customers through social media to drive the brand experience 4.3 Brands need to move towards a social media service centre culture 4.3.1 Service desks can improve communications with the use of social networks 4.3.2 Why brands should put a value on social networks 4.3.3 The road map for success – Solve problems with social media 4.4 Tech support goes social 4.4.1 Social PC repair 4.4.2 Risks of social service help desks 4.4.3 Tweet for help 4.4.4 Looking forward; what brands should consider 4.5 Social service call centre 5.0 The driving force needs to be brand advocacy 5.1 Key to developing brand advocacy is social media services provision. 5.2 There are some simple rules to follow 6.0 You need shoppers if you want shopping 6.1 Consider your structure and strategy – function and form 6.1.1 Social retailing goals 6.1.2 Social retailing strategies 6.1.3 Social retailing tactics 7.0 Understand the social shopper and put the customer at the centre of all decisions 7.1 Social media intelligence and business intelligence decision making 7.1.1 Social marketing analytics defined 7.1.2 Beyond listening— the path to integrating and acting upon social media data 8.0 Social customer relationship management 9.0 New merchandising strategies for retail growth – crowd sourcing strategies to attract customers 9.1 What is crowd sourcing? 9.2 What is real‐time merchandising? 9.3 Create digital habits for offline behaviour 10.0 Set goals, objectives and develop integrated strategies 11.0 Should companies in the IT sector be taking the lead? Surely they should, but where do they begin? 11.1 Social media starts at the top – establishing social media policy 11.1.1 Top executives lead social strategies 11.1.1.1 Step 1: Understand people 11.1.1.2 Step 2: Determine objectives 11.1.1.3 Step 3: Develop a strategy Appendix 1 Yahoo! use social media to drive brand advocacy Introduction This paper looks at how social media needs to be viewed and applied by brands with particular reference to the IT sector.  It will consider what organisations need to do to drive brand advocacy and how this requires a more holistic view of the social media organisation.  In particular the paper will focus on the use of the social media service desk as a driver of brand advocacy in the IT sector. Social media has significantly changed the way brands need to connect with their customers.  More and more companies are starting to realise the true value of social media; they are adapting and integrating this new form of communication into their culture. It is important to understand that for a successful social media strategy, the company has to have an internal culture that is ready to accept new ideas and promote learning from these new practices. How should brands use social media?  The obvious approach and best place to start, is; blogs, social networking tools, forums, and video to build brand awareness, which maintains an up-to-date dialog with the consumers.  This may be about new products, services and tech support.  This is a good platform to start from, as it gives a human face/personality, which starts to develop a relationship with the customer. The above social channels or paths form a holistic approach to communications with customers.  This holistic approach needs to be mirrored by the internal brand, with the top-level executives taking the time to give updates on what they are doing and company activity.  The social media brand is driven from the inside out. In order for companies/brands to engage from the inside out, they need to develop social digital platforms, allowing the company and its employees to share and discuss technology, tech-related products and services.  The employees need to be guided and encouraged to join relevant product and service discussion topics like computers, interface products, personal IT products, iPods, mobile devices and so on.  There needs to be clearly defined channels for social customer service. The marketing department needs to consider and understand how social media service can lead to brand advocacy and loyalty.  They need to put the loyalty strategies in place and ensure the team have the technology, processes and capability/training so they can engage and drive the strategy.  Management needs to ensure the team also have the time to make sure the social media assets, such as forums etc, are stimulating environments, where valuable conversations are developed and participants converted into brand advocates. At one level social media marketing is all about getting your customers and your potential customers interacting with your brand.  The following paper will detail this evolving relationship between social media marketing, brand recognition and customer-company interaction. The key question is ‘why invest in the use of social media’? If you allow your employees and other stakeholders in the value chain to build small groups on the fly, to work on a problem through social space, the resulting collaboration magnifies their ability to deliver innovative solutions.  What if you can engage the customer in the problem solving?  Where does this lead us in terms of brand engagement?……………….. Peter at Moscow conference **price is inclusive of VAT ***A PDF will be emailed to you when you have purchased
If you need social media training look at the Panther online training academy online social media training Social Media Consultant and International trainer

The C Level Manager needs to understand the implications of social media strategy in order to understand her or his place within an organisation. As brand management is altered to behave in a more social network-esque fashion (teams and segmented offices are becoming a thing of the past as social media style communication assembles “taskforces” to address immediate business issues), the whole leadership role of the C Level manager has suddenly been amplified.

Simply put: Peter, Social Media Consultant suggests that all leaders need to be continuously engaged in the social media conversation. That enables them to do two things: first, to keep a constant finger on the current pulse of customer and stake holder opinion about the performance of the company; and second, to ensure that their findings are used to influence the behaviour of our previously mentioned taskforces.

The upshot of the new social media strategy is that communication is becoming the most valuable tool in any business’ box of tricks. As a brand exposes itself daily to multiple social media streams, it becomes the job of leaders to find and encourage excellent communicators in every area of the company.

It’s no longer the case that team leaders and departmental managers do all the talking for the brand. From the customer’s point of view, it is now the brand that speaks. Social media strategy points out the good leadership in these circumstances is entirely dependent on the ongoing social media conversation – in effect, the C Level Manager should be completely involved in that conversation so he or she knows both what customers and stake holders are feeling about the brand; and how his or her staff are equipped to hold up the brand’s end of the chat.

Social Media Consultant and International trainer

Peter, UK social media consultant speaks internationally on social media strategy, ‘The Social Company’ and company culture, driving innovation and company-customer collaboration through  social media, social media marketing  and social media in HR at conferences internationally from London to Moscow to Marbella.  Working at the highest level, I help leaders and companies understand how they should bring social media into their strategy and realise its potential.

Panther Social Media  offer a range of social media services from social media strategy development for external  and internal marketing, social media recruitment strategy for HR and full programme management of transformational programmes to bring social media into a company’s culture with appropriate governance.

Working with boards and chairman of large global corporations to small SME companies I bring an expert and practical perspective to developing a marketing mix for internal and external social media strategy | Social media branding | Social media marketing.

Our social media strategy | marketing services cover the full spectrum from senior board briefing and director mentoring through social media strategy development to the full range of tactical services necessary for executing an internal and external social media strategy.

I am founder of the LinkedIn group social media marketing UK #SMMUK. This is a vibrant and buzzing group for people who wish to find out more about social media strategy | marketing.

My Blog http://socialmediastrategy.org.uk/blog/

Specialities
Social Media Strategy | Internal and External

- SMM board briefing, coaching & International speaking
- Social Brand monitoring – Investigations – Reputation
- SMM Brand energy transformational programmes
- SMM into the marketing mix

Social media consultant
Digital marketing | Strategy
Digital public relations
Social media optimisation
Search engine marketing
Search engine optimisation
PPC and Social PPC
Message strategy
Communications strategy
Integrated communications
Strategic marketing management

Social Media Consultant and International trainer

Peter, the UK’s leading social media consultant, reviews words that provoke an Emotional Response –  Marketing firms have an inside secret that helps them to write compelling content and advertisements. They know there are certain words with the English language that, when read, create an emotional response. The big names in marketing use those words every day to write compelling copy that increases the potential for higher sales volume.

Those words are words that conjure a specific positive thought, or pull on the emotional senses that each of us have. They make certain implications that give us warm fuzzes about the products or services we review, and the security needed to trust the company involved. Those words also add an urgency, another secret in marketing, which compel people to act before they “miss out” on something.

absolutely accurate advantage aggressive already amazing approved attractive authentic bargain beautiful better big bonus celebrate challenge colourful colossal commanding complete confidential convenient crammed delivered dependable direct discount easily effective electrify enchanting endorsed enormous essential everlasting excellent exciting exclusive expand experienced expert exquisite extraordinary extravagant famous fantastic fascinating foolproof force foremost fortune full gallant genuine gift gigantic golden greatest guaranteed helpful highest honour huge hypnotise immaculate immediately impressive improved incredible indescribable informative inspect instructive interesting invincible largest latest lavishly liberal lifetime limited limitless lowest magic magnificent magnify mammoth matchless maximum miracle noble noted odd outperforms outstanding overpower personalised pioneer popular powerful practical preferred private professional profitable proven quality quickly radiant rare recommended reduced refundable reliable remarkable revealing revolutionary scarce scorecard seasoned secrets security selected sensational simplified sizable skilled solid sparkle special spirit startling stimulate strange strong sturdy substantial successful superior surprise tempting terrific tested timeless tremendous turbocharged ultimate unconditional unearth unique unlimited unparalleled unprecedented unsurpassed unusual urgent useful valuable wealth weird wonderful wondrous you.

Incorporating these words into your content will help generate the emotions needed to move potential customers from potential to customers. You need to inform your visitors while also giving them adequate reasons to act upon your information.  By adding some of the words from above, you can add a time constraint to your offering that compels people to take advantage of it. Failure to add a time constraint can allow someone to bookmark your proposal and then forget about it. By adding a time constraint, you compel them to act now, not later. Why would you want to spend all that time in design to generate the emotions needed to compel a visitor to buy only to allow them to bookmark the site and forget about it? Implementing the emotional marketing strategies will set you well on your way to higher profits through increased sales volume.

Peter, your UK based social media consultant reviews – Online social media training gives your employees the power to represent your brand properly, delivering responses in customer interactions that are appropriate to the proposition you represent. There is, though, a difference between the supply of rote answers and a genuine ability to speak in the language of your company. It’s a difference that can itself make the difference between a positive and negative customer service experience.

Every one of your employees should be a brand advocate. That means someone whose actions convince others that your brand is a good thing. Advocacy done right is unobtrusive to the point of being invisible. It is, in simple terms, the thing that you only notice when it isn’t there.

In terms of your employees using social media, advocacy happens when the manner in which they attend to customers (from the things they say to the speed with which they resolve questions) leaves those customers satisfied with their experience. It’s about creating an overall tone and feel that sticks from employee to employee – no matter what the question they are being asked to answer.

Some companies confuse the idea of having a uniform tone with creating stock responses to common problems and questions. The theory is that by having a brand-approved wording for a response, each employee can speak with his or her customer as a direct representative of the brand.

The problem with this approach is that – while understandable – it negates the fundamental purpose of social media. The social media, be they business based or entirely personal, are about having conversations: and repeating a rote statement is the direct opposite of freely exchanging views and ideas.

So the successful brand is beholden to create an environment whereby its employees know how to talk on its behalf, rather than an environment where they read out the brand equivalent of an edict. To do this, training is required.

Online social media training teaches best practice in expression and behavioural conduct when using either professional or personal social media pages. These best practices range from the manner in which a user creates and maintains a network, to the ways in which he or she expresses himself or herself on all of his or her social media platforms.

It is important to remember that every social media action, every word and every deed, is transparently visible to almost all contacts. The ways in which your employees use the social media when they aren’t working, then, are as important as the ways in which they use the social media when they are. These days, it’s not enough to be professional at work. Employees should have an eye on their professionalism throughout their social media involvement, wherever and whenever it might happen.

Consistency applies to every level of the organisation. It’s important that social media training happens at upper management levels as well as on the front lines. Management, for example, may wish to engage in an internal social media programme to instil brand spirit into the troops – and if they don’t know how to comport themselves, their efforts are doomed.

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company

You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company

You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely

Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready

Consistency of training across the whole organisation

Number of videos per section:

LinkedIn Academy (39)

Profile 15
Networking 5
Interacting 8
Advanced 5
Useful Tools 5

Facebook Academy (20)

Privacy 15
Security 4
Useful Tools 1

Twitter Academy (15)

Basics 4
Best Practices 4
Privacy & Security 7

Total 74 video lessons

Please go to buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

You can have access to the Whole Academy (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook) for a modest monthly fee and we will not tie you into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

BUY NOW

Alternatively contact us to organise terms and receive a invoice  

Social Media Consultant

Peter at Moscow conference

LinkedIn recently changed its architecture, allowing more targeted B2B marketing in the hope of both LinkedIn and the businesses that use it – facilitating a more flexible and focused way of bringing complementary brands together. Where previously LinkedIn only supported geographical and industry focus, it has now added the ability to tag and target specific tags; group names or types; job titles and types; and the names of particular companies.

What this means for social media marketing is that you can aim a specific B2B marketing campaign at a very highly defined segment of the site’s users. In turn, then, this indicates that you can deliver more success for a client’s marketing money. By plumbing a more segmented and defined marketplace, your campaign meets only those people who are most likely to be affected by it. This is a different strategy to the LinkedIn marketing of the past where your B2B marketing strategy had to hit a wider audience – and therefore, while it had more people looking at it, it had a smaller percentage of action.

The actual changes present in the way LinkedIn works are as follows.

You can now use the professional social graph to specifically aim your marketing at LinkedIn users whose profile suggests a strong match. This is in direct contrast to the old method of B2B advertising on LinkedIn, in which the marketing consultant had to make more of an educated guess as to which business sectors or geographic areas an advert might work best in.

You can use this information to create and display standard ads, or what LinkedIn calls “content ads” – dynamic content packaged in a single advertising unit for immediate and recognisable effect.

To an extent, the ways in which B2B marketers now use LinkedIn is dependent on the creativity of their thinking. For example, a dynamic content ad in which a relevant company hosts a market-specific, pertinent discussion board, works as a tool for client businesses and raises the profile of the host company’s name.

Display ads also allow businesses to reach out to other businesses with hard calls to action – a prime example is seen in a screen shot of a major national energy supplier, offering a two thousand pound saving to clients with a bespoke “Quote Machine”.

So the mechanics of dedicated B2B ads on LinkedIn are the same, generally, as they would be anywhere. An advert is an advert. The difference, as is the case with all successful marketing, lies in the way that advert finds its way into the eyes and ears of the people it is most likely to work for.

With LinkedIn’s new architecture, the pegs on which to hang these ads have multiplied and got smaller. That means more direct targeting and more specific advertising – which in the long term equates to a better success rate for the client company. B2B marketing consultants are now able to devise much more subtle and effective campaigns on what is effectively the world’s number one networked locations for businesses and serious professionals.

Peter Wilkinson | Social media consultant, social media speaker and international trainer

We all know that social media is the future and the importance of maintaining your brand.
Social media is a company wide requirement.  Everybody needs to be able to engage
and show a common social brand tone and engagement approach.

The Academy is constantly updated so you have the most up to date social media
training on the market.  It is streamed form our secure servers.

Now you can have your own social media training channel delivered to you when and
where you want it so your team can all learn from a common platform and take a part.

You can have access to the Academy for £120 per month and we will not tie you
into a contract.

You can buy now and go directly to the academy, see a demo or request a call back

If you buy before 30 November 2012 we will give you a promotional price of £96 per month

BUY NOW  (you will need to create an account to goto the check out)

Alternatively contact us to set up a credit account and pay by invoice

On Line Social Media Training

…….. Social media training to your PC, Pad or Phone where and when you want it

• Be empowered to work as a brand advocate for your company
• You and your employees will create a professional online presence that reflects positively on the employee and your company
• You and your employees will know how to use social media safely and securely
• Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook training that is always up to date and ready
• Consistency of training across the whole organisationPlease buy now to receive your activation code and url link for your personal on-line social media training within 3 hours.

**price is per month and  inclusive of VAT

***We will deliver activation codes and personal url within 3 hours for orders placed between 9am to 3pm UK time Monday to Friday.  Outside of these hours it will take longer

Peter Wilkinson | Social media consultant, social media speaker and international trainer

Driving the brand advocacy of learning, Peter Wilkinson explains how social media can be used to help establish a brand for your learning function and then encourage people to become its advocates  Published as a feature article in the Training Journal TJ http://www.trainingjournal.com   For up to the minute leading edge information about training, leadership and HR

Please click link below in red to see article

Driving the brand advocacy of learning

Driving the brand advocacy of learning

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | Social Media Speaker | SMM Agency Owner

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Chief Executive Officers, company boards and senior management need to up skill their social media.  Not only for developing and managing their own personal brand, but also for showing leadership in this important area. Peter Wilkinson, international speaker and social media trainer guides senior manages helping them develop a robust personal social media brand  and strategy so they can show leadership in their organisation.  ’The Social Company’ and company culture  are providing companies with a means to develop competitive advantage.  Using social media to drive innovation and company-customer collaboration is key.  Peter runs board briefing sessions to full engagement programmes for senior directors.

I have trained, given key note presentations and presented papers I have written on social media strategy, widely, from London to Moscow to Marbella.  The most resent speaking assignment being in the ‘House of Lords’ where I spoke on ‘social media leadership, and innovation’.

Peter is also Managing Director of Panther Social Media.  Panther  provide services for social media strategy development, social media marketing deployment and  programme management of transformational programmes to embed social media into a company’s culture with appropriate governance.

Peter has worked with boards and chairman of large global corporations to small SME companies. He brings an expert and practical perspective to developing a marketing mix for internal and external social media strategy and marketing.

Panther’s social media strategy and social media marketing services cover the full spectrum from senior board briefing and director training / mentoring sessions to a comprehensive set of social media services. Helping with the development of strategy to the full range of tactical services necessary for executing internal and external social media campaigns, you can tap into a wealth of skills at Panther.

Panther’s team have created a marketing Jobs portal http://www.socialmediamarketing.eu.com   This is supporting marketing freelancers and job seekers so they can find contracts, jobs and help.  Peter founded and with his team manage the  LinkedIn group ‘Social Media Marketing UK’, which is a vibrant buzzing group focused on the UK market

For up to the minute information on social media strategy and social media marketing please visit my Blog http://socialmediastrategy.org.uk/blog/

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Specialities
Social Media Strategy | Internal and External

- SMM board briefing, coaching & International speaking
- Social Brand monitoring – Investigations – Reputation
- SMM Brand energy transformational programmes
- SMM into the marketing mix

Social media consultant
Digital marketing | Strategy
Digital public relations
Social media optimisation
Search engine marketing
Search engine optimisation
PPC and Social PPC
Message strategy
Communications strategy
Integrated communications
Strategic marketing management

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Social media trainer and mentor, Peter Wilkinson, helps CEO, directors and boards develop their social media strategy. ‘The Social Company’ and company culture  are providing companies with a means to develop competitive advantage.  Using social media to drive innovation and company-customer collaboration is key.  Peter runs board briefing sessions to full engagement programmes for senior directors.

I have trained, given key note presentations and presented papers I have written on social media, widely, from London to Moscow to Marbella.  The most resent speaking assignment being in the ‘House of Lords’ where I spoke on ‘social media leadership, innovation and engaging your customers’.

Peter is also Managing Director of Panther Social Media.  Panther  offer a range of social media services from social media strategy development for external  and internal marketing, social media recruitment strategy for HR and full programme management of transformational programmes to bring social media into a company’s culture with appropriate governance.

Working with boards and chairman of large global corporations to small SME companies I bring an expert and practical perspective to developing a marketing mix for internal and external social media strategy | Social media branding | Social media marketing.

Our social media strategy | marketing services cover the full spectrum from senior board briefing and director mentoring through social media strategy development to the full range of tactical services necessary for executing an internal and external social media strategy.

To support marketing people, Panther have created a marketing Jobs portal http://www.socialmediamarketing.eu.com   Here marketing freelancers and job seekers can find a wealth of contracts, jobs and help.  You can also find regular updates from Peter and his team in their LinkedIn group ‘Social Media Marketing UK’, which is a vibrant buzzing group focused on the UK market

For up to the minute information on social media strategy and social media marketing please visit my Blog http://socialmediastrategy.org.uk/blog/

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Specialities
Social Media Strategy | Internal and External

- SMM board briefing, coaching & International speaking
- Social Brand monitoring – Investigations – Reputation
- SMM Brand energy transformational programmes
- SMM into the marketing mix

Social media consultant
Digital marketing | Strategy
Digital public relations
Social media optimisation
Search engine marketing
Search engine optimisation
PPC and Social PPC
Message strategy
Communications strategy
Integrated communications
Strategic marketing management

Peter at Moscow conference

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker – Marbella conference

I am passionate about social media and what it can bring to the organisation.  Not just the external marketing side of social media strategy but also the way it can be used inside the organisation to engage the culture and fire up organisational energy which in turn will invigorate the brand energy.

I speak on these topics at home in the UK at events and functions such as the APM conference and at the House of Lords as well as at major international conferences.

I am a social media marketing professional, Chartered Marketer, Registered MSP® Practitioner and Managing Director of Panther Interactive Marketing a social media marketing agency specialising in internal and external strategy | marketing for social media branding. http://www.socialmediastrategy.org.uk. I am an international speaker on social media strategy | marketing and have worked with boards and chairman of large global corporations to small SME companies.

Panther was founded in 1994 & has clients across the EU. Panther Interactive Marketing specialises in social media, social media marketing and social media networking as well as more traditional marketing methods. We help clients blend their social media into their overall marketing mix. Panther’s team help businesses grow in the UK and internationally with measurable ROI.

Our social media strategy | marketing services cover the full spectrum from senior board briefing and director mentoring through social media strategy development to the full range of tactical services necessary for executing an internal and external social media strategy.

I am founder of the LinkedIn group social media marketing UK #SMMUK. This is a vibrant and buzzing group for people who wish to find out more about social media strategy | marketing.

Panther also run a UK focused Social media | Marketing | Web ‘monster job board’ which is packed with social media, marketing and digital marketing jobs

http://www.socialmediamarketing.eu.com/job

http://www.marketingjobsuk.uk.com/

http://www.digitalmarketingjobs.org.uk

http://www.digitalmediajobs.org.uk

http://www.socialmediajobs.uk.com

My Blog http://socialmediastrategy.org.uk/blog/

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Social media has become a primary source of information on a variety of topics. Customers want to interact with services and support and get information from the help desks. If you want to understand the way brands or companies are interacting, delivering service and maintaining a brand experience then the key is social media analysis, which is derived from a social media intelligence system.

As a marketer you need to monitor constantly the social media channels and identify the opportunities for new engagement.  Analyse the social media intelligence to gain an insight into what customers, consumers and competitors want. Such an analysis also provides a sneak peek into latest industry trends. With an overall analysis you will be able to fine tune your social media strategy involving engagement tactics and service delivery.

Let us take an IT service help desk for example. The listening, monitoring and intelligence analysis forms an opportunity for such a company. The opportunity is passed onto internal stakeholders (customer service, marketing, sales and product development) for prompt action.

When someone puts a positive comment about your brand in social media, it can be used for building PR. There is also need to identify the peer influencer and brand advocates. There should be a deeper relationship built with such people. If there is a bad comment posted in social media then prompt action should be taken before the situation mushrooms out of control. Replies should be appropriate. Aggressive replies against a negative comment are not looked on lightly. You should stay polite and define the measures taken to overcome the problem.

The insights, analysis and opportunities can be key inputs for measuring the success of any social media strategy. There are some simple rules to turn followers into brand advocates.

You can transform followers into brand advocates by giving them compelling content and regular engagement. Brands should create their content and engagement strategies after listening to what consumers are saying about their product or brand. This listening should be analysed and converted into understanding of the data; then present it to the management. Such data will help single out the trends from other sporadic incidents.

There should be a well worth strategy in place that attracts the consumers to follow a brand via leading social networks. Marketers should engage with consumers and foster relationships. This will in turn lead to peer influencing. Once you have recognised a bunch of brand advocates and peer influencers the next step is to deal with them at a more personal level and increase their loyalty.

Consumer generated advocacy on social media is the fastest way to win the trust of users. But it can be the fastest route to lose favour too if the trust is violated. So engagements should be planned and not random.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Social intelligence performs some important functions: it pulls social media, processes the data and provides customer insights upon which actions can be taken.  Listening on social media performs a primary task of gaining insights about customers from an abundance of social media data.  As much important information is derived from social media data, a wide variety of business functions beyond PR and marketing are serviced. Some of the business functions met by social intelligence are mentioned below.

Reputation Management: PR and Marketing teams can track the mentions of their brand, products, employees, etc. within the social media sites.  Experts are able to see how the general public feels about them and use these as alerts for any potential crisis.  Brands use various social media applications to keep up with plethora of online discussions.

Brand Protection: Legal teams and marketers can monitor social media discussions for copyright infringement, product knockoffs, legal threats and other needs.  Many brands are using social media to manage potential logo and brand name infringements on the online channels.

Competitor Research: Marketers are also using social intelligence to track mentions of competitor’s brands and products.  By tracking competitor’s marketers can gain insights: how people feel about their competitors and business opportunities it presents.

Market Research: Market research teams can answer questions about their brand, product or services by listening to the social media buzz.   Market research through social media is a cheaper and quicker process but it does have its own risks. There is question on data validity of the data.

Ad Targeting: Marketers can search through various online discussions and find where their potential customer base is spending their time. It will allow businesses to target specific and probable sites for displaying ads.

Marketing Message: By using data gathered in online discussions marketers can understand how their customers talk about products.  Points made showing their satisfaction and dissatisfaction can be used in copy for marketing campaigns.

Measuring the Campaign: Marketers can use various metrics within social networks to test success of their marketing campaign. If the buzz is unfavourable then they can address this and review their strategies quickly and come up with new concepts.

Building Influencers: Marketing and PR professionals try to use social media metrics to measure an individual’s level of influence and potential for word of mouth sales.  They pay special attention to such individuals and make sure there are many positive mentions about their brand or products/services in social networks. It brings a positive influence on the marketing campaign.

Lead Generation: Sales teams and marketing professionals can monitor social media platforms regularly to find potential customers based on online conversations and content interests. They can track the engagement of individuals and track sales leads.

Product Changes: Changes in existing products can be brought about after tracking the online discussions of customers.  They can use the insights of customers and unsolicited opinions for future product improvements.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Customer relationship management is a key to success for most organisations, it provides businesses with much needed customer intelligence and other relevant data.  This data isused by businesses to maintain a good relationship with customers.  Using social media to maintain customer relationship activities can help improve company’s performance and tighten relations between brands and customers. Social customer relationship management can open up new opportunities for communication with clients outside the formal processes and build an online community.

For marketing and managing customer brand experience effectively there is a need to implement and manage relationships with a Social Customer Management System (SCRM).  Such a system would be an extension of the traditional CRM. It would encompass a social channels model and system.

Social media experts all around the world are watching the dimensions of change brought about in consumer behaviour by Facebook, Twitter and other leading social networks.  The brand dynamics have changed and there is an extra layer of complexity added to the company-customer relationship.  This layer of change spans across the entire company and not a selected few.

Traditional business intelligence architectures are holding back companies from fully realising the potentials of social customer relationship management. Companies would integrate business intelligence and social media intelligence system are seeing immense benefits.

The next level for social customer relationship management encompasses making changes to the system for getting real benefits to the brand or organisation.  Incorporate a real time link into customer relationship management system.  This link is SCRM. Brands or organisations should embrace this concept in earnest and develop strategies that create a good framework for expansion.

Leading companies such as HP and Dell are developing and deploying social media services that integrate social networks into their marketing strategy and overall mix of contact channels.  Such services offer them much deeper insights into their customers.  The social media strategies are integrated into a larger marketing strategy which is then supported by social media processes such as social media monitoring and intelligence gathering.  These can be analysed to provide both tactical and strategic inputs to ensure a high performance contact centre which drives brand advocacy.  Such initiatives can help organisations decrease time needed to market new products or services.  It will also mean that products or services are aligned with customer requirements.  Such an initiative will definitely provide brands with a competitive edge in the sector.

Most B2C companies are realising the importance of consumer-to-consumer interactions.  They are looking to build brand advocates and peer influencers to drive more business.  Business social media strategies are heavily inclined to improve brand experience in the social sphere.  There are powerful social media intelligence and SCRM systems available in the market helping businesses.  Such systems have a full set of tools and methodologies which help in rapid start-up and seamless broadening or deepening of social media strategies that will drive brand engagement, relationship building and brand advocacy.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Social media has affected the time spent online.  Many IT companies are realising that user time on social networks is growing.  This is forcing the companies to go where customers are.

Companies necessarily need social media presence.  They are setting up marketing and support pages on Facebook and monitoring the feeds coming through Twitter.  These arrangements are helping IT companies interact with their customers and seek their support.  YouTube is not neglected either.  In this social media bandwagon YouTube has also come up as major player.  Marketers are posting various sorts of self-help videos on YouTube. IT brands are also making their bids to set up support communities which can be easily found by customers.

It should be made clear though: not every upset consumer complaining about a faulty product will receive superb services and help from the Twitter or Facebook business pages.  It has to be understood that social media support is still in its early stages.  But this feature will definitely help companies build a satisfactory brand experience and drive more brand advocates.

Some big IT brands such as AT&T, Microsoft and Dell are connecting with their customers and consumers using Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms. Support issues for the customers and consumers are resolved on social networks by these leading names.  Social media channels and niche communities are becoming the hub of support and help for major IT companies.  Hewlett-Packard is using social media as a part of their support mix strategy to engage and impress customers.  HP is using social media combined with other traditional support channels such as phone support and online chat.

If you are a customer for these leading IT brands, you can ask a question related to your problem by posting it on the brand’s Facebook pages or even by tweeting about it.  A team would be scanning their brand’s Twitter profile, so a complaint posted in the page is sure to seek quick response from a company determined to protect its online reputation.

There is an elaborate support page for Dell on Facebook that contains key data such as setup guidelines, drivers, technical manuals and a help request form.  The Dell Cares support profile on Twitter has also attracted many followers for the company.  The social media listening command centre of Dell has support staff tracking all social media sites such as Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and blogs (through Google alerts).  There are 25,000 Dell related posts on the social media sites reported on an average.

One effective part of social media strategy could be utilisation of social media ambassadors.  These ambassadors could be employees within the company or some volunteers.  Social media ambassadors should minutely focus on Twitter, as it is the place for customers shouting out and venting their anger or dissatisfaction.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Building brand awareness, authority and trust are very important for entrepreneurs, businesses and bloggers.  Whether you are selling services or products, people like to conduct business with people they know and trust.  Social media is a great platform to build trust, awareness and authority.  Taking active part in leading social media sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. builds awareness profits significantly.

There are some basics of social media marketing all businesses should learn and follow:-

Create a Facebook Fan page with basic company information.  On the wall of this business page you can add a shop or share a link leading to customised pages.  This allows users to view all ads and promotions running.  There should be a button in the page which allows the shopper to communicate with your local store and get answers to any technology related queries.  Shoppers should be able to browse through all promotions, offers, competitions and gifts.

For the Twitter business profile you should integrate it with your overall business cause. Integrate Twitter with your other marketing actions using short URLs.  You can tweet about blog updates, press releases, products, promotions and offers running at your store.  Tell visitors about new store locations and other incentives.  Such arrangements will let advocates and customers stay in touch with the company.  Many companies are thinking one step ahead; they are using Twitter as a customer service tool.  You can respond to happy and dissatisfied customers alike.  To utilise Twitter in this way you also need to listen to the social media buzz and create a social media intelligence strategy.

Visual communications through all the social media channels should be consistent.  They should be in line with your social brand footprint.  Styles, fonts and logos should be consistent across platforms as you would do for any printed media.  Use Pinterest to make a profile for your company. Display all the employees and URLs on this site.

Let your employees take an active part in social media promotions.  Your social media community should be channelling information to your social media intelligence system. It will deliver hot information to the service desks.  This information in turn can be used to enhance your marketing strategy.  You should allow the employees to interact with customers.  Employees should be encouraged to actively interact and build relationships with consumers, thus turning them into brand advocates.  If your employees are able to resolve the tech questions of customers, you can be certain they will visit the real or virtual store to pick up the product and overtime become your brand advocates.  Offering a certain level of personal touch will help bind the customers and the brand together.

Brands should focus on creating a community where customers can share, discuss ideas and vote on certain related issues.  You can offer some inventive ideas and advice on how they can improve their business.  This community should be regularly monitored to know what ideas are being discussed.  This knowledge will help brands in their bid to continually improve – adjust, develop and innovate with consumers at the core of the process.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Social media marketing is the intelligence which is powering present day marketing.  All social networks are dominated by marketers keen on the promotional power of these networks.  Social media sites have opened a new world of chit-chat and sharing, which is now the obsession of everyone in the marketing profession.  Social media marketing analytics is the recent buzz among marketers.

Measuring social media can mean different things to different people.  Social media is not as simple as traditional marketing programmes such as advertising, direct mail or e-marketing. In social media marketing messages are dispersed from one individual to another.  Distribution of social media messages follow a non-linear path.  Such a complicated distribution pattern has led to differing opinion among experts about what social media is and what it can do.

Social media analytics can be generally defined as “the process that companies use to measure, analyse and explain the performance of their social media marketing initiatives relative to their business objectives.”  Analytics should focus on B2C and B2B marketing and how consumers are discussing brands among themselves.  The purpose of social media analytics is to allow marketers make informed decisions regarding their social media marketing initiatives. Analytics should offer a standard measurement which will allow businesses to assess their efforts and derive important data to help their management decisions.

Many businesses are using sophisticated business intelligence systems to manage complex data from their marketing processes.  Marketers need to be adaptive while modelling and implementing these systems.  Social media data sources present a new challenge for traditional business intelligence systems.  While the business intelligence systems are structured; social media data comes in semi-structured form.  Currently used systems are having problems analysing semi-structured and unstructured social media data. It is because data does not fit into the traditional data warehouse solution.

There are some issues in implementation of social media marketing analytics.  First of all, the way data is stored or the structure of content does not match with traditional models.  Much content is put into social media is unstructured and this needs to be analysed.  Such content may include PDFs, notes from phone conversations, letters, images, pictures, videos, etc.  Analysing such content using a content management or knowledge management systems can pose a challenge.  A large proportion of semi structured data is also put into social media. Documents, web pages, wikis and information presented in XML, etc. are examples of such semi structured data. If such unstructured customer data is neglected brands will be unable to realise vital customer insights.

Thus, the future of social media marketing analytics will depend upon business intelligence and social media intelligence.  These approaches should be flexible and timely enough to meet the changing business requirements.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Recent research by e-Marketers has revealed that 46% of customers seek solution for their problems when they are engaged with a brand on social media.  39% of these customers then provide feedback about services and products of the company.  When companies can effectively resolve the complaints of their customers they will do more business. Customers also want their brands to be more social and interactive on social networks.

A study by American Express states: “brands resolving their customer complaints via popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have a 21% rise in their sales than companies handling such issues over telephone or written form”.  The report further reads “one out of five shoppers turn to social media to file any complaints before giving a call to the company”.

These stats are strong pointers to companies. If you are not offering social service help desk then you are missing out on a huge opportunity to earn new customers and more business.  Every communication with a lead or customer is a marketing opportunity, so even when you are communicating with the customers, solving their problems you are already into marketing. With regular support and value added services you will soon have a fair following on social networks. The new social media marketing mantra is making brand advocates and peer influencers. You can accumulate a host of favourable friends with planned strategies for social service help desk.

Basically there are three core areas for success in a social service help desk. Firstly, you have to ensure that you are an effective curator. While interacting with customers there will be new data flowing in.  These are important for sketching future marketing plans. Create and preserve all these collections of data while you are about it. Have a caring approach while dealing with customer’s problems.  Customer complaints must be met and solved in a planned manner. You will be getting good feedback from a host of customers. Make sure you choose the best feedback for display in social network pages. You will need an expert moderator to look over the materials and display the favourable ones.

Social service help desk should have an effective social search. There should be a specific strategy for natural language and text processing.  The individuals in your social service help desk should have expert knowledge about other assets such as forums and Wiki, etc. Companies also require industrial grade search tools and techniques.

When you are looking to get the most from your social service help desk some organisational changes may be called for. There should be some added incentives for customers when they are engaged with you.  Most companies are offering free coupons and Twitter only news to engage their customers. These exclusive incentives makes customers stay glued. There should be robust governance within the organisation, HR departments and corporate internal communications should be engaged for the overall success of social service help desk.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Brand awareness is roughly described as the knowledge a person has regarding a certain trade item. Favourable brand experience leads to the fame of products and increases the chances of sale. When it comes to selecting among two good products a decision is often assisted by how well a certain company has portrayed itself to the community. Often the value of a product is based on people’s opinion. Taking an active part in social media networks improves the chances of making a favourable impression.

While planning for social media marketing you have to remember there is a vast amount  of data available on social media. There are options galore for marketing in social media and given this fact it is not wise to make on the spot decisions. Often marketers leaving their decisions to the last moment regret lack of planning.

Social media marketing thrives on word of mouth sales. Through social networks you can build trust and engage customers to give favourable recommendations thus leading to sales. If your customers like the experience of being engaged with your brand they will soon turn into brand advocates and recommend your brand to others in their circle of contacts. If you have customers and consumers praising your product will definitely influence others looking for similar products on Facebook or LinkedIn. It will significantly build on your brand authority.

Many marketers ask what is the value of marketing in LinkedIn? The special recommendations section in LinkedIn caters for B2B marketing needs. This can lead to word of the mouth sales across peer groups, thus reaching both personal and business connections. But the important question in this respect is: how to take recommendations and convert them into favourable brand experience?

Recommendations on LinkedIn can be further utilised into recommendation ads. Such ads are highly targetable and prove to be a useful marketing tool. With the help of cross social media platforms traffic more consumer focused areas can be directed to the LinkedIn company business pages.

Next, let us move forward to syndicate this content to various other social media platforms. There should be a proper syndication strategy implemented to reap these rewards. You can use the recommendation received in LinkedIn and syndicate this to other parts of the social sphere. Also comments and recommendations provided in other spaces (such as blogs and other social networks) can be pushed back to LinkedIn.

When consumers review the products or services and view the recommendations from their trusted peers (be it social or business) they are pushed into the consideration stage.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

Key findings from the 2011 Nielsen US report should be taken note of.  This report suggests: social networks and blogs are dominating time spent online for Americans.  Social networks account for nearly 25% of the total time spent online.  Social media has grown rapidly with nearly 80% of active Internet users visiting prominent social networks and blogs.  Out of these 40% of social media users access social media content using their mobile phones.  Social networking applications are the third most used by smartphone users in the US.  These stats bring to the fore the importance of social local mobile marketing.

The trend for convergence of social networking, mobile shopping and local search helps consumers save time.  This trend also works well for businesses.  Businesses can benefit from social local mobile.  The availability of consumer data which can be gathered makes this concept a real winner.

To cash in on the trend you can create business pages in Facebook, Google + and other leading social networks.  There are mobile pages and additional mobile marketing tools available at these social networks.  Through business pages the consumers can connect with brands and interact with peers even on the go.  Frenzy for social media encourages consumers to stay online using mobile phones.  Leading social networks are working hard to make their pages suitable for a variety of smartphones.

A recent PWC survey brought out some interesting facts: more than 30% of people are using social media every day.  Social media is used by 32% of individual retailers or brands.  What it means is: social media users are using various social networks to research and follow businesses or brands that interest them.

Consumers place more value on recommendations from their peers or friends in their network.  Word of mouth marketing and advertising should be harnessed by brands to influence the purchase process.

Social local mobile helps businesses in their bid to create brand advocates and peer influencers.  Uninterrupted interactions between brands and consumers lead to firm relationships and trust. Consumers can follow their brand 24/7 wherever and whenever. It brings out a huge marketing opportunity for the businesses/brands.

As more people are leaving their laptops and computers behind for mobile devices, it’s time to optimise sites for multiple devices to capitalise on traffic.  A site which appears well on all devices can increase their brand engagement and product conversations.  The point here is to exploit the convergence of people looking for information, products or services.  These are sought using the smartphones and tablets; favourable social media presence can drive online orders.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

There’s a sense in which social media uses itself to ensure employees have the best cultural fit. Because it’s an information sharing tool, social media makes it easier for companies to express their culture – which in turn means that employees who don’t endorse it or can’t “get with it” end up selecting themselves out of the business.

Your international social media consultant can show you various ways to make your culture felt using social media technology. Key to this is the concept of engagement. Team leaders and managers must be able to express corporate culture in their social media presence, to a degree whereby the atmosphere of company culture becomes a natural background to the interaction of every team and set of individuals in the business.

In the past it has been difficult for top management to instil company values across the board – simply because the bigger the company is the more fragmented it becomes. But when your international social media marketing consultant helps you develop internal social media networks, groups defined by teams or departments, all of which are linked to the top, then the company message can be expounded daily by the highest employees.

Obviously, in order for this to work those in positions of company power must be willing to spend time socialising with employees on the network. The core company values are diluted the longer it takes a key espouser of those values to interact with his or her employees. So follow the doctrine of your international social media consultant and maintain an active presence in the internal social networks.

And how does this all apply to recruitment? Simply enough – candidates using social media to apply for jobs internally will already be exposed to the company culture; and candidates coming in from outside can be made to be exposed to that same culture by ensuring the brand has a similar presence on external social media sites.

Again, this requires work on the part of high ranking employees, on the part of employees who have been nominated as official agents of company culture. It can benefit large companies to employ a full time international social media marketing consultant to develop cultural network presence both internally and externally so the message never runs a risk of serious dilution.

The basic measure of cultural fit is an observance of candidate’s interactions. Your international social media consultant will of course point out that there is no better way of observing interactions than on social media, which immortalises every action and interaction in a historical stream. So you can see how candidates react to each other, and to given situations, by holding informational interviews using your internal or external social media presence.

This is already being done every day on sites like LinkedIn. Time to take the advice of your international social media marketing consultant and join the party.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Here’s a question: can you use social media to change the way your employees represent your brand?

The potential for social media to change attitudes towards brands from the outside is clear. I’ve blogged already about how you can turn poor customer service experiences into positive brand energy by conducting a resolution in the full view of everyone on your social media streams. But what about engineering the culture of your grand internally?

The first thing to say here is that there’s a different brand concept operating at a high level within your business than there is at lower levels. Executives and managing directors become executives and managing directors by espousing the values of your brand internally. “Footsoldier” type employees, though, have no more brand loyalty than they do loyalty to their old school or university.

In which case using the social media streams and their associated technology as a kind of internal reconditioning tool isn’t always going to work. You can use social media as a messaging tool, of course, and you can have the totems of brand culture posting exhortative messages every morning – but your average employee is as likely to feel put upon by this kind of behaviour as he or she is to feel more like an ambassador for your brand.

No, the core of brand ambassadorship is your customer – and it’s the relationship social media can build with your customer that is likely to develop a stronger internal sense of brand personality, community and responsibility.

Think back to your own experiences in customer service positions, or in lower level positions within your current industry. Where was the reward? Outside the pay check, the reward is when you get to make someone happy. A customer’s joy is a very effective method for energising even the most lackadaisical employee. Because of course half the reason for lackadaisicalness in the first place is that he employee doesn’t see any meaningful return on his or her actions. No-one smiles or says thank you anymore.

So connecting the customer to the employee through social media can force the employee into a position of brand ambassadorship that he or she has not had to display before. And that gives the potential for direct, rewarding contact with customers.

Also, as soon as your customer service employees are using the social media streams to communicate your brand message, they become your brand message. They have to. Because it’s all there written, archived for ever more. And visible written communication doesn’t go off message when you have higher level management monitoring to make sure it stays within company parameters.

There is one way internal social media technology can re-engineer a brand fidelity of course. Smile and say thanks. Remember – no-one does that anymore. So when you do you start to reclaim the hearts and minds of your employees for the brand message.

Corporate social media use is all about transparency. After a while, your employees will self-select – they’ll either get with the programme or they’ll realise there’s nowhere left to hide and they’ll quit.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

With the evolution of technology, communications are changing dimensions too. For example your grandparents would have used the telephone, mum and dad used email and today’s era uses social media to meet their communication needs. Businesses have upgraded their communications models based on their clients’ needs.

There are various benefits of using social media to control your service help desk communications.  Social media provides a unified platform for free exchange of thoughts, discussions and problem solving.

Communities within social networks are able to take care of some basic issues for themselves. Communities discuss and solve problems sharing knowledge to  make short work of your help desk enquiries.

Implementation of social media as a help desk can also lead to reduced costs and time spent by customer service professionals. Social media help desks can also aid in bettering the range of services. Listen and understand any shortcomings of your products or services (from the customer’s point of view) and revise your provision according to your customers’ needs. Integrating social media as a part of your helpdesk will lead to higher brand engagement.

Though there are many benefits of adopting social media strategy, some companies remain reluctant. They still have doubts over social media for their organisation. Many businesses have a perception that employees may not use social media wisely and abuse the power of such a platform. Employees need to be educated, empowered, engaged and managed to make sure they do not abuse social media. Social media policies should correspond to the overall corporate policies.

Most business service desks still use email and instant messaging to communicate with their customers and employees within the organisation. Use of social network tools will expand the means of contacting clients and staff. It also provides greater opportunities for data capture, innovation and collaboration.

With the growing user base of Facebook, this social network could lead to active consumer engagements. With its 800 million users presently a service helpdesk as a Facebook page will not go unnoticed. If the page is regularly updated on the service problems and other product related issues, it is sure to attract the attention of the end user and improve the resolution of issues for customers.

ISP Plusnet can be regarded as a good example of service centre culture in social media. They have a professional constantly monitoring the Twitter feeds and updating it with new information on network maintenance. If there are queries lodged by users, service centre professionals set the expectations of the service provision and notify the users that the Twitter support service is now live. Notifications are also sent at the close of support services at the end of the day. There are telephone numbers provided for the users to contact and seek further support.

Such an arrangement allows users to solve their problems without having to call the service help desk. It leads to reduced queuing times and abandoned calls.

Social media engagement can create a favourable impression for users. Customers will be happy you adopted social media for service help desk!

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

In any good marketing mix, there’s more than one channel. That’s why it’s called a “marketing mix” rather than single channel marketing. An international social media consultant is there not to take over your whole job advertising and recruitment strategy, but rather to ensure you maximise all the channels available to you.

An international social media marketing consultant is able to help you recruit both internally and externally by harnessing the two great powers of social media technology. On the one hand, social media is where people go to join relevant networks. And on the other, it’s a place where people leave a lot of information about themselves – including their previous employment history.

The international social media consultant can help you understand how the existing flags and tags in a person’s social media graph can help you locate the right people for your business, or for your client’s businesses. For instance, if a candidate has certain key industry areas listed in his or her employment history, he or she may be of use even if his or her current position is not directly aligned with your own. Also, a person employed in one area, but connected to groups specifically rooted in other areas, may be looking to make a move that you can capitalise on.

The international social media marketing consultant will also be able to show you how the networking capabilities of social media can help you create the teams of the future. From an HR point of view, your social media consultant is also able to help you learn to groom likely prospects in advance, by using job or team specific network circles to deliver informal training and conduct informative interviews prior to a candidate actually applying for a job.

From the candidate’s point of view, the ability to research a job and prepare for the skills required in advance, means he or she feels she or he has much more control over his or her employment future. And as any international social media consultant will tell you, the candidate who feels he or she has control of his or her future is the candidate who works well within his or her team.

Ultimately the question is this. Given that people are already using professionally oriented social media networks to develops their careers, shy shouldn’t HR take advantage of the trend to find and prepare the best possible network of contacts?

An international social media marketing consultant, then, is there to help you use the technology to widen your pool of potential future employees. Bear in mind though that plenty of candidates, particularly at higher levels, use other routes into employment. Job boards are one, where they are specific enough. Others may not even utilise online technology. So the social media avenue is simply one of many – and the more you have in the mix the more rounded your HR capabilities become.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

As social media increasingly permeates our lives it becomes imperative for HR managers to understand all of the opportunities if offers.  These include the ability to bring a company’s brand to life in the online world, interact with customers and business partners in a more personal way than ever before, and to make employees and customers into internet evangelists for a business.

There are many ways in which social media strategy and HR strategy inform each other, but one of the most important in the years ahead will be in the area of recruitment.  Given the amount of information that is available through social media networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, among others, they have become an invaluable tool in the search for – and vetting of – potential hires.

The number of companies using social media to support recruitment is growing rapidly.  Some use it to source hard to find skills, others to find passive candidates they can approach with job offers or to refine their headhunting strategy.  Many HR professionals rate word of mouth as the best source of candidates, and social media networks are the online pathways through which word of mouth can pass more rapidly than ever, and to a wider audience.

Many companies also use sites like Twitter to advertise vacancies.  In fact, the number of job opportunities posted on Twitter has made it one of the most influential jobsites on the internet.  Talk to HR professionals and you will soon hear that within the next few years they expect the majority of candidate referrals to come through online communities.

As well as finding candidates, companies that are closely monitoring social networks are increasingly using them to find reasons to hire, or not to hire, potential candidates.  They are also tracking their branding as an employer, and can influence the impression people have of their business as a place to work.

In all of these aspects, the HR function must have an in-depth understanding of how social media networks function, how to use them to find the right talent, and how to create the right image of their company as an employer.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Discussions about social media usually focus on the external uses to which it can be put, on the conversations with customers and business partners, and on the building of an online brand through personal interaction.  Less is said about the benefits of internal social media networks, which facilitate internal collaboration and bring different parts of a business closer together.  Yet here lies one of social media’s biggest benefits.

Organisations thrive on having talented, knowledgeable and creative people, yet all too often they work in disparate parts of a business, operating in silos where their creative energy is focused on one small element of a company’s broader strategy.  Bringing those people together, giving them a forum in which to communicate and share their ideas, enables an organisation to tap into the full power of the creative energy it possesses.

The use of social media is primarily about building networks, but often it is focused on external networks of customers and business partners.  This is certainly desirable, but building networks within an organisation is just as fruitful.  A company that divides up its employees by skill set can benefit from linking people throughout the business that share other affinities such as personality, interests or secondary talents.  The result is a more cohesive organisation with more engaged employees.

Through these internal networks, companies can greatly improve their internal branding by encouraging broader discussion of its strategic goals, communicating its vision throughout the business and through the walls of departmental silos.  As a result, employees better understand the company’s strategy and can more readily define their role in delivering it.

Putting such networks in place creates fertile ground for new ideas, and the best ideas tend to stem from the entire organisation, not just one desk.  Harnessing the creativity and knowledge across an entire business often leads to innovations – be they large or small – that steer a company closer towards its strategic goals.  Employees know the business and with a clear understanding of strategy they can bring valuable new ideas to the table.

Furthermore, an internal social media strategy can have a beneficial effect on external social media strategy as it provides a proving ground in which to test ideas, develop policies and bring employees up to speed with the technology.

If employees are like individual neurons in the brain, then internal social media connects them to get their creative ideas flowing.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

As companies wrestle with the growing phenomenon of social media networks like Twitter and Facebook, which are an increasingly important feature in the lives of their customers, they seem to quickly understand that having a presence on these networks will give their brands greater prominence online.  What many struggle to grasp, however, is that social media gives businesses an unparalleled opportunity to have a more personal relationship with customers.

Many of a company’s existing and potential customers use social media to organise their lives, and use them to put their wishes, needs and opinions out into the public domain, that a truly responsive and attentive business can get to know them better than ever before.   Understanding what customers want is the most important step in ensuring that a company can satisfy their needs, and online social media networks are the ideal place to take that step.

Knowing what its customers want puts a business in pole position to provide the products and services they needs.   Not only that, it enables a company to vastly improve the quality of advice and support for existing customers, who want to have a dialogue with businesses before and after the sale of goods or services.

Customer relationships are a two-way street, and through sites like Facebook companies can ensure that this dialogue takes place in a manner that is timely, relevant and satisfying for its customers.

Social media is a landscape that is constantly evolving, and which is shaped by the people who use it, all of whom are potential customers.  By staying at the forefront of this process of evolution a business can greatly improve its performance in the battle for the prize of customers’ attention, but it can only achieve this if it understands the trends that drive social media.  That means staying in touch with and attentive to the opinions and desires that consumers express through these networks.

For marketers, the value of spending on social media campaigns comes from targeting the right people through networks like Twitter, and getting that decision right depends on knowing where and when to promote their business in order to reach the right customers.  Knowledge is power, and social media networks are a goldmine of customer information.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

How much money do you spend on social media marketing? How much do you spend on Google SEO? How much do you spend on print advertising?

The marketing mix for every brand is different according to the demographics of its core audience. If your audience reads a lot of magazines and doesn’t use the net much, then social media marketing fits hardly at all into your marketing cocktail. If, on the other hand, you’re targeting younger professional spenders, or school leavers, then social media presence is one of the most important things your brand can achieve.

Actually achieving a good social media presence is rather difficult, particularly for companies that have been used to dictating public opinion with advertising campaigns. Because social media works back to front, from a traditionalist’s viewpoint – the customers tell you what they think and you adapt your branding to accommodate their views.

Clearly there’s a very finely honed balancing act at work here. If you adapt your brand too drastically, it stops being your brand. For example, if you sell beer and lots of people who don’t like beer start complaining about you in the social media, then selling fizzy pop instead isn’t adapting your brand according to your social media reputation – it’s changing your business completely.

If, on the other hand, your target audience is unhappy with your social brand, you have to do something about it. This is the whole point of social branding and reputation management. You start with an intended effect, develop your brand personality (the way your brand is expressed, effectively, in social media streams) accordingly and then manipulate the end product according to the majority reaction from your core audience.

Our beer-haters example isn’t entirely fatuous: when you deal with the public eye to eye, as you do on a social media platform, then you have to expect some genuinely malicious publicity to come your way. The key to success in the social media is what you do with it when it happens.

An unanswered comment never looks very good – it shows you have no faith in your brand, or no ammunition with which to defend yourself. And taking down untrue claims about your brand just looks like capitulation. So how, in a world where your reputation can plummet in a heartbeat, do you control the social media terrorist?

As with most potential bullies, the best way to deal with a social media hater is to be honest. You can politely refute a comment of this nature, but that still looks a bit weak. What I’d suggest is that you ask the “complainer” to cite specific examples illustrating his or her point so you can rectify the situation in a satisfactory manner. That way you’ll stay strong and your brand reputation will remain good.

Ultimately, social media is a pervasive tool for a massive proportion of young and young to middle aged consumers. It’s a culture you can’t afford to ignore if you want to define and capture the market share appropriate to your service or your product.

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

In the days before social media when a business provided a customer with a good level of service the best they could expect was a hearty word of mouth recommendation to friends of the customer and a small spread of positive feedback. Nowadays any customer is potentially an advertising mouthpiece with the ability to promote your brand to thousands, even tens of thousands, of other potential customers.

Businesses that recognise the importance of engaging with customers via social media can reap tremendous rewards, not just through increased revenue, but through using their satisfied customers to drive their brand identity.

Social media allows a company to quickly and cheaply establish a brand identity, because it allows businesses to focus so specifically on their target audience. The information social media can provide regarding the wants and needs of your potential customers allows you to tailor your brand to match those needs.

For that reason it is vitally important that businesses actively encourage their customers to provide responses to their services via social media websites. This is the fastest, not to mention most cost effective, way to reach a large target audience. Businesses should ensure that both their website and communication materials contain details of how customers can interact with the brand, because interactivity is at the heart of the social media experience.

Interactivity allows businesses to open a conversation with their customers. The days of customers jotting down their feedback on a piece of paper are long gone – now customers can communicate their feedback directly to you quickly and (in some cases unfortunately) publicly. By responding to this feedback in a positive manner a company can not only demonstrate that they value their customer’s feedback, but it also can enforce a customer’s perception that they have a stake in a business entity. This helps build your brand identity and forges a bond with customers both existing and potential.

This interactivity is also useful in other areas – if customers can offer ideas for how your service could be better, it would be foolish to ignore them. Not only does social media feedback highlight potential flaws in your business model, but by implementing even one or two suggested ideas you establish the message that your brand is one that values and listens to its customer base.

Of course, social media is a particularly sensitive area to try and spread corporate messages through: social media users are by and large a savvy and cynical bunch who can detect a blatant marketing plug and expose it to ridicule with just a few keystrokes – no business wants their messages to end up with the dreaded ‘fail’ hashtag. This is why it’s well worth hiring a company that has experience in social media strategy to co-ordinate your social media presence. These companies are experts at what they do, and will ensure that your message reaches your potential customer base in an unobtrusive and organic way that plays to the strengths of the social media medium.

B2B Marketing article on LinkedIn advertising – a worthwhile read http://www.b2bmarketing.net/knowledgebank/social-media-marketing/best-practice/how-get-most-out-linkedin-advertising#

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

I could have phrased this title as a question really – something like: “Is social media’s true power in internal culture?”. Because whether or not the social media world has a direct impact on internal culture, despite what the progenitors of corporate social media presences might have to say, is still up for debate.

On the pro side of the argument, the “yeses” for social media giving new life to massive corporations, is the idea that using social media technology for internal communications somehow makes you more likely to endorse and display the qualities of your company’s brand. In basic terms that argument goes like this:

Internal social media networks allow high level management to “get down with the kids” on the shop floor level, by posting regular updates and having on-stream salons to discuss employee issues. The thing is, this pre-supposes two things I’m not sure you can second guess so thoroughly –

1)      That employees in the company are happy and

2)      That they’ll tell the truth when given the chance to complain.

In other words, social media involvement by companies in this kind of way is only as good as the reliability of employee endorsement. In my experience, not many employees within a given company are that loyal, or indeed that bothered – they just want to do their job and earn their wage without too much hassle.

So that’s the con side of the same argument. But what about the way in which social media as a public facing tool can change the way companies work internally? Surely that’s where social media has a real effect on the internal culture of a business?

One thing the  social media  does for everyone is make their lives more transparent. As soon as you start posting on social media streams, everything you say and do becomes visible to your entire social network – and is of course enshrined forever in archives too. So people can go back and look at how you respond to customer complaints – and the whole of your company’s social network, which should normally include as many of your customers as possible, can see in real time how you are responding to an issue.

A lot of companies have been guilty in the past of running scared from social networks for this very reason. When something goes wrong it goes wrong publically and in an achievable fashion. But here’s the thing. We all expect our service providers to mess up at some point. What we want is to see how they respond to that mess. If they do it well then they get our respect and by extension our loyalty.

The culture of avoidance in customer service issues has run deep throughout corporate culture for a long time – normally engendered by employees who, as noted, just want to be left alone to do a job and draw a salary. But if you use social media to display the inner workings of your customer service team’s responses, there’s nowhere to hide. And so the social media makes your customer services team buck up its ideas – or move on to pastures new.

Social Media Case Studies

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

How is social media going to fit into your company?  Does it sit in marketing.  Maybe it sits in public relations or in customer service.  I would suggest this is a culture issue and will be different in each company.  You will also need agencies to help, but you will not be able to outsource all the social media.

What is your process for developing social media strategy?  In my opinion, the best answer is to understand the way social media fits in your company.  How it will be resourced.  Then research your target markets, both internal and external. Know them well, understand them and be part of them. Immerse yourselves in the cultures of their online communities or set objectives to create communities for them to be part of.

Set your objectives. Have a clear understanding of what social media is going to do to your whole company and your marketing campaign. Social media is stronger if it’s integrated more holistically into the company and the campaign.

Set the metrics that will be used to track the success of social media strategies and tactical campaigns. These metrics need to feed off harvested data.  The important issue is they need to be translated into meaningful insights.

Create a plan!  Hopefully this goes without saying! You need to be able to layout a clear plan on where your social media efforts will head and how it affects your whole marketing strategy. Both the internal marketing strategy and the external marketing strategy need to be considered holistically and in detail.  There needs to be integration.  Nevertheless, the plan should be flexible enough to sway to how the target market is responding.

Identify the technology to be used (Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter? Etc.  There are many tools and this is where you need a training course or consultant to help. The technology to be used should always be put last in the strategy. Remember technology is only an enabler.  The principles are the foundation.  If you allow yourself to be blinded by techno babble and cool/sexy technology you may regret it later.

You’re plan shouldn’t be limited by the technologies that are most used by your users. Look into smaller Social Networking Sites or forum, etc. Smaller ones are more focused and may prove more receptive to your message and participation.

Consider – how do you see social media as part of the whole marketing strategy?  Social media can be for Awareness, Engagement or Activation. You need to be able to give it a role in the company culture and whole marketing strategy to keep a focus on the objective.

We mentioned metrics above, but how do you measure success in social media? What are the tools that you use?  There are a lot of tools out there that are available. But what’s important is that you need to be able to translate the data you get from those tools into meaningful information.  Hay, the marketing process has not changed we just have more and better tools to help us!  This again is where you may need professional help and input

Do you have a website?  Stupid question, of course you do.  The issue is how it integrates into the marketing strategy in terms of social media.  Is it a boring catalogue site? I know you will not say it is, but is it in your customer’s eyes?  Never changing or changing only when budget permits.  Maybe it is a site that is pushing the corporate message.  Carefully crafted by the marketing department, which is now transparent due to the advent of social media.  It could be a ‘let me sell to you shop’ with a ‘must have’ blog that is guarded by the corporate communications department.   Or is it a thriving community with two way dialog and social buzz, with people sharing what they think and feel about you and your products.

If you would like more information on how to build your social media strategy to integrate with your organisation’s existing or evolving marketing strategy please follow me or contact me to discuss your requirements 07930 330125.

Social Media Consultant | Social Media Speaker

A social media strategy is a powerful way to reach out to existing and potential customers or to business partners.  It is a means of bringing a corporate identity to life in the online world, making a business more responsive and interactive, and mining the valuable information that customers put in the public domain. But its power to affect meaningful change within an organisation is as great as its power to change the external face of an organisation.

Increasingly, social networks are being used to promote innovation within businesses, providing a forum for the creative power that is distributed within an organisation.  Internal collaboration is as important a part of a social media strategy as external interaction with partners and customers. For both of these functions of social media it becomes important for HR to ensure that employees have the right skills to use social media in a way that benefits the business.

For HR, there is also an emphasis on providing guidelines on how social media should be used by employees – both at work and at home – in order to preserve the right image of the company.  Careless talk on a social media network – be in LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook or a blog – can soon become a public relations disaster if it seems to reflect badly on the company.  The power of ‘word of mouth’ marketing that social media offers can, after all, spread negative comments as fast as it spreads positive views.

Social media strategy and HR strategy are, therefore, closely intertwined.  With the right advice from experts that understand the intricacies of social media and can point out both its benefits and its potential pitfalls, creating an HR strategy that is aligned with a social media strategy becomes far easier.

When employees are equipped with the right skills to use social media there is a real opportunity to harness the creativity and knowledge within an organisation, increase employee engagement, bring a company’s brand to life and also to improve recruitment processes.

HR managers need to embrace a wider view of social media and how it can benefit a company both internally and externally.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Social media has ignited a revolution in how companies interact with their customers and business partners by offering a more interactive and personal way in which to build relationship and engage in online conversations that define a company’s presence on the internet.  Yet social media also affects businesses in other ways, and companies have to keep a close eye on how their employees use social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Employees are people with lives outside the company, and like a rapidly growing number of people they use social media sites to organise their lives, express themselves and communicate in the highly public arena of the internet.  As their jobs are a big part of their lives, their comments may well reflect on their place of work, their company’s products and services, or even their employer’s clients. Of course, if their comments are positive then there is no problem, but any negative comments can go viral and create a PR disaster.

That is why HR departments are increasingly concerned their companies’ policies on social media. A short message on Twitter can soon spiral out of control if it is picked up by other followers and reposted, and there are many examples of this simple act forcing companies into lengthy and costly damage control exercises.

What seems private and personal to an employee can soon become very public through social media, leaving HR teams to pick up the pieces.  The solution is the have an internal social media policy that makes it clear to employees what behaviour is tolerable, and what is not.  Relying on common sense is not enough.  So, a social media policy needs to clearly define the ethical issues arising from discussing a company online, whether it is on a blog, on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or any other online forum.

It should address employees’ use of social media not only when they are at work, but also outside working hours, but without being so prohibitive that employees resent it.  It should also have clear guidelines on how any policy will be monitored and enforced.  Furthermore, it should stress that people will be held responsible for any comments they post that are explicitly identified with an employee of the company.

In short, HR bears the burden of setting a policy that clearly shows employees what rights and responsibilities they have as representatives of the company in the online space, and what the consequences are of posting comments about their employer.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Golf and social media are ideal bedfellows – and golf courses and clubs all over the country are realising that perfect fit! It’s not only golf, of course – any sport that relies on external conditions; has set times for play; and is performed in an ongoing league or as a one off championship, is ripe fodder for the social media technologies that now run many of our interactions online.

Everyone uses social media these days – even companies. So when golf courses started conversing directly with their members and players, it was really just an extension of a process that we’ve been observing across the board in our daily lives. Sign up for your club’s social media feed and you’ll get real time alerts about free tee times, perfect playing conditions and of course specific events: championship days, pro days and awards ceremonies for example.

The thing about the social network is, there are more people in it than just golfers, That’s true of everything of course, What I mean is, if your golf course is in your social network, then all your other non-golfer friends will be engaged with it at a remove of one. And when they see the flood of updates, photos, contests and social events coming through from the course, they may start to get interested.

For a golf course, this is a perfect example of influence – which as we all know is the new buzzword in the online marketing industry. Influencing potential customers to do stuff is the name of the social media advertising game – and the above example is exactly how to do it. For every fan you have, as a golf course, there are potentially hundreds of new converts to the game in that fan’s own social network.

It’s not difficult to maintain a strong social media presence once you get into the swing of it. Tee off with regular Twitter feeds and create a Facebook page. Your existing members are an instant fan base – and word will spread from there.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Panther Interactive Marketing, known in the field of social media and Internet marketing, offers social media marketing strategy services. Panther interactive Marketing understands that social media provides huge opportunities for companies to promote their brand.  But to get good ROI companies require good online marketing strategies. Such assistance is provided by Panther Interactive Marketing.

The experienced professionals at Panther Interactive Marketing work as brand ambassadors for their clients and promote their sites on influential social media channels. More and more companies are shifting their budgets for social media promotions. Company owners are giving more priority to social media promotions over blogs, copy and linking.

Social media promotions should always be based on current market trends. There is detailed research and expertise required to read and act on the current trends. The professionals at Panther Interactive Marketing have the necessary knowledge to help your campaign.

One of the prevalent trends in social media promotions is the fact that all the companies are making the same claims and have similar content in their advertisements. Panther provides fresh thought that will revitalise your brand strategy and come up with innovative ideas to make your social media campaign a success.

Facebook changed the world, with its constantly evolving functionality and influence on the way users engaged with it shaping the way they engaged with the internet as a whole. The result: socialmedia strategy was born. Initially it was born out of desperation – companies needed to keep up with a whole new game plan for product visibility, which arose when people moved away from just using search engines and started to follow the links given them by their social network buddies – who, needless to say, they trusted more than they trusted a robot.

Google +, which has been developed by a search engine, or rather by the company that owns it, is, in the words of the Bangkok street seller, the same, but different. That’s because Facebook was never meant to be a tool for marketing – it’s a social network through and through – while Google always was. A tool for marketing that is.

So Google’s whole + functionality, while it looks like Facebook on the surface, is actually built around the dynamics of consumer action, rather than social interaction. And that makes it perfect for your socialmedia strategy.

Why? Because a socialmedia strategy is still, effectively, an attempt to get people coming to your website to buy stuff. With Facebook, it has to conform to rules that are based not in an analysis of consumer behaviour, but in an analysis of broader social interaction – so it has to find ways of twisting that social interaction to serve its end.

With Google +, designed with consumer behaviour in mind, the socialmedia strategy needs to do less twisting and turning. It’s already plugged into a source that understands what it is trying to do.

It remains to be seen whether the Google + function will hold as much sway with the internet user as the Facebook Like, which can have an edge in the mind of the consumer because it comes from an explicitly social background. That said, not many average consumers know the difference between the Google + and the Like, so basing your strategy here can reap real rewards.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Panther Interactive Marketing has developed a range of social media training UK packages designed to offer a broad spectrum of marketing opportunities to British businesses. The business social media course options are intended to promote an awareness of ways in which companies can meet their customer’s needs through using social media sites and SEO techniques.

The social media for business packages offered are available in a range of incarnations. Clients can choose standard social media services, enhanced social media services and extended SEO services.

Standard social media training UK and social media for business packages include social media mapping; social media setup; and social media bookmarking. Mapping is intended to explore the social media landscape and develop a strategy that fits a customer’s business with the right audience. A business social media course run by Panther aims to foster the knowledge and skills individual organisations need to exploit the social media landscape to its fullest potential.

The setup service offered by Panther develops a bespoke network access using blogs, networks and tweet feeds to develop an online business personality. The social media training UK offered by the company ensures that every client is able to exploit its new domain to the fullest potential.

Panther’s social media for business services are designed to ensure that every company is able to use the same sites its customers do, to create a presence that sells.

Businesses have always cared about what others think of them. Reputation and brand building are two pillars for the success of marketing. In the present times the promotions over the television or printed press have been replaced by the social media for business. Understanding the requirements of the business owners Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions have brought their new service that comprises of tracking the success of any social media campaign.

Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions has earned high repute for their value oriented social media training courses yet they offer many other critical services for the social media professionals. One such service is their Web and Social Media Monitoring. With the help of this service the business owners can stay up to date with what other social media visitors are thinking of their company. Panther Interactive also tracks various conversations going on in the forums and blogs regarding their client’s company. If there is any need for improvement in social media for business strategies then they will be the first to suggest them.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Twitter has been the most recent craze in the world of social networking. In the last few years Twitter has not only conquered social media but also emerged as a giant tool in brand building and brand marketing. Today there are a very few people in the world who are not aware of Twitter or “Tweet”. In business the most important thing is to make the business network so that you can reach out to your target audience.

With the emergence of social media as a big marketing strategy the importance of leaning how to use social media has also become very important. This in turn has given rise to social media training courses all over the world. Panther’s social media training UK is designed in such a way that one can use the social media in the most efficient way to get the maximum benefit. Like other social media sites Twitter marketing is a big way which can ensure a big leap in brand promotion but only if used in the correct manner.

Twitter marketing is all about keeping people informed and creating brand awareness.  Businesses also have the opportunity of being aware of current thought and the feelings of their potential customers.  With the knowledge of their market they have the power to anticipate the mood and react quickly to market changes.

Knowing the strategies of Twitter marketing one can market a brand to the specific targe audience required. Twitter provides a great platform to generate hundreds of targeted leads for your brand.

The steps of Twitter Marketing:

• Create a profile for your brand on the website

• Once the profile is created, you have to get some followers. Once you start following people and participating people will begin to follow you if your contributions are interesting to them.

• Now you can start marketing your brand by posting all kinds of information on conferences, events or any public relations information – remember though, don’t sell.

• Once a tweet is posted, every one of your followers will access it on their computers or mobiles. This information can also be shared with friends by re-tweeting it.

• It is a good way of keeping a track on what people say about your company and a great way of getting the feedback about your brand and product.

Twitter marketing is a great way to connect and establish a relationship with the people and gain the information one looks for. The faith and trust which is built through interacting in Twitter on a personal level, helps in making a brand and marketing a brand to a great extent.

Social media has a key role to play in your reputation management. The buzz surrounding your products and services is your reputation.

With social media almost ubiquitous, the power of tweeting, commenting and liking is enormous. You can build a hit product just by getting the right conversation in a social media stream – or you can sink without trace, the victim of a social media disaster propagated from a single erroneous statement.

Reputation management uses the social media conversation as a continuous check on the status of your online reputation. It’s a monitoring system that allows errors and potential calamities to be headed off at the pass while good chatter is used to guide your thinking about future products, launches and marketing campaigns.

In effect, the social media chatter is like a “tell us what you think” card – but without the skewed results that a survey of “tell us what you think” cards would provide. Reputation management focuses on the fact that everyone on social media is chattering away off their own back – rather than as the result of a specific request from a brand. So the information is unfiltered, unbiased and completely genuine.

It’s the genuine nature of the information on social media streams that gives them their power. As the tide has turned and the real opinions of everyday consumers have begun to be heard, en masse, businesses that don’t pay attention either get left behind, or worse publicly humiliated as the tone of chatter about them changes.

Reputation management goes where public opinion is most displayed. These days, nearly all public opining takes place in some kind of social media sphere. There is no longer a delay between an error and its consequences – which is why social media streams need to be examined and understood at all times.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Social media has changed the whole perspective of Internet marketing in present times. Business owners are no longer satisfied serving their local customers they now want to capture the global market. Social media channels assist in this regard. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the best places to start your social media advertising campaigns. These channels are followed by a large number of people and most of these platforms are regularly visited by professionals and private individuals alike. Companies invest in marketing campaigns to get a good customer base but all the other forms of advertising are Geo specific. It is only with the help of the social media advertising campaign that you will be able to reach out to people sitting in  other parts of the world. If you can impress  social media followers then there is a high chance of getting good business.

There are many companies in London that have made the good use of Panther’s social media advertising London service. People are becoming interested in taking up services from businesses that have a social media entity. They can get in touch with the company with ease if there is a problem. They can post their opinions or contact the company sales people directly from their social media profile. In short they have another avenue to get in touch.  Here are some tips for improving the business using the leading social media platforms:

• Twitter: Creating a Twitter account to start your social media advertising. After creating the account ensure someone replies swiftly and in a friendly manner. Whenever the customers post any queries in your account they must receive a response, even if it is to say that you will investigate their query and get back to them. Many Twitter tools are available in the market that can help to improve your Twitter marketing significantly.

• Facebook: The popularity of Facebook is unprecedented, it is the largest social media community at the present times. Millions of visitors around the globe log on to this platform to find solutions to their problems. You can leverage the popularity of Facebook by creating a fan page for the company. With the help of the fan page you can reach out to your customers  quickly and learn what the general masses think about your products or services. You can start lead generation campaigns through the fan pages to maximise the impact of your social media advertising.

• LinkedIn: It is the largest social network for the business professionals. Millions of professionals and business owners visit LinkedIn to resolve their queries and update their profiles. It is important to have your own network in LinkedIn and start discussions of some of the major events in your company such as product releases, discounts and promotions. Enlightening discussions can impress many professionals to take up your services or products. Thus it is a good platform for Panther’s social media advertising London.

If you own a business and want to maximise your profits, then social media advertising is a must. It is a channel that provides the opportunity to the business owners to interact with the customers and the masses. There are a huge number of possibilities – seek help from Panther’s social media advertising London.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

The role of any stakeholder in a company is vital to the internal developments and success of the firm.  It is only with the help of a knowledgeable panel of stakeholders that a company can move forward. The popularity of social media sites can therefore be seen to increase communications between stakeholders and business owners, when and if used efficiently. Potentially, using social media site channels could mean that stakeholders can instantly come to know about the latest developments and make their viewpoints clear in a positive way. What is more, social media sites can save business owners time as they may no longer have to hold separate meetings with each group of stakeholders for the firm.  Panther Interactive Marketing offers such social media business tools and social media marketing training for businesses.

Panther Interactive Marketing offer social media training packages to suit all levels of business.  These cost effective packages have often shown to allow business owners and their employees to learn the value of interacting and informing the stakeholders effectively about their product and service.

All Panther Interactive Marketing’s  professionals have undergone social media for business training, allowing them to demonstrate social media promotion tasks effectively.  The social media training packages of Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions are both cost effective and ensure that the business owners will receive full return on investment.

For more information on various social media training UK packages offered by Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions visit: http://socialmediatraining-uk.co.uk/

About Panther Interactive Marketing Solutions: Panther Interactive Marketing Limited is a UK based social media training UK and marketing services company known to offer the latest and most useful media marketing courses. They do all they can to ensure businesses are able to meet their internal, B2C and B2B communication needs.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Social media has become most interesting point for Internet surfers in the recent times. People like to share their views and interact with many people all at the same time using social networks. This has led to the evolution of many social media channels, but none can rival the popularity of Facebook or Twitter. Twitter offers much scope to business owners in the UK to promote and reach out to their target audience. Most social media marketing experts tout Twitter as the best and one of the biggest social media networks for viral marketing and promoting all types of products and services. If you are not using Twitter for getting business benefits, then you are surely missing out on a great opportunity. Twitter offers chances for viral marketing to business owners. You can create a buzz using this social media website. If you have the required skills, soon people will be talking about your company, its products or services. By creating a twitter marketing strategy you can achieve many followers, testimonials as well as positive feedbacks about the products or services you are looking to promote. Its a great way of showing people that it is not only you who thinks that the products of services of your company are good. These positive feedbacks can go a long way in bringing in new customers to your company.

That said, the challenge that confronts business owners, is  :

How to use the limited characters in Twitter to write what you feel?

Or what should be the twitter marketing strategy?

If you are worried about the above questions then get help from Panther Interactive Marketing, who offer social media for business training courses in the UK. These social media training courses are made for business owners.  They help in making you a champion in not only twitter marketing, but also other social media channels.

Panther’s trainers who deliver the social media training courses in UK are experienced professionals who have themselves made big with the social media channels. They are experienced at setting strategies that will best suit your business and lead to a significant fan following for your company within a short span of time. Many companies  also wish to train their employees.  Twitter marketing and marketing on other leading social media channels is of utmost importance for the growth of any company. Thus the employees have to be well aware of the opportunities and challenges in social media marketing. The key traits required to become successful at social media can be learnt with ease if you choose Panther’s social media training UK.

Summary: Twitter marketing is one of the best way to market products or services in the social media channels. Application of proper strategies is important for the success of this type of social media marketing so why not seek advice and training from Panther.org.uk and enrol on a social media training course.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Social media strategy UK is full of phrases like “brand management”. There’s a reason for that – the enormous quantity of social media users, plus the prevalence of the medium’s influence on popular thinking (remember that Twitter, for example, broke the news about the Arab Spring), is an equation that makes for heavy reading. It takes a few comments in a social media stream to start the tide of reputation turning – and once it turns it’s pretty difficult to divert.

So rather than sitting on the shore like King Canute, ineffectually trying to wave back the water, brands are having to use social media and social media strategy UK to keep a close eye on what people are saying about them. New tools are enabling businesses to research the current buzz about their brands, their products and their overall online presence: which in turn makes sure that any negative vibes can be identified quickly and acted on.

Social media strategy UK advises that brands do as much listening as they can, engaging with social media tools and streams as a way of divining public and share holder opinion rather than using them as yet another stage for advertising antics. Effectively, social media streams are seen as a completely different way of marketing – less about shouting from the rooftops, and more about having a quiet conversation with a friend – where you do most of the listening.

Ultimately, the reality is this: social media strategy UK suggests that the chatter about your brand is your consumer’s way of enfranchising himself or herself with respect to what your business does. Your reputation is now in the hands of that consumer – and it demands you to keep a close eye on it.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Twitter has become one of the top followed social media networks around, with over 300,000 new sign ups for the site everyday. Now, just think how much your business would grow if you had 300,000 new customers everyday! Yes, with a Twitter account and with a well designed Twitter marketing strategy you can make it big.

Twitter is basically a microblogging site that allows its users to write what they feel in the form of “tweets” that are no longer then 140 characters or even less. If used properly Twitter can fetch you significant profits, but if the strategies are not set properly you can get lost in the crowd quite quickly. One of the success stories of Twitter marketing was viewed by Dell computers who had an astounding sales of $6.5 million by marketing through Twitter. Thus many online marketers are using  Twitter marketing seriously to network and market their products, on the otherhand it has become a headache for may business owners, who are unaware of how to best leverage the benefits of Twitter. In this respect it has to be said, there are four main pillars for Twitter marketing success from the customers point of view. These factors are mentioned below:

• Communicating with Customers: Twitter is a great outbound messaging website, where the messages are bound by 140 character limit. When you get inbound messages in Twitter they are to the point and quick. This helps the easy monitoring and management of conversations. Twitter marketing also allows you to converse with  customers in real time and communicate with them. With the help of this facility you can clear any grievances of the customers in a very short time.

• Brand Exposure: Many people think that Twitter marketing is about what you say about your products or services to the other users. It not that simple! Brand exposure can only be built by what others say about your company and its services or products. If you are present online and engage in customer interactions, getting a fair amount of retweets, it can shed a better light on your marketing campaign than any other social media sites. If you look at the brand exposure features of social media sites in terms of good, okay and bad, then Twitter will definitely get a “good”.

• Getting Traffic to Site: With the increase of spam and noise within Twitter, there are many users leaving Twitter. But on the brighter side, though business owners may not get any direct traffic to their website, they can get fair amount of viral traffic with the proper implementation of the Twitter marketing strategies.

• SEO: According to the new paradigms of search engines, buzz is a key factor in deciding the ranking of any website. Twitter and Facebook popularity are given extra stress by the search engines. So with a good fan following in Twitter the chances of high page rank also improve.

Its no wonder then that so many businesses are using Twitter marketing so heavily for their overall business promotions. You can improve the chances of success with the use of social media training courses. Some of the critical components of Twitter marketing are discussed and taught as a part of these courses.

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

A social media agency will tell you that the first principle of social media marketing is influence. Current digital marketing agency UK thinking (actually it’s quite well entrenched, having started a couple of years ago already) goes one step further. The first principle of leadership is influence.

Influence training has been a buzz at management and leadership courses and seminars for a while now. The basic idea is this: anything you want done is done because your influence and persuasion powers are working properly. Effectively, people don’t do things because you tell them to: they do them because you persuade them to.

A social media agency works to help brands persuade their customers to purchase their products and services. Any digital marketing agency UK will be able to point to hundreds of instances where the tools and behaviours present in social media use have been platforms for campaigns to influence, rather than instruct a buying public. That same influence is applied by successful teams and company leaders.

Think about it this way. A social media agency influences hundreds, sometimes thousands of online users to get involved with a brand. Without those users, that brand is nothing.

The digital marketing agency UK model, when applied to internal relationships between employees and their leaders, reads like this: without those workers, the leader is nothing. In other words, in order to get something done, all those workers must be persuaded by the influence of their leader – who in many cases they will never have met.

This is where social media tools come in. A social media agency can train companies to use social media technology to communicate internally – which allows the leaders to present their own brand message in an influential and persuasive way.

Your social media strategy should be having an impact on the way your company does business – both internally and externally. That’s the point of social media – it’s how it works. Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing aren’t just about getting more people to come and buy your products – in fact, any good digital marketing agency UK will tell you that the direct advertising potential of social media is limited. What social media strategy does instead is to give you an unprecedented window into the real thoughts and feelings of your customers.

By tracking your own comments, buzzwords and key phrases in the social media stream, you’ll be able to see what your customers really think about you – and use that information to tweak your existing campaigns, products and promotional strategies to closer match the expectations and desires of your customers.

Good Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing is designed to get the users of your social media services and streams to recommend your company: to refer to you and link to you in other areas of the internet. As such, your digital marketing agency UK is there to direct a social media strategy designed to highlight the importance of using Twitter, Facebook and other social networking streams: in terms of how your presence there will present your brand to the world.

Social media strategy is about creating a solid brand personality, which can be used to express views, create comment exchanges and ultimately bring influence to bear in fruitful areas of the internet market. Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing aims to get your brand talking with people whose own internet behaviour will have an effect on the number of people hearing about your company. Your social media strategy is designed to instil a culture of awareness and engagement with your target market.

Social media strategy doesn’t simply have to apply to the external behaviour of your company – or even to the way that your employees behave internally while representing your company online. Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing is a complex tool, one that your digital marketing agency UK is able to use to improve the internal working habits of your people as well as their outward representation of your brand.

Social media technology has made all sorts of advances possible – changes in the way that your company works on a daily basis. You can use your social media strategy internally, to streamline the way that your employees work. By applying the same tactics to inter-employee relationships as your Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing strategies do to your brand-to-social network dynamic, you’ll be able to use the strengths of social media technology to your advantage.

Real time meetings taking place in different locations is only the start of it. A competent digital marketing agency UK is capable of training you to use social media habits to run the daily working life of your company: by linking your departments together in an internal social media network, on the same way that your Facebook marketing and Twitter marketing presence links your brand personality to the outside world.

The internal culture of your company can be dictated by your external social media strategy too. Once your company has found its online personality, and is using its social media marketing presence to create a brand influence in new market areas, your employees must be encouraged to work in a way that fosters and backs up that personality. Effectively, your digital marketing agency UK is there to make a coherent personality for your business in the world of social media – and your employees are there to ensure your business backs up that talk with the right kind of walk.

Peter Wilkinson’s Photos

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Thought Leader and Social Media Pioneer

What is of value to the customer?

Value = benefits (tangible + emotional) / costs (actual + opportunity)

• What is the buying criterion of your customers both tangible and emotional?
• How do you get your customers to see the value in what you’re selling over your competitions?

“Nobody wants your product. Nobody wants your services. They only want what it will do for them right now.” The value it offers them now!!

• For each customer you need to know why they want to buy from you and why they will buy your offering rather than the competitions.
• What is their buying criteria.
• Develop the feature benefit grid to cross analyse your features and benefits against your competitions. Find your USP for each segment
• When you have found the benefits, ask your customers to rank them.

Each segment will have a different rank. You need to communicate what is relevant to each segment. The key benefits relevant to the segment will do better than all benefits to all segments

• Remember, we don’t sell what the product is; we sell what the product does. So don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle.
• A feature is what a product has.
• A benefit is what a product does.
• You will never identify all of the features of your product.
• Your customers will actually find benefits that you will miss. Think how you will find this and debate!!
• Try keeping a formal list of all the features and benefits of your products and services .

Let’s think of a pen

• If we ask the right question, at the right time, of the right person, we will get the information we need.
• Some questions to determine why someone would want to buy your pen:

o What kind of pen are you currently using?
o When do you use a pen?
o What do you look for in making a pen selection?
o What are the 3 things you like most about the pen you’re using?
o What are the three things you like least? o What would you like to accomplish in your profession this year?

• We must ask more to find out what benefits our customers are actually interested in.

Question: Why would Peter want to buy this pen?

Answer: Somewhere in this questioning process, the customer will tell us which benefits they need. You need to think about the structure of the research, but that is another course

Remember: A feature is what a product has.

A benefit is what a product does. Some examples: http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:B1ERaJK5Y1AJ:air.ingersollrand.com/nirvana/pdf/nirvana_benefits.pdf+feature+benefit+analysis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:HiWNcrWLtYcJ:www.ups.in.th/fba_sg.pdf+feature+benefit+analysis&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=uk

If you’re looking for marketing jobs or social media jobs why not visit our job site dedicated to social media marketing jobs. http://www.socialmediamarketing.eu.com/job/

Thought Leader and Social Media Pioneer

If you need to know more about B2B social media and the reasons why you should be using it, look at these excellent sources of information.

Peter’s profile http://bit.ly/69qjc2

1. Crushing the Myth of B2B Social Media

2. Social Media For B2B

3. Social media & B2B: Interactions are opportunities

4.  The Business of Social Media: B2B and B2C Engagement by the Numbers

5. B2B vs. B2C: Why is Social Media MORE Opportune For B2Bs Than B2Cs? It’s The.…..

Thought Leader and Social Media Pioneer

If you are still wondering if B2B social media is for you look at this presentation by Dell B2B Social Media Huddle – Social Media Trends

Peter’s profile http://bit.ly/69qjc2

What is your social media marketing strategy?

It has to add value – here is a 10-step social media strategy checklist.

• What are we trying to accomplish?
• Why social media?
• What kind of social media will help us best achieve our goals?
• What will we do less of if we’re spending resources on social media?
• Are we prepared to let go of control of our brand, at least a little?
• What will we do to encourage participation?
• Who will maintain our social media presence?
• Do we have the resources to keep this up, or will this be a short campaign?
• How does engaging users via social media integrate into our overall marketing/communications strategy?
• How do we measure success?

If you need social media/SEO training, consultancy or just would like us to do it for you visit http://www.socialmedialeicester.co.uk/packages.html

Thought Leader and Social Media Pioneer

A must watch video about social media in business | Leicester – Nottingham – Derby. If you think it is good re tweet it.

Peter’s profile http://bit.ly/69qjc2

A strategic perspective on Emotional Marketing

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

Peter’s profile http://bit.ly/69qjc2

Making an Emotional Connection with Your Customers Brands that don’t make emotional connections with their prospects and customers will eventually lose out to those that do. The practice of emotional marketing is all about getting your target audience to connect with your product, service, and brand at a very basic and fundamental level – the level of emotions. Examples of emotional marketing can be seen with top brands such as Starbucks, Porsche, and so on.

These products and services make an emotional connection with the people they serve. Your challenge is to identify how your products/services can connect emotionally. What is the larger purpose? What type of experience can you offer your customers? Emotional marketing can only take place once you deliver a user experience that embodies your purpose. Once you are able to deliver on that promise, you can market the experience to your prospects.

Be sure to leverage:

• Customer testimonials
• Word-of-mouth
• Discussion forums
• Trials

When your product or service delivers an experience, get prospects to participate and have the experience themselves. Remember…emotional marketing is a powerful strategy if you can deliver a strong customer experience. Marketing strategies without emotion will not work. Emotion stimulates the mind 3000 times faster than rational thought. It’s an emotional world we live in. Many people say we live in a rational world but nothing could be further from the truth. Emotions drive our behaviour; the world is driven by emotions. Rational thought leads customers to be interested but it is emotion that sells. People really aren’t much interested in attributes; they want to know if they can have a product that suits their personality.

It is all about values.

Do you remember the equation? Emotional marketing is better in many instances than rational marketing that focuses on product attributes. Capturing minds is one thing; capturing hearts is quite another. Build emotions in your marketing strategies; don’t always chase “share of wallet – chase “share of heart”. Employ strategies that would make decisions very emotionally driven and remove the rational questions that might drive the prospect elsewhere.

Highlight the Emotional Satisfaction Your Clients Will Get

No matter what your business is, if you are serving people, you need to be able to tap into the emotions that motivate them. Describe the emotional gratification that your clients get from your services. Example: Your clients feel a sense of “pride” because they have improved skills; “confidence” that they will provide better outcomes for their own customers; “relief” that they will more easily meet some legal requirement, “joy,” etc. Pushing the right emotional buttons to get your visitors to buy

First we need to learn what kinds of visitors come to our sites.

What kind of people are they, and what kinds of emotions compel them to buy?
Does keeping up with the “Jones” motivate them?
Do they have a family or children?
Are they middle aged and planning for retirement?
Are they more motivated by competitive price or quality of merchandise?
Do they prefer ease of use or features, what benefits are they looking for?

The answers to all these questions can be and should be simplified down into basic emotional needs. Take for instance a person who is looking for ways to generate more income because of the financial needs of college tuition and a nest egg to pass onto their children. Now combine that person with a website that could help them cater to these needs, and help them to accomplish their goal.

Think about the feelings that could be generated to compel this person to buy. Think about the feelings and reasoning this person has for the goal they are trying to achieve.

Doesn’t every parent want their children to have it better than they did?
What can a webmaster/website designer do to convey feeling in this instance?

To begin with let’s start with painting a picture. Stories are good at that. Using words to paint a picture for them about what our services can offer, and how those services can benefit their children with financial stability. Then we can choose pictures that convey the same kinds of feelings that our text did. For instance, maybe a picture where the child is young, and then the same picture where the child is older and standing in front of a college or university. We could also use a picture of a new car to imply the financial stability and wealth to own such high-ticket items directly resulting from purchasing our products/services. These are just some examples.

Keep in mind that we need to keep the trust in tact. Do not make offers that cannot be delivered upon. Done correctly, you can see how compelling such a site could be. Of course, there are other factors that come into play. People like to deal with reputable companies. People also look for companies that are going to be around for a while. They fear making a purchase and then being left alone without anyone to turn to for technical information or repairs. Again, all of this boils down to feelings and basic emotional needs. Knowing which buttons to push will help develop websites that not only draw visitors back, but also compel them to buy, or click through affiliate programs.

The ten emotions that add the most force to a sales or marketing effort

1. Achievement – How does your product/service contribute to the customer’s achievement or accomplishment of something notable in life? In this example, your product/service becomes part of the customer’s identity.

2. Pride of ownership – How does your product/service contribute to the pride someone would feel from ownership? When you pit pride against features or benefits, pride usually wins in the end.

3. Security – What kind of security does your product/service offer? This is a blanket emotion that includes money, love, acceptance, power and control. Do not emphasise it if you cannot offer it.

4. Self-improvement – How does your product/service appeal to a person’s self improvement needs? The internet was born from information relay ideas. Almost everyone uses self-improvement books, articles, or newsletters of some kind. Information is what keeps the internet moving, and content is king.

5. Status – How does your product/service contribute to the status your visitor achieves? Everyone knows that you can fly in second class because it is cheaper and more economical, but deep inside almost everyone would rather fly in first class. What is the “first class” of your product or service?

6. Style – How does your product/service fit your buyer’s style? Are your products/services the Ferrari of style, or are they the Reliant Robin? Keep in mind that their style needs can be real or imagined.

7. Conformity – Does your product/service fall into a conformity niche? People do not want to be alone. They flock together in groups. You have seen them throughout school, and surely have seen them in your adult life. Does your product or service command a group following? How would your product/service help to fulfil the need of community? Does peer pressure play a role in your product/service?

8. Ambition – How does your product/service help people to get more out of life? More out of life is a broad term and can be applied to money, love, security, power, or just about anything else you can think of. What is it that people want more of that your product or service can help them get more of?

9. Power – In what ways does your product/service offer a person more power? Power can be over something as simple as their own lives, time, or any number of other things. What ways can you come up with that will help people gain more control over things that they want more control over?

10. Love – This one is the grand daddy of them all. The more of these feelings you can incorporate into your design and information, the better chance you have of generating the emotions needed to compel a person to buy.

Incorporating these 10 emotions into your design may help you produce better results.

The top emotional response words Marketing firms have an inside secret that helps them to write compelling content and advertisements. They know there are certain words with the English language that, when read, create an emotional response. The big names in marketing use those words every day to write compelling copy that increases the potential for higher sales volume. Those words are words that conjure a specific positive thought, or pull on the emotional senses that each of us have. They make certain implications that give us warm fuzzes about the products or services we review, and the security needed to trust the company involved.

Those words also add a time constraint, another secret in marketing, which compel people to act before they “miss out” on something. absolutely accurate advantage aggressive already amazing approved attractive authentic bargain beautiful better big bonus celebrate challenge colourful colossal commanding complete confidential convenient crammed delivered dependable direct discount easily effective electrify enchanting endorsed enormous essential everlasting excellent exciting exclusive expand experienced expert exquisite extraordinary extravagant famous fantastic fascinating foolproof force foremost fortune full gallant genuine gift gigantic golden greatest guaranteed helpful highest honour huge hypnotise immaculate immediately impressive improved incredible indescribable informative inspect instructive interesting invincible largest latest lavishly liberal lifetime limited limitless lowest magic magnificent magnify mammoth matchless maximum miracle noble noted odd outperforms outstanding overpower personalised pioneer popular powerful practical preferred private professional profitable proven quality quickly radiant rare recommended reduced refundable reliable remarkable revealing revolutionary scarce scorecard seasoned secrets security selected sensational simplified sizable skilled solid sparkle special spirit startling stimulate strange strong sturdy substantial successful superior surprise tempting terrific tested timeless tremendous turbocharged ultimate unconditional unearth unique unlimited unparalleled unprecedented unsurpassed unusual urgent useful valuable wealth weird wonderful wondrous you.

Incorporating these words into your content will help generate the emotions needed to move potential customers from potential to customers. You need to inform your visitors while also giving them adequate reasons to act upon your information. By adding some of the words from above, you can add a time constraint to your offering that compels people to take advantage of it. Failure to add a time constraint can allow someone to bookmark your proposal and then forget about it. By adding a time constraint, you compel them to act now, not later.

Why would you want to spend all that time in design to generate the emotions needed to compel a visitor to buy only to allow them to bookmark the site and forget about it? Implementing the emotional marketing strategies will set you well on your way to higher profits through increased sales volume.Emotional marketing is the most powerful way to increase market share and create undying brand loyalty. However, if you do it wrong, you can spend millions on advertising that actually talks people out of buying!

In “Ogilvy on Advertising”, David Ogilvy discusses a study done by a former research director at Ford. Automotive ads were placed in every other copy of the Reader’s Digest. At the end of the year, more cars were purchased by people who had not been exposed to the ad! Use emotional marketing correctly and you’ll create Irresistible brand that builds long lasting relationships with loyal brand customers. However, if you use emotional marketing incorrectly, you’ll drive people away and erode your market share.

Here are five of the most harmful emotional marketing mistakes, and they are a lot more common than you might think!!

1. The Empty Promise – You can’t sell on attitude alone. People may buy for emotional reasons, but they want to justify their purchases with logic. So you must give them real reasons to purchase. Real features and their respective benefits that deliver!

2. The Emotional Mismatch – Emotional benefits are the human needs that attach to real features. Not every emotional benefit is appropriate for every feature. Your emotional promise must be logically consistent with the features you have to offer.

3. Emotional Psychobabble – Be honest! Have you ever sat in a meeting where people were pretending to know what each other was talking about when it came to the emotional benefits in your campaigns?

4. Emotionally Biased Research – People like to think of themselves as smart shoppers, so they aren’t likely to admit to you (or themselves) their emotional reasons for purchase (especially if they’re not socially desirable – lust, greed, envy, etc). So you need special research techniques to uncover emotional marketing insights!

5. Emotional Advertising Blunders – When you execute on an emotional marketing approach, you can’t just blurt it out at the consumer (e.g. “Use my brand and you’ll feel more powerful!”)

Show them, don’t tell them! (Emotional marketing is for marketers to understand, and consumers to experience!) The market out there is fast and furious. The competition is heavy and the marketing messages are reaching consumers in their thousands every day. To compound the challenge most of your potential customers’ basic needs are already met. They are looking for things to enhance their lives, make them feel better, prettier and sexier. Marketing to today’s consumers is a challenging business because you are no longer listing the specifications of products and services. Instead you are meeting people on an emotional level to break into their consumer awareness.

Let’s focus on some of the tactics, what they are and what you should do to benefit from marketing on an emotional basis to your potential customer base. First take your cue from the marketing greats such as Nike, Coke, Pepsi. They have been top marketers for decades and have multi-million budgets. Yet you never see a Coke or Nike ad list the specifications for soda pop or running shoes. They market entirely on an emotional level. When figuring out how to market emotionally, you need to work out what drives your customers.

How do they spend their days? How can your product make their lives easier, make them healthier or better looking or their lives more fun? Once you get a grip on how your product appeals to your customer, you can then focus your marketing efforts on bringing to the fore the emotional offer that your clients will respond to. For example, if you sell liquid vitamins I would say off the top of my head that your target market are people who are health conscious, not as healthy as they would like to be, high income earners, probably leading quite stressed lives and they want their vitamins quickly and immediately. Obviously you need to pitch your marketing tactics at intelligent, busy people who are concerned about their health and want instant results from vitamins. You could show a before stressed executive at office or stressed mother ferrying the kids and after an executive in control of a meeting, mother is laughing with the kids to show the benefits of these vitamins.

This approach hits a number of emotional points in the consumer:

1. There is help out there.

2. It doesn’t have to be this way.

3. Ordinary people are benefiting from this.

4. All it takes is liquid vitamins to change your life.

5. My destiny is in my hands because I can buy liquid vitamins to change my life.

6. Vitamins make you healthy so they will make me healthy too.

7. Liquid vitamins have an instantaneous effect on your mood and life.

Whether any of these assumptions bear scrutiny is not the point. The point is the emotional response that your campaign induces in the potential customer. To build an emotional marketing campaign you need to read the psycho-social make-up of your target market and build up an emotional campaign to meet their needs. It sounds like common sense but surprisingly few businesses go about doing this. They simply have advertisements published and hope for the best. What you actually need is a promotional campaign where you are entering into an emotional back-and-forth relationship with the customer, persuading them that your service or product can meet their emotional need.