Panther's Social Media Marketing Blog

What is the Importance of Brand Advocacy in Social Media Marketing?

chaitalid — Fri, 18 May 2012 05:31:17 +0000

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.

Specialist Jobsites and Social Media Recruitment Strategy are Keys for Cost Effective Recruitment

chaitalid — Thu, 17 May 2012 08:55:46 +0000

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

In order to understand how best to recruit staff, you have to understand how candidates go about finding new jobs. The big job sites are long gone – an international social media marketing consultant will tell you that most companies feel they are spammed by large job sites, so except in a very few situations they tend to steer clear.

Specialty job sites are a different matter entirely. The specialty job site provides candidates with very specific skills and employment histories. Generally speaking a company with specific detailed requirements can find good candidates on small, focused job boards.

Social media marketing is of course the other fruitful online avenue to employing good people. An international social media marketing consultant is there to help you expand your hit rate by ensuring you focus your attentions in the right places.

Every social media marketing campaign represents a spend on your part of course. So in order to keep your spending under control, and make sure your ROI for your recruitment spend is good, it is necessary to identify the most fruitful areas for you to advertise in.

Not all social media recruitment is direct advertising. An international social media consultant can help you identify networks you need to be in, where a whole collective of potential future candidates may be waiting for you to come knocking.

Ideally, you want to start associating yourself with industry players and influencers – people or companies whose opinion and actions carry more weight than the average. Because the people working with and in businesses are the ones you want to come to you when they are looking for work – or when they have a promising contact who is in need of a job.

In a stricter marketing sense, you can direct your recruitment campaigns with key terms in much the same way as you optimise your web page. Target key employer names, for example, in the social media graph of candidates for people with the right experience.

An international social media marketing consultant should emphasise the importance of routine in social media marketing and recruitment. You can’t simply hop onto the network when you want to fill a position, and expect everything to be ready and waiting for you. In reality, your social media recruitment campaign must be as proactive and intensive as your social media branding campaigns.

Indeed, as any international social media consultant will tell you, there is very little difference between branding using social media and recruiting using social media. Ultimately in both instances you are trying to create and maintain a presence for your brand – a presence that excites people and makes them want to be part of what you do. That means plugging away every day, building up and maintaining your visibility on the right networks.

Put in the time and you will reap the rewards.

LinkedIn Advertising for Legal Practices

chaitalid — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:26:31 +0000

Peter Wilkinson | Social Media Consultant | International speaker

For any legal practice, in today’s competitive business world, advertising is essential. Many businesses, including legal practices are turning away from traditional advertising methods and further towards modern methods such as social networking for their advertising campaigns and LinkedIn is at the heart of this revolution.

LinkedIn is a business focused social networking site, there are a variety of means of advertising available on LinkedIn and a legal practice that is able to take advantage of this is sure of success within the site.

The Advertising Platforms

There are five methods or platforms for advertising on LinkedIn and each has their own levels and degrees of success. Firstly, there are display adverts. A display advert is one which is displayed on the screen and is only visible to members of appropriate groups. For your legal practice, a display advertisement might then be displayed to other legal professionals, charities, financial services and other professionals.

Next are Social Ads. These are more of a type of technology rather than a type of advert and ensure that the adverts are seen by the businesses and individuals likely to profit from your offerings. This information is based on the various groups which users choose to join.

Home Page Takeover Ads are the most impressive, wide reaching and (obviously) the most expensive of LinkedIn advertising methods. These are a form of “roadblock” advert which leads to engagement and call to action before the user passes to the normal business home page. Such adverts can be best utilised for attracting attention to special offers.

Standard adverts are IAB compliant ads that are easy to follow and provide ample space for placing text links in the call to action.

Last but not the least is content ads which engage the customers by streaming multiple content stands using a single ad unit.

The Secret of Success

Just as is the case with traditional advertising, there are certain do’s and don’ts when it comes to LinkedIn advertising and in order to guarantee your success, it’s always a good idea to consider your target market and use a soft selling approach.

Secondly, all adverts should contain direct and punchy headlines with hyperlinks leading to your page. Use all the information about target users when purchasing advertising times. Knowledge about target market aids in the decision: whether to run LinkedIn advertising campaigns using your personal or business account.

Before running an ad campaign wait until you and your partners are certain of a direction or plan rather than going in half-cocked and failing to make the right (or indeed any) impression.

Social media strategy for recruitment agencies: What you should consider?

Peter Wilkinson — Wed, 16 May 2012 08:55:24 +0000

Peter Wilkinson Panther Social Media

This is the “opportune moment” for recruitment agencies to come out of their toe dipping stance with social media. Latest surveys over jobseekers in the UK came out with some staggering facts. Most jobseekers in theUKand all through Europe are using social media to not only search for their choice of jobs but also to interact with their potential employers. Two leading sites in this regard are Facebook (used by 64% of jobseekers) and LinkedIn (used by 52% of jobseekers). These stats have proved that jobseekers have found social media as an ideal platform to find suitable jobs.

After having a look at these facts it can be said that solely having a presence on social media is not enough for the recruitment agencies. As with other organisations, they may require assistance from professional social media marketing consultant to plan their social media strategy. While developing a sound social media strategy to trigger growth of campaigns there are certain factors that need to be attended to.

Needs: The primary goal for any recruitment agency is to find the best talent for the vacancy. Before finding the talent it should be clarified what type of person is needed. After this question has been answered professionals need to start looking at the social media networks where such talent can be found. Look through the popular social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Sort the type of workforce depending on the requirements. Once the source of talent has been identified strategies can be planned out by your social media marketing consultant.
Brand: Like any other business, you will not find the best candidates unless you can attract them to your brand. Social media marketing consultants are aware of this fact. With the right social media strategy you will create the right impression to jobseekers and help create a great brand image in social media. Jobseekers will seek only trustworthy and well connected recruitment agencies to back their job seeking bids.
Engagement: The dimensions of engagement for a recruitment agency have changed. Agencies do not sit back after posting their ads waiting for the phone to ring or door to open. With effective social media strategy they will actively seek candidates. Social media marketing consultants will help agencies create an engaging strategy that will include tweeting, blogging and making more friends and contacts in the social media sphere. All social media engagement should be well targeted and proportioned. If an agency posts too frequently it might be seen as desperate, while infrequent engagements can lead the contacts to fall away.
Honesty: The world has become a less tolerant and more cynical place. People are cautious to trust others nowadays. Recruitment agencies therefore need to have integrity and honesty in all dealings on social media to build trust in their followers.

Recruitment agencies will need to take these factors into account while planning their social media strategy. Getting help from an expert social media marketing consultant is a sensible first step for recruitment agencies launching in the social media sphere.

account-director–healthcare-pr–gsa-techsource–surrey

Panthernews — Tue, 15 May 2012 11:54:18 +0000