Small businesses shouldn’t have to struggle

This article from Silicon Republic demonstrates the need for social media but reinforces the fact that many small companies struggle to implement it.  It does eat into your staff’s time, but I can show you ways to create an efficient social media strategy that minimises time spent and resources used.  Social media is a fabulous way to keep consumers up to date and aware of your services and products and needn’t be the headache that pushes you away from it.

Ways I can help:

  • Identify essential social media channels
  • Develop a content strategy that pushes out your key messages
  • Determine the most suitable candidates in the organisation to post, monitor and maintain the sites – or do that for you
  • Workshop a conversation calendar that takes the head-scratching away from what to post

social media, small businesses

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/new-media/item/30008-small-businesses-struggle-w#

Do you need help with your social media?

USING SOCIAL MEDIA is a hygiene factor for companies nowadays – an affordable and effective way to communicate with your brand ambassadors, customers and stakeholders. All these different channels are revolutionising how you can interact with, inform, help and and learn from your customers, an amazing tool for rewarding advocates and placating whingers.

In Ireland alone, we are massive users of social media and it is a missed opportunity for any company not to be present and interacting with their consumers.  Did you know that we are the fourth heaviest users of Facebook in the world (the heaviest in the English speaking world) and Snapchat has the most penetration in Ireland?  You only have to listen to the call to action on radio ads – you are no longer being sent to the website (a static non-interactive forum) but to their Facebook page.

No company is too small to have a presence on social media; whether it’s to help boost your search engine rankings, act as a customer service tool, learn what your customers want, engage a new target audience, or simply to have an online presence. But the thought of entering into this ever-changing, massively expanding world is daunting: Which sites should my business be on? How can I find the time to keep them up to date? What should I say? It is much more manageable than you think.  With my help you can soon be totally immersed in this world, and wondering why you didn’t do this sooner.

So if you are in need of help with setting yourselves up in the most strategically effective, cost and time efficient way on social media, let’s talk.

WHAT I CAN do for your brand is:

  • Analyse your company structure and business objectives and work up an affordable, hard-working communications and social media strategy
  • Recommend the right media for your business (effective channel strategy)
  • Advise what to say on them and when (distinctive communications and content strategy, tone of voice, conversation calendar)
  • Select the right people within your company who will be responsible for maintaining and monitoring the sites and provide them with the training they need to work as efficiently as possible. I can help you with monitoring the sites, interacting with your followers and find appropriate and engaging content for the sites for the first couple of months until you find your feet.
  • OR I can provide content and do all the work for you – handing in a KPI report to an agreed schedule.

I ALSO WORK ON A CONSULTANCY BASIS WITH AGENCIES, so if your agency needs a dig out during busy campaign periods, help with strategic pitch work, or want to have a chat about how best to set up a social media function in-house, please give me a shout.

I CAN PROVIDE TRAINING AND WORKSHOPS if your team needs to be more conversant about social media. I create bespoke sessions that get them familiar with the business tools – how the different channels are operated, how they can be used effectively with best-in-class case studies. Some of the training sessions I’ve done include:

  • Brand strategy – creating a tone of voice, channel and conversation strategies for your social media
  • Online PR – how to manage your brand’s reputation, and what to do in a crisis
  • Personal brand – how to build your own online presence and reputation
  • Facebook and Twitter for Businesses
  • Snapchat – talking to Millenials
  • Getting the most out of LinkedIn
  • Content is King – how to create and manage engaging and strategic content
  • Everything you wanted to know about Social Media but were too shy to ask (an overview!)

BUILDING PERSONAL BRANDS is also something I’ve helped Clients with.  Due to the confidentiality of this area, I haven’t included this in my CLIENTS page.  This can include reputation management, increasing your online presence through social media and getting you an impressive personal KLOUT score or just teaching you the basics in a very informal and flexible way (lunch hour or after work…).