Social media: The Emperor’s New Clothes?

I was speaking to some successful business owners this week who confessed that while their company had social media channels, they had no idea what benefits they were getting from them.

They were pretty well convinced the whole thing was a waste of time, but felt they had to be seen to be involved, because everyone else was. It al sounded a bit like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

I have some sympathy. However, social media benefits are tangible and can include: consistent online exposure; sharing knowledge; improved search ranking; better customer engagement and service; increased web traffic; better lead generation; and increased brand awareness.

But none of that is instant and as easy as signing up to Facebook or creating a Twitter account.

The truth is that marketing with social media requires expertise, persistence, resources and time to be able to achieve these benefits.

The best place to start –as always – is with a plan. Outline specific goals for your social media marketing plan: What do you intend to have achieved in three, six or nine months?

An example of some social media goals could be creating 50 new connections that result in 10 prospects and 5 leads, or generating a 100 new visitors to the company website.

Goals help companies track the impact that their efforts in social media are having and measure progress.

If you feel like you are wasting your time on Facebook and Twitter and would like a free copy of Accord PR’s Social Media Workbook full of tips and tricks to save hours and help improve your ROI, drop us a line at claire@accordpr.co.uk or fill in the contact form below.

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In praise of the local rag

The local newspaper – once a common sight on coffee tables across the UK – is starting to look as out of date as a record player.

Not so long ago if you wanted to move house, needed a new job, wondered what the council was up to, or who had been up to no good, there was just one place to go – the daily or weekly newspaper.

Now Facebook is the no 1 news referral website, 95% of all UK homes are on Rightmove and if you need a job, there are a plethora of options that mean you don’t have to leave the sofa. If there’s a police car screaming past your window, click onto Twitter or Facebook on your iPhone and you’ll find out what’s going on in minutes if not seconds.

So what’s the point of local newspapers?

Having started my career in local newspapers, perhaps it’s no surprise to hear me rush to their defence. But without our army of local reporters, who else could cut through the hot air of council meetings to uncover what our elected representatives are up to? Who would give a voice to the people who don’t agree with what those representatives are up to?

Who else other than your local reporter would sit in a stuffy court room on the off-chance of a half decent story, with the tenacity – not to mention shorthand speed – to keep up with proceedings?

The local newspaper, with its Golden Wedding photos, bonnie baby competitions and weird and wonderful local campaigns provides a very important function in our communities: It not only reports on what’s happening, it keeps a watchful eye on our elected and non-elected representative, our legal system and the judiciary.

Without it, we will all be poorer.

Story telling – the smart way to market

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin…

I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture that makes our ears prick up at the hint of a tale, but there’s something special about stories, something that makes us pay attention.

Great speakers and salespeople know that when they are trying to explain or sell something, the moment they relate that into a real life story, the audience or prospect will suddenly get it. For PR and marketing, a great story can capture people’s imaginations and remain with them long after the url is forgotten or the newspaper is recycled.

Finding a story that truly resonates, however, takes a bit of thought. Like those fairy tales of childhood, an absorbing story should be:

Exciting and interesting: The day to day, ‘man goes for a swim’, is boring, ‘man swims the channel’ is more interesting. Explain the man has just turned 40 and has battled a life-long fear or water, and it becomes compelling.

Emotion increases interest: Imagine the sense of fear the 40 year-old will feel as he tentatively dips his first toe into the chilly water; The physical and mental pain once the swim is underway; The triumph when he completes the swim.

Finally, as they say on the X Factor, it’s all about the journey. The swimmer above has a reason no doubt for being so scared of water, something he has overcome and a reason to want to overcome it. Add the achievement and triumph of success and we have a story.

The best stories intrigue and interest the audience enough that engage for the journey, and they don’t have to be long. Master tale teller Ernest Hemingway once managed to write a story in just six words: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

Social media: Plan your web of wonders

Have you ever tried to quickly check or post something on Facebook and caught yourself, 25 minutes later still stuck in the social media abyss? Something caught your eye, there was a comment that had to be made, a new friend added or… who knows?  We’ve all been there.

This is of no great significance if you are using personal time, but if this is dedicated work time, then it can feel very much like you were ‘robbed’. If you are anything like me you will be kicking yourself for falling behind schedule and wasting time.

This is the web of wonders that is part of the attraction of social media.

It’s that power of attraction that most businesses try to utilise, trying to make the passing social media traffic stop, look, listen, buy into and – hopefully – buy.

In the last blog I mentioned the importance of using tools to rationalise time, I also mentioned the importance of a plan.

This plan needs to be all about why you are on social media. I am guessing it’s not just to get 800 likes or 20,000 followers, I imagine it is more to do with marketing.

When planning your social media, dig out your PR and marketing plan and work from there. Think about your objectives, look at where you are now and what’s coming up over the next six months to a year, think about who you want to speak to and where you might find those people.

Plan it according to your marketing objectives, then most important of all put your plan into action.

Find out more about Accord PR‘s social media services here.

Social media: Time for a change

Have you heard the one about social media being all about relationship building? Possibly from a social media guru, or someone who has been instructed by a guru.

It’s not wrong, just a little misleading. If you have given yourself or a member of staff the task of developing social media for your business, you may have noticed that relationship building can seem horribly time-consuming. A lot of input for a less than exciting ROI – sound familiar?

Just as you wouldn’t be happy if your salesperson spent a week wining and dining a client to bring in a £200 sale, then any sensible business person has to look beyond the relationship building aspect and calculate the real financial returns for their business. This is not a climate where many of us can forget that time really is money.

Let’s get this clear – social media platforms are free, but the time spent on them comes at a cost.

It makes a huge amount of business sense to streamline and rationalise how you manage social media.  With the plethora of tools available now, there’s no excuse to be ‘tweeting’ or ‘liking’ away your days to get a valid and valuable social media profile.

Like so many things in business, it starts with a plan. Turn off Twitter, shutdown Facebook and close Pinterest and take that time to think about what you are going to speak about, and most importantly why.

More about that ‘why’ in our next blog.

Find out more about Accord PR‘s social media services here.

E-newsletter v paper newsletter: Which is best?

I overheard a conversation the other day between two very experienced business people about newsletters.

One felt that e-newsletters were better, arguing that they are the way that many people prefer to receive information these days. The other felt that the rush to email meant that paper newsletters stand out more in these days of depleted post bags. Both felt that their preferred format was the one most likely to get read.

So which was correct?

They were both right, to an extent… I will explain why.

An e-newsletter has lots of plus points: It’s quick to assemble and even quicker to deliver; It’s cost effective; With less copy, it saves a significant amount of time over its paper rival; It’s the easiest way to deliver direct clicks to your online shop front – your website; It’s trackable, you can monitor how many people opened it, what they read etc.

BUT (yes that’s a big but) it does have to compete with the plethora of emails we have hitting our inboxes at a higher rate than ever. Email has become one of the marketer’s favourite tools, so we all receive a lot of htmls.

Added to this we have become a texting, emailing nation. Just about everyone has an email address and very often an email is sent from friends, relatives, business associates and colleagues when a phone call would have done just as well, if not better. How many times have you emailed someone a desk or office away, when you could have just popped your head around the door or picked up the phone?

Put those factors together and your e-newsletter is not just competing for attention with other businesses, but with the rest of the recipient’s business and personal connections.

If you are anything like me you probably sort your emails by deciding which you can delete without ever reading. It’s the online equivalent of sorting your junk mail over the waste paper bin.

Which leads us to paper newsletters. Like e-newsletters, the old fashioned paper versions have many plus points: They stand out in a e-obsessed world; They can go into greater depth than an e-newsletter; They can have eye-catching design and photography; They stick around – while an email gets lost in an inbox if its not read quickly, a paper newsletter can sit on a desk for a long time, constantly reminding people of your company.

The downside is mainly cost and time (the latter of course also goes back to cost) and those are the two things many businesses are most cautious of wasting. With a paper newsletter you can’t be 100 per cent sure what people liked and read, or even if they read any of it at all.

So which is best?

The answer: Great content is best!

Think for a moment what newspapers, newsletters, magazines, websites and emails you read, aren’t they the ones with the engaging content? Aren’t they the ones with the tips, the advice and the relevancy to your business and life?

Whichever method you choose, the best newsletters have great content. Those are the ones that don’t make it into the wastepaper basket or the trash folder.

The single biggest mistake that I’ve seen newsletters make is to be devoid of anything entertaining, interesting or valuable. Those are truly the biggest waste, sure of not getting attention and sure of ending in the virtual or physical trash.

Time and effort spent thinking about engaging, well-written content will make either option a more effective marketing tool.

Find out more about Accord PR‘s newsletters services here.

The business advantage every SME has over corporate goliaths

This weekend means yet another children’s party and yet another weekday lunchtime dash to get a gift. Usually this means a ‘grab what I can’ at the supermarket while picking up the office milk. This week I did something different… I went to the local toyshop.

What a different experience! I was sorted with an age appropriate gift, wrapping and a card with the right number on it in five minutes flat, aided by the experienced and helpful shop assistant.

I should add that this shopkeeper was no marketing genius. There was no attempt to gather my details etc, but it reminded me of the one clear advantage every small and medium sized business has over corporate goliaths: Customer relationship. 

The people in my local Tesco are friendly enough. They are also efficient. But it’s not their job to usher me through the toy aisle making suggestions of the latest age-appropriate toy while handing me a card and a sheet of wrapping paper.

Building a relationship with your clients is one of the smartest moves any small business can make to stand apart from the likes of Tesco. The big companies with the big advertising budgets and big discounts don’t have the manpower, or inclination, to create a relationship in the way an SME owner can.

Now you probably can’t speak to every client every day, but you can communicate with them regularly.

Back to the toy shop. Despite my great experience hand on heart, I can’t guarantee I won’t grab a toy on the milk run in future.

However, had the toy shop owner taken my details and kept communicating with me, with an electronic or paper newsletter, that demonstrated his expertise, product knowledge with the odd offer thrown in, then he would probably have had a customer for life.

What’s more he would have had a customer happy to pass the hours spent in mum small talk at those oh-so-frequent parties recommending his excellent toy shop.

Don’t let client ignorance rob your business

I heard an all too common story yesterday from a very established businessman: He’d lost out on tens of thousands of pounds (around £30,000 in fact) of work from a client.

What’s more this wasn’t a disgruntled client, this was someone who liked, knew and trusted him.

The reason he lost out on the work?

The client didn’t know he could do it!

It’s not a unique story, in fact I’ve heard it many times. Often the people telling me the tale shrug off the disappointment and make the point that at least he or she ‘knows now’.

The fact is that this story shows a hole in a business’ marketing plan. Too often in our search for shiny new clients we forget to keep in touch with the ones who are already sold. The people who already like know and trust our businesses, because they have already bought our services or products.

This is one of the reasons that newsletters are so important. And at this time of year, when a mass mailing is due as we all say ‘Season’s greetings’ to our clients and customers, it’s a very cost effective option.

Whether you opt for an electronic or paper version (the pros and cons of both I will discuss in a future posting) the most important thing is to have a newsletter.

And given the subject of this post, I would be remiss if I didn’t say that Accord PR’s editorial team has many years worth of experience in writing and designing newsletters. Most importantly, as trained journalists, we can craft stories that people want to read.

Go to www.accordpr.co.uk or call us on 0845 154 3491 to find out more or request samples of client newsletters.

Britain PLC is crying out for some positive PR

Great news, you would think.

But the expert being interviewed said that a lot of this was down to the Olympics (yes the same event that was previously being blamed for slashing productivity).

Now I understand that London had a whale of a time with that event, and it was truly spectacular, but for the rest of the country it was a spectator sport. Even accounting for  the electricity that fed our TV sets, I’m not seeing how it fuelled the UK economy to that extent.

The reporter however swallowed this strange explanation and asked if it weren’t for the Olympic effect, what would our growth have been? The implication being that we may not have had growth were it not for this once in a lifetime event. Worrying news for those of us in business who were just seeing a chink of light after some dark times for the economy.

The previous week I heard the equally apparently good news that employment figures were up. Though another expert interviewee explained that a lot of this was part-time work that therefore would have little impact on the economy and spending power. Not so great for the beleaguered High Street then.

As an ex-journalist I understand the need to dig under a story and that good news isn’t always ‘hold the front page’ news, but we have just clambered out of a double dip recession and more people are employed – how can this not be positive?

Brits are a cautious bunch, and I know we like to worry when things appear ‘too good to be true’ but as a business person and a PR pro, I think it’s time to just enjoy the fact that we all worked remarkably hard and appear to be back on the up. After such a prolonged recession, it’s time to throw caution to the wind, kick the nay-sayers to touch and spread the pure and positive news for UK PLC.

PR – the unfair business advantage

If there is one business person in the UK who not only understands but exemplifies the true power PR it’s Richard Branson.

He has built the kind of celebrity profile and trusted reputation that ensure when Virgin goes into a new market, it is like it has always been there.

As someone who travelled on Virgin’s West Coast line I know that the service wasn’t always perfect – far from it on occasions. However, Branson’s actions after losing the West Coast Mainline rail franchise were a master class in PR and lobbying.

The battle between Virgin Trains and FirstGroup came to a head last week when the Department of Transport ditched its decision to award the franchise to FirstGroup blaming ‘significant technical flaws’ in the process.

It comes after a campaign of media attacks by Branson and his staff after Virgin lost the franchise in August. As ever, he has not avoided the spotlight, using his celebrity, reputation and influence to head up the campaign alongside the Virgin Trains chairman.

Such was the intensity, not to mention positive outcome, of this campaign it has led some people to ask whether CEOs like Branson should sign the lobbying register.

Now let’s consider this for a moment: A businessperson who uses PR so well, people want him to sign a register because it gives him such an unfair advantage?

Now that is true mastery.