Welcome to the first of my monthly columns for Greetings Today magazine where I will be talking about issues affecting retailers, publishers and businesses in the greeting card trade. The next few months will have a distinctly digital flavour as I take you through the nitty gritty of how to make social media, the internet and digital marketing work for your business.
Last month I spoke on Social Media Strategy at a seminar organized by the Greeting Card Association (@GCAUK) and held at at Birkbeck in London. It was well attended with delegates including many well known greeting card businesses @The_Art_Group, @Woodmansterne, @Paperlinkcards, @LensIdeas and @Gemma_Int. Soula Zavacopoulos from @TheLondonStudio spoke on her experience using Twitter and James Mace told us about the success @TheArtFile were having on Facebook. Here are some of the key points from the day:
The first thing to be aware of is that social media is relatively young, but not used exclusively by the young. The following are some examples of social media tools and when they were launched: LinkedIn (2003), Facebook (2004), YouTube (2005), Twitter (2006), Pinterest (2009), Instagram (2010), Google+ (2011). Facebook is used by 1 in every 7 people in the world they spend 15hrs a month on it. It’s used by people across all ages, creeds and colours. 57% are female, 43% are male. Incredibly, one of every five web page views online is on Facebook. Twitter has over 30 million users in the UK and the following age groups 25-34, 35-44 and 45-54 each make up around 20% of tweeters so it’s not just our youth that are babbling on about what they had for their lunch. In fact many of top politicians, journalists and business people have twitter accounts and they are increasingly valuable tools for them.
So what does this all mean for you and your business? Well, there is one of the largest social gatherings in history going on right now and if you are not involved you could be missing out. It’s not enough for us to have a website for our business anymore, our customers are spending more and more time online and they want to interact with us using tools they are familiar with. More and more people are choosing Facebook messaging over email. We recently took our first order via Facebook instead of email! When we look for new restaurants to go to, we are asking our friends online rather than just searching Google ourselves. Even search engine optimization is being influenced by these tools, so if you want to show up on Google searches you can’t ignore them.
Social media is really about engaging with your customers in the digital age. For example, do you remember a shop keeper whose store you have always enjoyed going to? Let’s call him Bob. Bob’s probably friendly, chatty and always willing to help you get what you need. He takes care of his shop, his stock, his staff and his customers without you ever feeling like you’ve been sold to. Bob’s personality is a large part of your enjoyment of your retail experience of that shop. In effect he is a living embodiment of his brand and his brand has personality. Well, social media is the transferal of this into an online presence.
How do you make the most of using social media? Let’s talk about Bob for a moment again. He is a great guy to invite to parties as he’s interesting and fun. He never spends any time button holing people and trying to sell them anything or coax them down to his shop. He’s helpful and considerate, he is also good at putting you in touch with people who can help you with your needs. “Bad back? Give my friend Anne a call, she’s a great chiropractor,” Bob will say. Bob is in it for the good of the community and not just out for himself. This is how to best practice using social media. Be helpful, be fun, be interesting and spend more time on others than on yourself.
One of the things I find most useful using social media tools is that it’s like being able to go to a social gathering at any time that suits you and instantly find like minded people who are interacting about subjects that you are interested in. Social etiquette still applies. You wouldn’t interrupt a conversation to sell something and one should always be polite. You can find yourself engaging with some interesting people, learning new things, developing new ideas and finding new opportunities. With our wedding business @IvyEllen I have been able to grow our network of business contacts ten times faster than if I had attended hundreds of networking events in person
Social media is also really useful for market testing your wares and getting customer feedback. This engagement can help grow sales. Even bad feedback is useful. It’s important that customers let Bob know when something goes wrong so he can sort it out for them and keep their loyal custom. Good customer feedback is reassuring and can help you focus on what to do to get and keep happy customers.
The seminar was incredibly useful for everyone who came and I am sure the @GCAUK will be doing more in the future so do follow them on Twitter. If you are still not convinced by the importance of social media in our lives, I overheard the word Facebook over a dozen times in different conversations on tubes and trains as I headed home from London that day. And the importance for businesses? I also overheard a girl on her mobile phone on the train home saying that she had just been on Facebook and seen an offer on a new chocolate at @Tesco so she was heading down there to try it out. I’m not making this up, these tools really can drive customers to your door.
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