Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 53 total)
  • Business owners – social media marketing – thoughts
  • andysbeans
    Free Member

    I’m looking for some advice from business owners on here. I’m doing a digital marketing diploma which eventually will allow me to set up in business in social media management. What are your thoughts on making the most of your social media pages? Would you see value in outsourcing it? And if so what phrases would you google to find an expert company?

    Serious answers oy would be helpful 🙂

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    Google “Experts in outsourcing social media management”?

    Oy!

    kayla1
    Free Member

    It’s probably only worth getting someone else to do it if you’re in charge of a large company, but by that time you’re probably in a sound enough position not to bother with social media. Smaller business (like ours) have better things to spend their limited budgets on (like stock or buying food/paying the rent) than paying someone to play about on facebook or twatter on their behalf.

    edit- I might google ‘leech’ or ‘workshy fop’ to find such a person/company 😉

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    captainsasquatch
    Free Member

    I’d get in touch with a social media management company for help, it’s what they’re there for.

    miketually
    Free Member

    I’m doing a digital marketing diploma which eventually will allow me to set up in business in social media management.

    Non-serious answer: Could you not set up a social media management company without doing the diploma?

    More serious answer: most companies should probably manage their own social media, but many outsource it. There are bucketloads of social media management companies out there, so what’s going to make you different?

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    Golgafrincham Ark B?

    P-Jay
    Free Member

    Honest answer, I wouldn’t start a social media management company – I know a few who tried and they’re all doing something else now.

    I don’t know, perhaps things are different in other areas of the UK but here it’s hard enough to convince Business Owners to invest in marketing without specializing in probably the most intangible part of it (to them anyway). The guys who do well locally to use act as one-stop-shops, they sort out press releases, PPC, website, and then drop all this onto FB, twitter and LI etc.

    Once businesses reach the point where they will spend a decent amount just on Social Media they tend to go in-house with their own marketing dept.

    allthegear
    Free Member

    If you’re getting another company to manage your social media presence then you really don’t understand social media.

    It’s about communicating with your customers – how on earth can that be outsourced?

    Rachel

    footflaps
    Full Member

    It’s about communicating with your customers – how on earth can that be outsourced?

    It can outsourced just as easily as it can be done in house. You’ll find good and bad examples of both. A lot of our marketing / comms is outsourced to a PR company.

    andysbeans
    Free Member

    Thanks for all your responses.

    Kayla1 it’s ok to not understand it. Whatever people’s views, 90% of the world population are on some kind of social media platform. Whilst you’re entitled to your opinion it’s probay why you’re spending all your time doing the things you do. Working hard not smart. If you connect with customers, partners, advocates and suppliers in different ways then you are more than very likely to benefit from it. I do feel that this kind of attitude is typical of companies who are not very forward thinking, and in particular no nothing about the subject. Ps, as for work shy fop…I’m holding down a full time job and studying in my own time to make something of my life. I remember the founder of our company being told by many that his idea was a bad one when he set up in 2007 with £250k. He’s now worth £80 million so id rather listen to him than some negative comment from a person who hasn’t done well enough to own a house outright. Instead he pays rent

    chakaping
    Free Member

    What P-Jay said basically – I work in social media and wouldn’t set up a one-man band operation myself at the mo.

    If you’re getting another company to manage your social media presence then you really don’t understand social media.

    Some companies really need expert help though. Even really big ones can be surprisingly inept.

    Edit: It’s a bit like saying “if you outsource your plumbing then you don’t really understand plumbing”.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    The value of Social Media varies enormously by market eg we sell multi million pound networks to Tier 1 MNOs. I’m pretty sure their purchasing decisions aren’t based on our FB feed (mainly as we don’t have one).

    Whereas if we were selling sunglasses we’d be all over Instagram like flies to a turd…

    codybrennan
    Free Member

    “Working hard not smart. If you connect with customers, partners, advocates and suppliers in different ways then you are more than very likely to benefit from it. I do feel that this kind of attitude is typical of companies who are not very forward thinking, and in particular no nothing about the subject. Ps, as for work shy fop…I’m holding down a full time job and studying in my own time to make something of my life. I remember the founder of our company being told by many that his idea was a bad one when he set up in 2007 with £250k. He’s now worth £80 million so id rather listen to him than some negative comment from a person who hasn’t done well enough to own a house outright. Instead he pays rent.”

    Oh dear.

    “And they made sure they sent you lot off first did they?” inquired Arthur.

    “Oh yes,” said the Captain, “well everyone said, very nicely I thought, that it was very important for morale to feel that they would be arriving on a planet where they could be sure of a good haircut and where the phones were clean.”

    “Oh yes,” agreed Ford, “I can see that would be very important. And the other ships, er … they followed on after you did they?”

    For a moment the Captain did not answer. He twisted round in his bath and gazed backwards over the huge bulk of the ship towards the bright galactic centre. He squinted into the inconceivable distance.

    “Ah. Well it’s funny you should say that,” he said and allowed himself a slight frown at Ford Prefect, “because curiously enough we haven’t heard a peep out of them since we left five years ago … but they must be behind us somewhere.”

    He peered off into the distance again.

    Ford peered with him and gave a thoughtful frown.

    “Unless of course,” he said softly, “they were eaten by the goat …”

    “Ah yes …” said the Captain with a slight hesitancy creeping into his voice, “the goat …”

    STATO
    Free Member

    Local bike shop had someone outside the shop manage their twitter and FB, as stated above they said were too busy to do it (not based on my view of them standing about most of the time), it was just generic repetitive stuff that to me just didn’t engage. Of course on twitter they got lots of reposts, but mainly from other people on twitter who also have no engagement and just repost crap constantly. Much better now they post a bit more current stuff, but how much either approach effects their income ive no idea.

    Another shop is pretty how on posting FB stuff, to the point it can get a bit irritating, but they actually post about stuffing going on at the shops and what deals they have, and it actually generates foot traffic.

    How that helps the OP ive no idea.

    footflaps
    Full Member

    “well everyone said, very nicely I thought, that it was very important for morale to feel that they would be arriving on a planet where they could be sure of a good haircut and where the phones were clean.”

    The irony being their home planet was wiped out by a disease spread through unsanitary phone booths…

    MrSmith
    Free Member

    Smaller business (like ours) have better things to spend their limited budgets on (like stock or buying food/paying the rent) than paying someone to play about on facebook or twatter on their behalf.

    having paid the rent and bought food i spend about 30min to half an hour a week on ‘social media’ which basically means sorting some instagram pics and doing some research on who/what i should tag in the images and checking on who is liking the images. it’s early days for me but i has had some potential clients follow me and some past clients can now see what i’m up to as i pop up in their feed but i would be unlikely to send them a marketing email which would probably be binned with all the others or simply not read.
    i was a sceptic until after much badgering by magazine client/friend i got with the program after seeing him get 30k followers on instagram/twitter. he was quite clever in getting ‘takeovers’ where you get somebody to take the feed over for a weekend and you both mutually benefit from the coverage and attract new followers to your brand.
    he has now taken on an advertisers european social media account off the back of that.

    as a photographer a visual media like instagram is a no brainer, it costs very little and you are already generating visual content. for other businesses it can be more difficult if you product isn’t interesting and people switch off if things start to to look like adverts.

    it really does depend on what kind of business you are as to how it can work for you. i’m no expert but i have seen how it can work in your favour if you do it right, that said it’s not rocket science once you understand how it, that said if you can afford it and dont have the time then get somebody to do that job for you.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    The irony being their home planet was wiped out by a disease spread through unsanitary phone booths…

    The further irony being that those disparaging social media are doing so via social media (which is what a forum is, of course).

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    The further irony being that those disparaging social media are doing so via social media (which is what a forum is, of course).

    I actually outsource my social media disparaging output these days.
    I didn’t even write this.

    thisisnotaspoon
    Free Member

    If you’re getting another company to manage your social media presence then you really don’t understand social media.

    It’s about communicating with your customers – how on earth can that be outsourced?

    Rachel

    Depends who’s communicating doesn’t it?

    Most companies seem to use them as an alternative to mailing lists.

    Most customers seem to think it’s a great way to complain, it’s the adult version of a toddler throwing a tantrum in a supermarket, public shaming its parents/the company until it get’s what it wants.

    The few businesses I do follow (bike shops, breweries) on FB are mostly along these lines:
    Business – Hey look at this cool new bike/beer we have
    Fanbois – *sycophantic fapping*

    mefty
    Free Member

    If you are doing business using social media when does it stop being social media?

    chewkw
    Free Member

    OP what are you selling anyway? Just curious like.

    Just film yourself or your mates using your product whatever on Youtueb pretending to be a new user in awe with your product or services.

    What you want is to turn yourself into some sort “religious cult leader” and you shall see sales increase!

    bencooper
    Free Member

    I see no value in outsourcing my social media, because I’d have to spend so much time telling the outsourcing company stuff that I might as well do it myself. If I was a big company selling washing-up liquid or something, I’d probably have a PR company to deal with all that stuff, and they’d have the kind of impersonal social media presence that gets either ignored or whined at.

    So it depends, I suppose – there’s probably a need for large and/or inept companies to take care of social media stuff for them, as reputation management as much as anything.

    Does hanging about on STW count as social media marketing, by the way?

    theotherjonv
    Full Member

    Whatever people’s views, 90% of the world population are on some kind of social media platform.

    Is that true? Source?

    When 11% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water, and 1 in 3 doesn’t have access to adequate sanitation, I’m thinking if that’s true it’s seriously **** up.

    the-muffin-man
    Full Member

    Does hanging about on STW count as social media marketing, by the way?

    Works for Brant – he even managed to sell trousers on here!

    perchypanther
    Free Member

    When 11% of the world’s population doesn’t have access to clean drinking water, and 1 in 3 doesn’t have access to adequate sanitation, I’m thinking if that’s true it’s seriously **** up.

    You’d think they would fire off a few angry tweets about it, at the very least. #cholera

    footflaps
    Full Member

    I see no value in outsourcing my social media, because I’d have to spend so much time telling the outsourcing company stuff that I might as well do it myself.

    Well with that attitude you will never grow. If you can’t delegate / outsource you’re pretty much always going to be a one (or 2/3) man band.

    Not that there is anything wrong with that per-se, but the mindset of ‘I’d have to spend so much time telling the outsourcing company stuff that I might as well do it myself.’ is pretty self limiting….

    footflaps
    Full Member

    Works for Brant – he even managed to sell trousers on here!

    He did outsource their manufacture though….

    chewkw
    Free Member

    the-muffin-man – Member

    Does hanging about on STW count as social media marketing, by the way?

    Works for Brant – he even managed to sell trousers on here! [/quote]
    If Brant is running a cult farm I want to join as second in command. 😆

    kayla1
    Free Member

    Well with that attitude you will never grow

    Some (small) businesses might not want to!

    #biggerbetterfasterMOARisnotallit’scrackeduptobe

    brant
    Free Member

    Works for Brant – he even managed to sell trousers on here!

    HTS posted a link I passed him in confidence, without me making it clear it was a secret. The rest followed.

    Anyhow, today was a good day for social media publicity…

    chakaping
    Free Member

    Does hanging about on STW count as social media marketing, by the way?

    Have any of your customers ever mentioned that they became aware of your work via here?

    Totally agree with your stance on the topic at hand anyway, from what I understand of your business from reading this forum.

    bencooper
    Free Member

    never grow. If you can’t delegate / outsource you’re pretty much always going to be a one (or 2/3) man band.

    Yup, happy with that. I’ve employed people in the past, it takes all the fun out of running a business. I like inventing, making things and talking to people, I don’t like managing employees, delegating or complex paperwork and regulations.

    Besides, my business isn’t really scalable, even if I did want to.

    bencooper
    Free Member

    Have any of your customers ever mentioned that they became aware of your work via here?

    I don’t think I’ve got any big sales from here – would feel a bit guilty if I did. I’ve got a bunch of recommendations for frame repairs and little things like that – and of course the membership here is so big there’s bound to be some crossover anyway.

    chakaping
    Free Member

    And – just as a current example – I bet Bird have sold a few extra bikes because of Ben being on here so much and making a useful contribution.

    leffeboy
    Full Member

    The op’s question is a good one really. Anyone can post up stuff they think will interest their customers but the trick is to be able to analyse the views, clicks, follow through to sites etc and work out what is working and what actually creates sales. The number of people who think that views on Facebook is a real metric when they have probably paid for most of those is crazy. Similarly businesses that post the same stuff all the time and never realise that less and less people are looking at it and they are wasting their time as they are posting too much. As for tracking the effect across multiple sources

    If you can do that and provide real numbers to prove you are driving sales then why not. It’s not easy but it does require numbers

    andysbeans
    Free Member

    This is all really helpful stuff for me.

    [It’s about communicating with your customers – how on earth can that be outsourced?]

    My aim is to keep it simple and stick to the markets I know very well. The answer is you can’t communicate with customers effectively if you don’t know the market. so I would concentrate on my passion for MTB and use all my contacts along with my face to face sales skills to drive business there, but ask me to put together a social media campaign for a fishing tackle manufacturer and i’d come unstuck.

    There are also other skills i’ll be learning in the background which could be provided as basics. A basic SEO strategy wouldn’t hurt any business if it was implemented. Just Keywords and phrases in titles and descriptions on pages of websites are a small help. SEO itself is only significantly effective if you find someone with years of experience in the subject.

    I’ll be building my own wordpress website so I can manage content, links etc

    One of the reasons why this market is somewhat thought of negatively is because there are so many cowboys out there claiming to know how to do it. I don’t claim to know how to do it yet but I will give it 100%. Being a social media management consultant on it’s own would seem dull. So if you have the personality and sales skills to enthuse your audience and win them over you’re some of the way there.

    oldmanmtb
    Free Member

    Ok I have followed this with some interest – if I gave you a social media managment budget of say £2k per month what would my ROI (return on invest) be? My experience tells me I would be about £2k worse off a month ….

    oldmanmtb
    Free Member

    If you want to do it for free for my business I will give you 50% of the profit from all the new business you fetch in..

    leffeboy
    Full Member

    Awesome deal.

    bencooper
    Free Member

    I don’t think you can have social media as a separate part of the marketing. Good shops use it to organise things like group rides – but that means you need to work with the shop to do that. Or to have promotions, again that needs I put from the shop. It’s really something that has to be part of a whole strategy – website, marketing, everything.

    Interestingly, there’s someone started up recently doing that for the bike trade: http://www.caffeineinjection.com/index.html

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