Keep an eye on Inside Finance if you are interested in social digital technology. There will be more TV shows from knowledgeable business insiders like Nigel Huddleston.
Look out for more business growth shows on Inside Finance TV. We will continue to follow ideas around publicising a business.
Social media policy should extend outside the marketing department, as Bob Barker explains in this TV show.
So companies are just waking up to the fact that they need to leverage their employees.
There’s a terminology that says marketing is far too important to be left to the marketing department, and that is the terminology that’s becoming true now with social media.
So if you just do push only marketing you’re not you know, you’re back to your 2% response or less, or if you’ve just got that mind-set that is, it works but it’s not terribly efficient and people don’t trust that marketing anymore.
So what companies are beginning to realise is that the that sales people and individuals in the company represent a really good way of getting their content out there, the important content that people need to engage with, particularly in the business to business area.
And so people are beginning to realise that if their sales people and their key executives aren’t good online they need to do something about that because if they haven’t got. For example, if they’ve got ten people on LinkedIn and they’ve got no picture of them.
They may be brilliant, but anyone of a younger generation is gonna look them up and think well, I don’t want anything to do with them. They obviously don’t understand this new world.
So there’s the companies beginning to realise that. LinkedIn has gained huge momentum the last few years as a defacto platform for people connecting in business.
So companies are beginning to realise the power of LinkedIn, companies are beginning to realise the power of content and getting people to share that content through social channels.
And it’s very important that individuals are used to share that content. It’s much more easy these days.
You’ve got these share buttons on the bottom of all the content. But even people knowing that they can just click on that content and it will share it, people generally don’t know that.
So there is a big opportunity to educate people who haven’t had that education because nobody told you how to use a PC, nobody told you how to use social media to get that education and help the firm do its marketing.
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Connected marketing relies on well developed personal brands to share company content. Our latest video from Bob Barker explores the issue:
A lot of companies out there have been using traditional marketing mechanisms.
They’ve been using digital marketing, and what we see is that more and more marketing has got to rely on the individuals in the company to help get the messages out because it’s those individuals that are often the sales people and it’s the individuals who themselves have got networks.
So what we do a lot of is helping people to understand what their personal brand is all about and to make sure, for example, on LinkedIn that they’ve got a decent profile because Google’s going to find you on LinkedIn if somebody’s looking for you quicker than any other platform, so you need to look the part.
You need to be dressed well, and so on and so forth. And then there’s the whole thing about network maintenance, or understanding and managing your network.
So we’ve all built up contacts on our Outlook or whatever it is, and we’re beginning to build up more and more contact on LinkedIn as it becomes more the de facto business platform for business people connecting.
So we have to put time in and understand how we build and nurture our networks using something like that.
And then the other thing is that now we’ve got a brand and we understand our network, we’ve then got all this content that the company’s produced that might be relevant to what we’re talking about but nobody’s sharing it.
So a lot of companies are building all this content and people aren’t sharing it, like these videos.
We see in large companies, when you look at the shares, nothing’s going on, and so we help companies to understand.
We help the individuals in those companies to understand it’s their responsibility to help get this content out there because on the internet when people are researching companies and they’re looking for what people, you know, what companies are all about, they’re doing a lot of their research without the company knowing.
So unless that company’s got content out there and people are interfacing and being out there, and having their brand out there, they’re not going to be visible when companies are looking for who they want to do business with and who they might trust.
Inside Finance TV will continue to explore connected marketing and the surrounding issues- look out for more TV shows from Bob Barker.All my friends and family are on Facebook. But pretty much anybody and any audience who wants to connect with me can.
I once hit the 5,000 friend limit and then went through and did a massive purge and dropped it down to three and it’s now drifting up over four again.
So when you hit that 5,000 limit you maybe have to think differently.
But for me, Facebook is a place where people can get to know me, me as a person. And I think some CEOs, some business leaders are starting to see the benefit in doing this as well, in just making yourself accessible.
I’m passionate about cricket and most other sports, but cricket in particular.
I am passionate about my family. I enjoy travel, although I hate travelling, if you can see the distinction between those two things.
And for me, I just thought, well Facebook is the opportunity for me to just let that all hang out.
In the same step as I’m travelling, as I’m with my family, as I’m watching sport, as I’m engaging with my clients, I’m getting a sense of what’s changing in the world.
Inside Finance will continue to look at the uses of Facebook for CEOs and we will have more videos from Graeme Codrington.
There are times when you do have to react quickly clearly. Social media’s a difficult one.
I mean 99% of stuff on Twitter you could … has been dismissed as complete garbage. And so the entire range of vaguely interesting through to useful is sandwiched in that one percent at the top
Companies are mentioned, you know, companies used to be discussed in pubs all the time, and they didn’t know about it so they took no notice.
And most of the stuff on social media, I mean a million people will read it and a million people will forget it thereafter. So there’s a tiny amount of stuff, a tiny, tiny amount that actually will go viral and could damage a company. Now, how you spot that and know how to react to it, I’m afraid I don’t have the answer
But I think most of it could be ignored. And I despair of companies that spend their time endlessly monitoring social media in case something pops up. They ought to have something better to do with their lives, you know, get a life.
I think it has offered a lot of opportunities. I mean when we look back, 1998 Google was only set up.
I mean LinkedIn, Twitter is only recent phenomenon we have. Personally I think there's great opportunities in terms of reaching your customers, reaching clients whether it's B to B, B to C.
But I always think there's also... the world's become more visible so maybe things you got away with in the past is no longer possible.
So I think my view is using social media is a great way of promoting your business but also keep aware of social media also comes with potential pitfalls if you don't use it in the right way.