Social Networking Expert

Social networking is in my blood, it’s what makes me tick. There are over 15,000 ‘social networking experts’ displaying their selves on Twitter alone. This itself shows social media is a huge growth area, but I’m fascinated by the disparity in knowledge and principles that are being displayed by the ‘experts’ and businesses globally.

Social Media and Social Networking have already paved the way in changing how we vote, interact, date, share and collaborate. When I started PPLparty in 2005 clubbers were looking for a faster way to know about the next visit by Oakenfold (DJs, promotions and events) without having to look for a poster at 8am on their way to work.

Social media is a new take on old-school marketing and customer services. It’s a series of events all linked together by people (backed up by technology). Social Media results can be seen in the real world, I’m not just talking about those FlashMobs you see in Trafalgar Square, I’m talking about bottom line results for businesses.

Seth Godin puts social media simply:

Social Media: It's a process, not an event.

Dating is a process. So is losing weight, being
a public company and building a brand.

On the other hand, putting up a trade show booth
is an event. So are going public and having surgery.

Events are easier to manage, pay for and get excited
about. Processes build results for the long haul.

Anybody can place a Google ad, or an advert in the Guardian, but the currency for social media is not about reach (how many clicks on the advert, or how many eyeballs on your newspaper advert). The currency in Social Media is attention and engagement.

The reason why social media has become so successful is because it is driven by the consumer. Just take a look at one of the most popular social media site on the planet: Facebook. It wasn’t started by a marketing director at a FTSE 100 company, it was started by a student who wanted to connect with his friends (and replicate offline conversation, yes products and services are a daily conversation topic for many of us).

Businesses find social media hard to understand because they would never allow their competitors or customers to write their advertising material or Christmas newsletter. Social media forces businesses to stand naked in-front of the mirror and if they wont do it, their consumers will reveal the ugly (or beautiful) truth without their support.

Social media offers up an opportunity for businesses to follow the chatter around their products; which they might not have been able to tap into traditionally.

We’re only just at the start of this revolution. With the advent of high-speed mobile networks the way we do things will change quikly and for-ever. Social Networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, EFactor, Xing, Twitter, Ecademy and many more are already changing the way we interact with people we may never meet, market ourselves and our companies and sell products and services.

Myself and my company are social media and networking experts, and we want to help your business.

Contact us.

The sort of numbers this would achieve aren’t unimpressive though! In June, ABCe announced that The Mail Online took the top spot in the UK, with 29.3m unique users in one month. If 5% of those guys paid £4.99 per month to read the news, that’s an income of £7,325,000. If the sell was compelling enough, those 10% who were not convinced or unsure might just be persuaded if it became the trend (bringing the achievable total of £21,000,000 per month)?

Will this change Rupert Murdoch’s mind when he recently announced he is to charge for access to much more of News Corp’s online news and entertainment content.

The graph showing the results is below:

As social media quickly replaces our photo albums, telephone books/directories and even our landlines – what happens in today’s social media rich world when we or our friends & family logout from our real world?

As a grieving relative, friend or lover where do we turn when dusty memorabilia no longer hides away in attics, but in tagged photos across Flickr, Facebook etc. I discovered Legacy Locker, a way to “protect your online assets”. For a one time fee of about £150 I can assign beneficiaries just like in a will and store any login details for my friends and family to login to.

For me I personally don’t like the idea of planning my death at the age of 20. My Mum works with old people, and even then they take a lot of persuasion to write their own will. So I turned to researching what some of the social media sites offer when you die – for free!

Facebook

Your family can request your profile to be taken off their servers or they can change your profile to that of a ‘memorial state’ which removes status update features, but keeps your photos and comments alive – for your confirmed friends only to see. Your personal account messages are never released – which makes complete sense to me!

Flickr

Flickr keeps the account mostly open upon notification from your family, but will keep private photos private.

Hotmail and Gmail

You can order a copy of a CD with all of the decease user’s messages on it, but you must provide them with a death certificate and proof of power of attorney. Makes sense to me!

(Quitter logo from Jan Lukas – Thanks! http://www.janlukacs.ro/quitter/)

The one statement that I’ve been using non-stop since way back in early 2008, goes something like this:

Marketing is no longer about marketing AT, but instead it’s about marketing WITH

It’s a common misconception that by simply launching a blog, or getting a Facebook fan-page one can tick social media marketing off their marketing plan.

The beauty of today’s web is the multiple platforms we can engage with our clients.

As with any form of marketing, it’s about positioning your product in a timely and relavant way, this is a massive factor of getting our message across to a greater number of people.

You wouldn’t market your new Christmas catalogue in July, so why just post a blog in the vast ocean that is the web, and expect your customers to come running?

By being clever with social tools we can respond to customers, potential customers, staff and suppliers when they are already thinking about your products or services without even knowing.

This begins to create a conversation, negative or positive – and as with normal conversations it’s important to remember that unless your providing real topics of engagement you might bore your audience, and not get the sale you desire.

So next time you think your ticking the social media box, ask yourself; is this relevant to the audience? Who will see this and how will they perceive it? Have I provided it upon the right platform where I can engage in an on-going conversation?