email liz@isbe.org.uk

http://econsultancy.com/events/jump

http://www.slniw.com/SLNIW_Call_for_Papers.pdf

http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/events-calendar/257710/protecting-your-business.thtml

http://econsultancy.com/events/managing-your-own-online-community-social-network-roundtable-july-2010

The most important reason a campaign needs to include variety is so that the business does not get typecast or stereotyped. If a business only uses Twitter to promote the latest offers, the Facebook Fan Page to advertise services and a blog, which only ever talks about the business, then there is a high chance that the campaign will fail. People will not bother to read tweets or the blog as they know the content is only trying to sell something or advertise a product or service. If the campaign is run along these lines, people will become disengaged and the campaign will be unsuccessful.

Social media marketing campaigns must attract people to actively participate in different mediums. This can be a response to a tweet, clicking on a link from a tweet, a comment on a blog or a like on a Facebook Fan Page. The way to encourage this participation is to have extensive variation in the campaign strategy.

This variation includes asking direct questions through a tweet or Facebook Wall Post, displaying news stories relating to the industry area, using polls, posting pictures, asking for opinion and insight, commenting on industry issues, posting a news story in the form of a question and varying the content and issues raised in a blog.

By combining a degree of advertising and promotion with the kinds of interactive features just mentioned, people will be encouraged to interact with the social media marketing campaign. This will create brand awareness and a following on social media platforms. However, as stated throughout this blog, this will only occur if there is variation in the campaign.

Twitter is now used by many businesses as a marketing tool. If it is used in the correct way it can become a very powerful weapon in a marketing strategy.  Its presence on the social media platform will only continue to grow; of this there is no doubt. However, many businesses are unaware of how to tweet effectively. Tweeting is an art, a significant amount of businesses are unaware of this. The purpose of this article is to give advice on how to tweet, so that your Twitter marketing campaign can as effective as possible.

The first point to make about tweeting is that it is essential you tweet regularly. This can be done through tweeting regularly on Twitter, or through Twitter software, which allows the tweets you come up with to be tweeted at regular intervals. If you do not tweet regularly people will lose interest in what you have to say. They will also become less aware of your business and therefore not have an interest in what you are tweeting, thus it is vital that you are consistently tweeting.

Many businesses are unsure of exactly what to tweet. They only create promotional tweets about their business and post links to their site. Whilst some promotional tweets are needed, it is important that the business recognises that the tweets need to be varied in nature. Tweets should be about related news items: take a piece of news from the internet, tweet with what you think of it, then post the link. Tweets can also be about your opinion on a subject within the industry the business is in. Many companies in the motor industry have regular tweets regarding their opinion on the predicament of Toyota.  By varying your tweets, it allows your twitter campaign to encompass many different areas; people will see that it is not purely a promotional campaign and are more likely to read your tweets and become a follower.

Tweets should encourage interaction. Tweets that are just statements do not encourage people to respond to your tweet. Interactive tweets allow for some customer insight to possibly be gained and also for you to analyse other opinions in the industry. For example, a recent tweet I did for Ortegra was ‘Do you agree that measuring social media marketing success is the biggest challenge social media faces? Have a read!’ There was then a link to an article discussing this question. Rather than just posting a comment on the article, this tweet actively encourages other people to respond back by directly asking for their opinion. This allows for opinion to gauged on this topic and for social interaction. The whole notion of social media is that it allows people to connect, if your tweets are just statements, then you are not utilising the potential of connecting with people through social media.

When tweeting it is crucial that you are creative in your use of language. Whilst you want people to understand the content of your tweet, you also have to encourage more followers.  However, you only have 140 characters. Again a recent tweet I did for Ortegra can be used to demonstrate this point: ‘Some great examples of how social media can save your business money! Have a read and start saving now!’ Again a link was posted to the article. This use of language entices people to read the article, whilst also detailing exactly what the article will be about. By using the word ‘great’, people are able to see that I would recommend the article, thus it already has a positive review. The ending of the tweet further encourages people to read the article; ‘Have a read and start saving now’ is a very persuasive piece of text. To start saving, you must read.  In this tweet there is information on the content of the article, as well as some language, which is designed to persuade people to read the article. These tweets show how in 140 characters, you can be persuasive in your language; the key to this is being as concise as possible.

There are of course many other factors relating to the nature of tweeting for a business, this article only details a few. However, it is of significant importance that when starting a Twitter campaign for your business, you analyse your tweets in great detail, many companies make the mistake of tweeting for the sake of tweeting. This is pointless and a waste of a valuable marketing space. By being thoughtful about your tweets you will be able to make far better use of this incredibly powerful social platform.

Entrepreneurs have many great ideas, some go on to become hugely successful businesses, whilst other fail. Sometimes the idea fails because it is simply not a good idea and not a viable business opportunity, others may lack the resources needed in order to turn them into a business.  However, some fail simply because they are not researched well.  This article will explain how researching your business before you start, is crucial to its success.

Evaluating the size and nature of the market your business idea will enter, plays a significant role in its future success. If the market is saturated with other similar businesses, then competition ill be fierce. This may mean that the idea needs to be altered so that it offers something slightly different to other similar companies. It could also mean that pricing needs to be changed in order to compete in such a competitive arena.  However, in a large market there will be more potential customers, this is always good for new businesses.

Alternatively the business idea may be entering a smaller more niche market. In this case, you must conduct extensive customer research in order to assess if the market will grow. You must also evaluate if there is indeed a demand for the service your business offers.  Additionally, a small market means that your potential customer base will decrease.  This must be taken into consideration.

Researching the nature of the market is vitally important. The history of the market should be taken into consideration.  What are common trends? By knowing the history and trends, plans can be put in place to respond to changes in the marketplace.

These factors need to be thoroughly reviewed when setting up your business.  If you do not analyse the nature and size of the market, then bad decisions are likely to be made as they will be made on limited information. By having extensive knowledge of the market, you are able to make rational decisions based on substantial information, for the benefit of your business.

Before turning an idea into a business reality, some research into competitors must be undertaken. Firstly, it is important that the main competitors are identified. Their prices need to be looked at and compared; this is essential, as pricing in a new business needs to be competitive. After reviewing this, three questions must be asked: What are competitors doing better? What are they doing worse? How can we improve the business by learning from competitors? Asking these questions then allows your business model to change. For instance, it could came to fruition from your research that competitors have a lack of focus on customer service, your business could then focus upon promoting customer service in order to exploit this deficiency.  Alternatively competitors may be offering a more comprehensive service. This would obviously mean that your business would need to respond to this and at least equal the service provided by competitors. By having this information, you are able to maximise every part of your business and compete with your rivals.

Perhaps the most crucial research you must do before you start your business is knowing who your target customer is, this will then lead to effective marketing. You must define what customers your business will be aimed at, this could be a large or small audience, depending upon the nature of your business.  Factors could include geography, demographics, gender, age, size of company or income. Once these factors and others have been analysed and a target customer identified, you can tailor your marketing campaign towards this audience. This will mean that the people who will see your marketing campaign are those likely to use your business. Without this research many people who are highly unlikely to engage with your business may see your campaign, this makes it ineffective.

Research is a time consuming process and as the saying goes ‘time is money.’ However, as demonstrated in this article its benefits are tremendous. Your business has a far better chance of success if you have researched thoroughly. This means that when you do set up the business, decisions are made faster and more efficiently, as they are based on information and not guess work. Too many start up companies fail to see the value of research, thus many run into problems very quickly.

Using Social Media to Increase Sales and Brand Awareness

Companies are continuously launching marketing campaigns in an effort to promote their brand and boost their sales. Some of these are highly successful – Carlsberg’s slogan and advertising of ‘probably the best lager in the world’ generates excellent brand awareness and reputation. This then contributes to increased sales and ultimately increased profits. However, many of these companies have large marketing and advertising budgets. What if your company can not afford these marketing initiatives? This is where Social media marketing comes in. Most social media marketing‘tools’are free to use and can provide the same amount of marketing exposure whether you are just starting out or are a giant conglomerate. This article explains how you can use social media marketing to increase sales at a relatively low cost.

Firstly, let’s just dispel the myth that social media marketing does not lead to a direct increase in sales. Here are some examples to prove this: Sony announced in February that through Twitter they had earned an extra £1million in sales, Dell announced in June last year that their presence on Twitter accounted for $3 million dollars increase in sales. You might argue that these are two big companiese and they already have a brand reputation. However, other smaller companies have also experienced increased sales through social media marketing. John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd, a small shoe making company in Canada, reported a 40% increase in sales in 2009, the same year it started social media marketing, this was not by chance.

So how can social media marketing contribute to increased sales for your company? Social media tools allow you access to millions of people. A television advert will reach the people watching at that time and allows for no interaction with the consumer. One tweet can reach millions of people. Sainsbury’s for example regularly tweet their latest offers. Anyone wanting to keep up with these can simply follow Sainsbury’s on Twitter. This gives a much bigger potential customer base and allows for sales to increase, whilst also creating brand awareness. Furthermore, people can respond to these tweets which provides a forum for customer interaction and thus customer insight. Your business can emulate this, tweeting your promotions provides free advertising. If this is done creatively, it really can boost sales and get your company noticed.

Social media marketing works in a similar way to other forms of marketing; it is viral. A small company initially works on a word of mouth basis, people tell their friends. Social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, work with this ‘friend’ concept. People can give you positive reviews, recommend your product and tweet about your company. This whole social community allows your company’s name and brand to be viewed by a significant amount of people. Continuous use of social media over time creates brand awareness and thus helps to increase sales. One of our clients, PeachorLemon, a car review website, gained over one hundred followers on Twitter within a week. This is a hundred more people who know about promotions and offers, may tell their friends, visit the website or use other social media outlets to mention PeachorLemon. All this creates brand awareness and over time increased use of the website, thus increasing its value.

The effect social media can have on brand awareness is critical in the future of small businesses marketing strategy. Brand awareness is only one way in which sales are increased, there are many other important contributing factors. However, as this article has demonstrated, creating brand awareness through social media can have a huge impact on your business and revenues.

The reality is that the startup or early stage pre-revenue business is only worth what value someone puts on it at the time. There are no metrics to value a business on an idea or on a website or anything pre-revenue. Investors who offer money in pre-revenue situations are very difficult to find and if you find them …take the money! Do not get hung up over 5% or even 10% difference in the amount of shares they are asking for.

With the startup investment you can move your business forward.

Without it you are still on the starting line.

Investors who back start-ups are brave risk takers and should be admired just like entrepreneurs with great ideas.

So remember: a bird in the hand is worth at least two, if not many more, in the bush!!