Earlier this month I had a great day at the Go Social Go Media event in Glasgow, run by Hashtag Events. Expert speakers from the world of social media inspiring us delegates with nuggets from their vast experience. So now I am sharing my top ten tips from the event:
- Starting conversations takes effort and being in the right place at the right time is no accident. Prepare your 60 second story, practice saying it out loud and then get out and network
- Keep in regular touch with your new and existing connections. Pick up the phone or communicate through social media
- Be genuinely interested in other people or their businesses, build relationships. If you like and share other people’s content, they will come back and look at what you are doing
- Consider your objectives and develop a strategy for your social media content, i.e. Who are you wanting to attract, who is your target audience? What social platforms are they on?
- Create relevant and engaging content – use great headlines and images
- Video content has become essential. 60% of marketers use video in their marketing plan and 73% plan on increasing their use of video (oops apologies I haven’t noted down the source of these stats)
- … And 50% of marketers are planning on using ‘live’ video services for example on Facebook. It’s certainly exploding in my newsfeed
- Plan your content, so you are communicating regularly. However don’t be too rigid – keep it flexible
- Use hashtags, but do not overwhelm your post with them. If creating a hashtag say for an event – google it first. You may find it is already in existence and not for quite the same theme as you had in mind – could be an embarrassing error!
- People are interested in people. Update your Linkedin profile – 25 million people in the UK are on there. Create a great profile and use a good photo – head & shoulder shot, not one of you on holiday. Builds trust and credibility
Fiona Melvin-Farr
