CATEGORY PAGE (RESOURCES)The Benefits of In-house Social Media Training

Changing algorithms, new ad options, new functionalities – the constant changes in the social media landscape can be hard to stay on top of, and causes headaches for many organisations.

In a survey by Sensai,
of respondents shared that managing social media channels is harder than filling out income tax paperwork.

 

The top 6 social media marketing challenges we see for businesses

• Facebook algorithm changes
• Rising ad costs
• Getting noticed in overcrowded feeds
• Too many trends/changes to keep up with
• Not enough people and resources
• Not understanding how to measure results

Source: Sensai

Benefits of Social Media Training

• No more ad-hoc social media activity
• Clear, strategic and measurable social media marketing
• Confidence that you are maximising your social media efforts
• Control your share of the conversation without letting your competitors dominate
• Boost staff motivation and morale by developing their skills and knowledge in Social Media

Have you considered Bespoke in-house social media training tailored to meet the requirements of your organisation?

We want to help you become self-sufficient with social media. If you train with us, we’ll give you the confidence, knowledge and practical skills you need to grow. Investing in social media training now will ensure your business does not get left behind.

From building a strategy to what to post and how to analyse results, this training will help you to find new clients, provide support and interact positively with existing and potential customers.

We deliver in-depth courses which give you a blend of best practice, strategy, practical exercises, guides, planning, discussion and Q&A.

We offer in-house training and workshops and Philippa is often engaged as a keynote speaker. Here is some of our feedback.

 

 

 

Want to get traction with your social media posts, email marketing and more? We have created this optimal character length guide for Facebook, Twitter, Hashtags, Domains and subject lines to help you get more engagement.

 

 
 
Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Biz Stone, and Noah Glass and launched in July 2006
 
On 15 January 2009, a US Airways flight crashed on NYC’s Hudson River. A photo posted to Twitter broke the news before traditional media, highlighting Twitter’s role in breaking news. Here are some other interesting statistics and facts on Twitter in our infographic.
 

 
You might also like to check out the latest statistics on Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube

Social media is a dynamic persuader of customer perception and a fundamental communication channel. However, it can also be an unruly place that you must be constantly prepared for.
 At the heart of any social media communication is your brand and it needs safe guarding online just as you would other places.

With over 1.6 billion users on Facebook alone, the potential for social media being incredibly creative or destructive for your business cannot be understated. Having a social media presence and understanding how to deal with the associated problems, is not an option.

Standard public relation rules and guidelines do not apply to the unique problems and crisis that can arise. Developing and implementing a crisis plan specific to social media is critical for an organisation of any size. Here are 8 key steps to consider when developing a social media crisis plan:

1. Create a social media policy for your staff
   A strong social media policy is your first defence against a crisis. It will help guide your organisation and staff in managing crisis on your various social media channels.
2. Map it out
   Work out your plan of attack. Aside from delegation, how will you deal with trolls, upset customers, misinformation and other problematic media content. Consider creating a visual guide as well which could be easier for staff managing the crisis.
3. Respond like lightening
   In the social media world, a minute late could be hundreds of comments late.
Use web-tools such as Social Mention to keep abreast of breaking news and business reports. Often the web will know about a potential crisis for your business before you do.
   Pre-empt a crisis if possible. This sends a message that the company feels strongly about its responsibility to the consumer and its ability to weather the storm.
4. Respond to the customer consistently and regularly
   Use the techniques and response protocols outlined in your crisis plan to respond consistently and regularly. Unhappy customers who are ignored are lost and will spread the word.
5. Be Real
   Part of your protocols should be to create genuine statements that address common issues and comments. Disingenuous, standardised PR sound bytes will lose you support.
6. Use a megaphone
   Let your customers and business associates know your position, through as many media channels as you can. Being proactive in taking responsibility will show general care.
7. Track your crisis
   Watch how the crisis is developing. Carefully go through comments to assess the atmosphere. Make sure to cover other sites for conversations you may need to respond to.
8. Post crisis discussion
   Review the event’s issues and advantages with your social media team and what you could do better the next time. Use this discussion to create a generalised plan adaptable to a variety of crisis.

We all know that Google Adwords has a ‘Quality Score’ system which rewards advertisers who create engaging ads with much lower cost per click and more prominent ad placement. Now Twitter has with a similar algorithm to reward the most engaging ads and penalise low-performing ads. Twitter recently confirmed this in their Help Section.

Twitter uses its ads quality score to determine how your ads are displayed, and how much you pay if people engage with them.
A quality score is generally comprised of three broad elements, the three R’s:

Resonance: are consumers engaging with your Tweet? Do they retweet, like, or reply often?

Relevance: is your Tweet related to things a user is interested in?

Recency: is your Tweet fresh? Twitter is a real-time platform about what is happening now, so fresher tweets get higher priority.

Twitter doesn’t currently show this metric so you won’t know your score. It is known that by increasing the quality score on your Twitter ads actually earns you a huge click discount. On average, when you gain one point in the engagement rates on your ads, you will see a 5% decrease in cost per engagement.

How do you ensure a good quality score?

Tweet new material regularly
The number of impressions per day declines over time. And, as time goes on, Twitter is less likely to show older tweets. With an important message create different variations of the ad to be able to tweet something new.

Promote tweets that are already performing well
When you pay to promote high-engagement tweets, it will often give your organic performance a boost.

Relevance is key to engagement
The best way to kill your engagement and quality score is to blast out tweets to a very large audience. Use Twitter’s ad targeting options to restrict your audience to those that really count.

Watch this video created by Twitter that is relevant for small and medium-sized business. A helpful intro on tips about how to grow a community of followers and highlights some of the functions to gain more value from your Twitter presence.

The video covers integrating your Twitter presence throughout marketing channels, then find customers to follow/interact with by importing your email contacts. Finally, use hashtags to join relevant conversations on Twitter and connect with industry experts.