Tag Archive for social media marketing

Wow! We are 1!

social media company marks first birthday

It’s a year since Wow! Signal Communications took the step to become a limited company, and what a first year it has been.

When I took a few minutes to reflect on the past year and the move from freelance social media consultant to company director, it made me realise just how big a change it has been.

Firstly, it’s not just me. A year ago my husband, James, joined Wow! Signal Communications for a day a week to help me manage the extra clients we had taken on and to add his experience as a specialist writer and communications professional. It was a change that helped our work-life balance as well as the business itself, and I’m glad to say that we work together well. We’ve built an office at home, taken on business support and drawn up plans for the future. For two years is was just me, freelancing while juggling being a busy mum to three young boys. We’re now a family business.

wow signal communications social media office

We’ve grown our retained client list to 12 and are really excited by the range of businesses we support. James and I are fortunate to be working with some truly dedicated and talented people whether they are specialist agencies, technology companies, professional services or healthcare providers. All of them using our support to connect with their customers and grow through social media. We’ve been proud to have grown organically – through recommendations and testimonials – and a big thanks to those who have supported our business and believed in us.

We’ve taken new directions too. We saw that more and more people valued the one-to-one advice we gave, so we’ve developed a training offering for sole traders and small businesses where they can sit down with me for an hour and get personalised, specific social media advice. And it’s not just business training anymore. Parents must now navigate the world of social media on behalf of their children, and we’re developing courses to help them understand how to do that.

The variety is something I love about my work. This month I was involved in the counter terrorism practice exercise Border Reiver. I work for The Social Simulator, role-playing members of the public and journalists to simulate how social media plays out during an incident. It is fabulous to work with such a talented team on an incredibly important piece of work.

Image credit PA. From BBC news story about Operation Reiver

Image credit PA. From BBC news story about Operation Reiver

Increasingly, our clients are widening the range of support from us. This year has seen us take our first steps into the world of branding, and to have our first proposal approved and implemented was a proud day for us.

Our plans for the coming year?

We stay committed to our fantastic clients, while developing our training services. We spend more time on promoting our business and sharing our thoughts. We adapt and grow as the demands of our family life change.

Here’s to another fantastic year!

Does your business need a Facebook boost?

Facebook for Business course

Why Facebook for business?

More than half of the UK’s population and 76% of the UK’s internet users have a Facebook account. Despite reports of Facebook being on its way out, the number of people using Facebook far exceeds any other social media channel and there are still a large number of social media users who only have a Facebook account and don’t have any other accounts.

This is clearly shown in Ofcom’s most recent Adults Media Use and Attitudes report for 2017.

Screen Shot 2017-08-24 at 12.10.57

So if you are looking for a way to talk to your customers, chances are they are on Facebook and your business could be making use of it to communicate with them.

It is easy to use, much simpler than a website to update, and can be managed any time, from anywhere, as long as you have a smart phone. If you need help, then I offer Facebook for Business training, but here’s some key things to think about.

You’ll need a business page, which remains separate from your personal profile, so you don’t have to mix the two if you don’t want to.  You can have more than one person who updates the page so if there are two or three people within your business who are keen they can all help manage the page.

What to post on Facebook?

Once you’re up and running you can let people know what your business is up to, any offers you are running, last minute changes to opening hours, or you could ask for feedback on new products or ideas.  It is best to post most days, and as well as information about you and your business you could also post links to relevant news stories or share posts from other pages that you think your customers would be interested in. People also love behind the scenes updates and information, it might be day-to-day stuff for you, but it builds a connection with your customers and potential customers.

You can also interact with other local businesses by posting on their Facebook pages and community sites such as Balsall Common.  If you add something interesting to their page they may share it with their fans, boosting your audience.

The only down side is that Facebook won’t show your posts to everyone who likes your page, there is a complicated formula that determines how many of them will see your updates each time you post, but there are ways to ensure you reach lots of people.

Facebook advertising

One of them is to pay – Facebook offers some very targeted advertising options, and you can select your audience by age, location, interests, and parents with children of a particular age. As prices start from just a few pounds, you don’t need a big budget. But you do need to be careful to select the right options to get the best results.

So what are you waiting for, your customers are on Facebook, are you making the most of it?

Learn more about Facebook

If you aren’t sure how to make the best of your Facebook page, why not come along to my next Facebook for Business training course. We’ll go through the differences between a personal profile and a page, the best times to post, the best content to post, how you can check whether your updates are working, and crucially how to use video on Facebook – a vital skill if you want to make the most of your Facebook Page.

Facebook for Business Training course

Snapchat advertising is now mainstream – so who is using it?

snapchat mainstream-2

Snapchat advertising is becoming a key part of campaigns. I’ve noticed lenses and filters from a wide range of companies on my account recently, including some that you might not expect to be using Snapchat.

John Lewis Snapchat advertising

Always eagerly awaited, this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert was very well received and generated a huge amount of social media traffic.  As in previous years it was launched on social media in the morning before appearing on television later that day.

For the first time this year, John Lewis also used Snapchat advertising. You could turn yourself into Buster the Boxer with the ad music playing and woodland creatures bouncing around.

I think this really shows the growth and increasing importance of Snapchat advertising over the past year. Hopefully we’ll get to find out a bit more about how popular the lens was and an indication of its value to John Lewis.

Who else uses Snapchat advertising?

Other companies using Snapchat advertising recently include Bacardi and Superdrug, Channel 4 for the new series of Humans,

snapchat lenses

and slightly more unexpectedly the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC).

Calculating a precise return on investment for social media is difficult and becoming more so. In the case of Snapchat, and other channels where direct calls to action and clickable links are either non-existent or hard work, we aren’t left with much to evaluate.

Channels and content are overlapping more and more too. A quick scan through the Instagram search results for #BustertheBoxer included many images created in Snapchat.  When I saw the RSC ad, I googled RSC and Intel to find out more about the advert I had seen.  The only way the RSC can measure the impact of the Snapchat ad is if they do no other advertising at the same time.

I love Snapchat and think the advertising potential is only going to grow and grow.  If you haven’t already started using it, why not give it a go.  You can find me as claireturner18 or use my Snapcode (save the image on your phone then choose ‘Add Friends’, ‘Add via Snapcode’ to use this.)

Snapchat-claire

Happy snapping!

Why Wow! Signal Communications?

I was asked again this week how I chose my company name. I have my husband to thank for it, and as soon as he suggested it I loved the idea.

We’ve been scanning the universe for years in the hope that we’re not alone. All we’ve heard is a steady background hum. That is until 1977, when a team of US scientists at the Big Ear radio telescope in Ohio picked up a one-off signal that fitted the profile of an alien transmission. It wasn’t at a frequency used by human beings, and it didn’t come from natural sources. Interstellar scintillation, the sound of a star twinkling, has also been ruled out.

As the instruments flicked into life, the computer chattered out a paper report. A scientist marked the extraordinary printout with a simple “Wow!” and the Wow! Signal was born. For nearly 40 years telescopes have scanned the part of the sky where the Wow! Signal came from. Silence.

Credit: The Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)

Credit: The Ohio State University Radio Observatory and the North American AstroPhysical Observatory (NAAPO)

It remains the only message to cut through the cosmic noise for decades.

In the eighteen months Wow! Signal Communications has been up and running I’ve loved cutting through the noise and getting messages through on behalf of local small businesses. Setting up my own business was a big step and I’ve been very lucky to have lots of family support and some great clients to make it a real success. I’m looking forward to the next eighteen months and more.

10 things I learned from Facebook for Business

Absolutely Anonymously. Canadian Pharmacy. Absolute An0nymity
Facebook occasionally put on events to offer insights into their latest updates and developments, with a few interesting glimpses at what they are planning next. Although partly motivated by their desire to increase their revenue, nonetheless I spent a fascinating morning learning more about the latest News Feed changes and advertising options:

    1. Competition is growing for News Feed placement – at any one time there could be 200 updates in there from friends, family, groups and organisations

 

    1. Therefore organic reach for business is dropping rapidly and eventually is likely to be zero – Facebook are unapologetic about this, your content has to be brilliant to bump updates from friends and family or you have to pay

 

    1. If it’s not mobile friendly, don’t bother. 20 million out of the 25 million UK FB users on today view on a mobile, this number is getting bigger all the time

 

    1. The future of the news feed is ‘sight, sound, and motion’, video is becoming increasingly important

 

    1. Facebook offers the most sophisticated targeting platform for advertising, with a range of tailored options and the ability to select an audience by demographics, interests, behaviours, and even by device used to view.

 

    1. Facebook advertising works on an auction system so the cost of reaching a particular audience varies, young males are more expensive during big sporting events

 

    1. In general new mums are the most expensive people to advertise to because there is a lot of competition to reach them

 

    1. New features are being added all the time, the latest, Local Awareness advertising, allows you to reach customers within as little as a one mile radius of your business

 

    1. Messaging for pages is becoming more important as a customer service channel

 

  1. Instagram advertising is coming in September

If you’d like to know more about how Facebook advertising could help your business please get in touch.

Why am I seeing this? – the science behind Facebook advertising

 

I recently took part in a Wolf Run. I’m glad I can tick it off the list but I won’t be rushing to do another one, it’s the only run I’ve ever finished wanting a blanket and a cup of tea.

As with lots of things that I get involved in I liked the Wolf Run Facebook page, mentioned the event in posts before and after the run and was tagged in photos from the day, covered from head to toe in mud.

Trainers covered in mud

Since then, I’ve noticed something very interesting. For the last month these are the ads that have been appearing in my Facebook timeline.

Facebook adverts for runs

 

Pretty much exclusively. I haven’t really seen adverts for anything other than running events, especially of the outdoor, muddy variety, and physical challenges. A click on the ‘v’ symbol and selecting the ‘Why am I seeing this option? ‘ tells me why.

i don't want to see this

ad preferences

 

Facebook thinks I am interested in running and physical fitness, which is a fair assumption based on my recent activity. But it does highlight a flaw in a computer generated algorithm – there is no account of the ‘never again’ feeling I have about another Wolf Run or similar.

Facebook is keen to tailor updates and ads to your personal preferences so if you are seeing ads in your Timeline that you don’t like, make sure you have a look at why you are seeing the ad and change the topics you are interested in if they aren’t accurate. You can’t remove ads from your Facebook timeline altogether but you can make sure they are for stuff you might be interested in.

On the other side of things, as an advertiser, this ability to target is brilliant. You can advertise to people based on their age, gender, location, interests and habits. Plenty of people who did the Wolf Run loved it and will be signing up for the next one and other similar events so I’m sure some of the ads I’ve seen will have been very successful. The cost of those adverts will also have been far less than in a printed publication.

Interestingly one of the few non-running adverts I’ve seen recently was for Land Rover and that was because I like Volvo, so companies large and small are using Facebook adverts to target potential customers.

So, next time you’re on Facebook have a look at the ads in your feed and why you’re seeing them, it might give you ideas for how you could use Facebook advertising and how to tailor them.