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0:16 – Social platforms your business should be on
1:12 – Maximising your marketing efforts in Pinterest
1:58 – Amazing facts about social interaction: people will post negative comments!
3:18 – Growing your business through strategic alliances & joint venture partnerships
Hi, Fiona Soutter here, from Super Savvy Business, with this week’s Word of the Week and business news update.
0:16 – Social platforms your business should be on
One thing I think as business owners and marketers that we really can’t ignore is the rise of importance that social media plays in our businesses.
For example, social care: consumers are becoming more and more used to getting feedback and answers through social media, and getting those answers immediately rather than just picking up the phone to speak to a company.
They are using places like Facebook, they are using Twitter, they are using Google Plus, and they are even using comments on the company’s blog pages.
So, what does this mean to you as a business owner?
It means that you need to have a really clear strategy about how you are handling the way consumers are interacting with you on your social media pages. And it’s important to get this right because if you can get it right then you are going to create a much wider gap between you and your competitors who aren’t paying attention to it.
1:12 – Maximising your marketing efforts in Pinterest
I’ve also been watching the rise of Pinterest and how businesses are using Pinterest in marketing. It seems that Pinterest is growing steadily at just an incredible rate.
What does this mean for you?
It means that it is important to create images that are visually engaging. If people are re-pinning your images then perhaps it is worth considering engaging with them. If they haven’t already purchased a product through you then perhaps even by engaging with them you might be able to turn them into a customer.
It is, once again, part of your social care. So if people are re-pinning your products, make sure you do engage with them, thank them for repinning, ask them what it was they liked about your particular product or about that image.
1:58 – Amazing facts about social interaction: people will post negative comments!
Now whilst we’re on the topic of social media… I came across a study recently which investigated the concept of social listening – in other words, how people are listening to each other when it comes to businesses using social media.
Now, there are some interesting stats I wanted to share with you:
– 70% of people hear about other people’s experiences through social media.
– 65% of people learn specifically about products and services.
– 53% of people compliment a brand or a product or service, but whilst that might be the case…
– 50% of people will also complain on social media, which is really worth paying attention to.
So, as a business owner, if you are not paying attention to what people are talking about you on social media – whilst people might be complimenting your brand or product or service, they might also be complaining about bad service or faulty products or something like that. You really do need to make sure you are watching attentively as to what is going on.
– 47% of people in these studies said that they would share money incentives or some sort of incentive to share a link or share a picture or something like that. So it’s worth investigating and seeing if this will work for your business.
3:18 – Growing your business through strategic alliances & joint venture partnerships
The final topic that I’d like to touch on today is around the idea of growing your business through strategic alliances or joint venture partnerships. Have a think about business owners around you – whether they are local business owners or whether they are businesses anywhere in the world, it doesn’t matter – businesses that have complementary products or services to what you do.
Perhaps they have a product or service which revolves around what your consumers need before they come to you or after they have done business with you. Or maybe it works alongside what you do. Think about what you can do to approach these business owners and perhaps give them some sort of offer of what you can provide for their customers, free of charge; something that is going to be a value add.
Likewise then, they might be able to provide something for you and your service. This is all about adding value to each other’s businesses but in turn helping to grow one another’s businesses.
This is something that we’ve been doing within the Super Savvy Business module and also it’s a module that we are using with the Savvy Mastermind members, showing them how they can grow their business and their database just by connecting with other business owners.
I hope that you got some value out of some of these tips today. Please leave your comments below the video.