Tag Archive for: Social media

A Quick Guide to Social Media Marketing

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To many of us digital natives it is difficult to imagine a world without social media. Social media has evolved from a tool that very few businesses use, to being an integral piece of every company’s marketing strategy. There should be no question as to whether or not your brand should be using social media instead you should be thinking: how can I best utilise platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn to help grow my business?

What is Social Media Marketing?

Here at Air Social, we know that social media marketing is key for generating leads, raising brand awareness and developing relationships with existing or potential customers.

When managed successfully, social media provides a platform for excellent, responsive customer service, community engagement and social selling activities that help generate interest and create relationships with customers.

The importance of Social Media Marketing

Social media is an essential component of every marketing plan. With its great potential this type of marketing can help you achieve many of your business’s marketing goals, such as:

  • Creating and building your brand identity
  • Raising brand awareness
  • Building conversions
  • Increasing your website traffic
  • Interacting with customers and developing relationships.

Once your business is ready to have an online presence, you should develop a social media strategy, ensuring you are sharing engaging content and maintaining a consistent brand image, whilst using your page to correctly promote your business.

Social media is no longer a place where you only interact and socialise with friends and family but is now a key component in promoting your business. Due to this trend, customers are now able to engage with brands whenever they please.

If you have not been using social media for your business you are really missing out! At Air Social, we place social strategy at the centre of all our marketing campaigns. We produce engaging, meaningful and targeted campaigns, reaching the right people at the right time to grow your business.

Contact us today on 01483 789 434 or email us at team@airsocial-build-com.stackstaging.com for further information on our services.

Social Media Day

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On Social Media Day we share our thoughts and opinions on probably the most powerful and far-reaching communication source in the world!

So, what is Social Media Day?

On June 30, 2010, Mashable launched Social Media Day to recognise and celebrate social media’s impact on global communication.

As Air Social is primarily a social media agency, we asked each person in the office to explain why social media was important to them, what their favourite advert was and why.

Alex

Social Media is my life. I love all the different ways social media is used, and the amazing things it can achieve. Having worked in PR and advertising for some time now, seeing the trend move from traditional mass-print advertising to tailored and targeted social media and digital strategy has been remarkable.

I think the campaign which has stuck with me most is the Geico unskipable series of ads. They are a clever response to the Skip Advert button that you find on YouTube. Aside from their creativity, they make me smile!

Oli

Social media is at the forefront of modern marketing. There’s no better way to be in front of your target market at such a low cost than through social channels.

Traditional advertising doesn’t offer engagement and a two-way form of communication in the way social advertising does. Communication is an art form and social media is the modern day canvas.

This is by far the most amazing advert I’ve ever seen;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjKd24UCPYY

Freddie

Social media is important to me because it makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family across the world. The way social media is used by businesses is also pretty cool. I love instantly having at my fingertips a newly-released film trailer, an advert for a new game, or a new piece of software that I would never have found otherwise.

Here’s my favourite advert. I’m not convinced it will make me buy a Volvo, but it shows very outside-the-box thinking when it comes to showing off their precision steering!

Aaron

Social media to me has become a way of life, the ability to stay in contact with social groups, to easily buy and sell and be  targeted by advertisers based exactly on your preferences. Social media is becoming so advanced that you are now leaving a digital imprint wherever you go. Of course there are negatives to this, but when used safely and correctly the benefits are huge.

An advert that sticks in my mind is the ‘We’re the Superhumans’ for the Rio Paralympics. It is a campaign that did very well on TV but also went viral, with over 8 million views on YouTube alone. It is a campaign which looks adversity, prejudice and the stigma of disability in the face and says, “yes you can!” It is an inspirational and eye-opening campaign, which shows that these athletes are superhuman and, whenever I see it, I get this feeling of awe and pride at watching these athletes and skilful individuals embracing their disability.

Piers

My name is Piers and I have been lucky enough to be a part of the team at Air Social for work experience. I’m at a point in my life where I am surrounded by social media in all aspects of my life. I even have friends that can’t go without it. To me, social media is a rare opportunity for the younger generation that hasn’t been available before now and gives us the upper hand. Social media provides a unique form of communication, which most people my age have been brought up with. We are surrounded by an online environment of influencers, creators and generally cool people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv9daYDOCIY

As you can see there are lots of adverts that stick with different people in different ways. Appealing to your target audience can be difficult, but get it right and the rewards can be huge.

We’re Air Social and we love social media and all things digital. If you’re finding it hard to compete in the digital world then why not give us a call on 01483 789434? We would love to hear from you.

How to keep up to date with trends in the digital sector

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The digital world moves quickly. It can be a daunting prospect knowing that a strategy you are using, or the tools that you find most useful, may soon be outdated. Having been in the digital sector over a period of great change, we know this only too well. However, we also know that keeping up to date with this ever-changing world can yield huge returns.

Knowing the trends and changes coming up will put you ahead of the competition, will give you valuable credibility, and will sit you on the road to digital success.

Below are 4 ways to stay up to date.

Blogs

This is our favourite way of learning what’s new and exciting in the sector. Regularly reading a range of articles on digital will give you a sense of the direction new trends and technologies are taking. There’s a huge range of blogs out there, so it is tricky to know where to start. Here’s a small selection that covers a variety of subjects within the digital sector.

Social media group

We love Linkedin groups. They seem to be less well-known than Facebook groups, however with the more professional audiences, you can be sure they contain treasure troves of useful articles and ideas. Simply search for your area of interest, find a group that looks interesting, request to join, and get scrolling!

Email newsletters

Don’t always be perturbed by the dreaded website sign-up form or checkbox, they can be game-changers. Email newsletters are controversial. Some people love them, using them as a tool to stay up to date and informed, some people hate them, seeing them as unwelcome clutter in their mailbox. We sit somewhere in the middle. Having a small yet varied selection of newsletters coming into your mailbox each month acts as a valuable pointer to what’s coming up and what might be worth reading more into. You can make this significantly easier for yourself by setting up an automatic forward to copy these into a specific folder in your mailbox. Then, when you have time to read through, they are all in one location.

Be inquisitive

The best way to keep up to date is also the simplest – talking to people in your industry and asking the right questions to potential customers will give you a foresight into common problems and challenges. These challenges will have been faced by people across the digital world and people will have written about potential solutions. The more your research these, the more rounded a picture you will gain of your digital surroundings. The clearer the picture, the better placed you are to adapt to changes in the digital world.

The digital sector moves quickly, and it can be daunting trying to keep up to date with the latest goings on. The above suggestions are just a few ways you can stay ahead of the game, but if you would like to learn how an agency specialising in digital strategy and creativity can help your business, why not get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.

The rise and rise of the Micro Influencer

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One of the golden rules of advertising is ‘Know Your Audience’, well how better to do that than by involving them in your marketing strategy?

One of the latest trends you may have heard banded about is ‘micro influencers’, but what exactly are they? Well, in essence, micro influencers are social media users that inhabit the intersection of civilian consumer and minor celebrity; commonly categorised as people with a following of around 1000-10,000.

The benefits of using micro influencers are numerous; they are often experts in their chosen category and have garnered a large following for this reason, yet have a following localised to their particular field. For example an artist on Instagram may have a large following of people, the majority of which will also have an interest in art; by using micro influencers you are accessing a ready-made targeted audience. Being endorsed by a micro influencer is also a solid way to build credibility into your campaign; a good Google review is always welcome but it doesn’t have the impact of a well-known expert recommending your product.

There is an argument that using micro influencers may also be more beneficial than celebrity endorsement. With fewer followers micro influencers are able to maintain a higher rate of engagement with their followers, therefore promoting discussion on their posts; on Facebook, for example, the more an individual interacts with their friends and followers on a post the higher the organic reach. Not only could micro influencers save you money on promoting posts, but they also come without the hefty price tag of celebrity endorsement.

In fact, research shows that although brand exposure would be increased by using people with huge followings, for most businesses it’s irrelevant (Takumi, 2017). This couldn’t be more true for the majority of businesses; it just doesn’t make sense for Kim Kardashian to be endorsing a deli in Brighton, however, a micro influencer from Brighton who networks online with other people in Brighton, would be an ideal person to advertise with, despite having 1/100th of the followers.

Not only can micro influencers benefit you, but you can benefit them. By offering them to sample your product you create content for both parties and can endorse each other in the process, it’s a win-win situation.

At Air Social we understand the importance of knowing your local area, creating relevant and engaging campaigns through cost effective methods. To find out more get in touch.

Social Media: The Goldman Sachs Story

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In 2008 the landscape of worldwide banking was not a pretty picture. In the midst of what many economists called the most serious financial crisis since the great depression, ‘banking’ had become a dirty word. Although Goldman Sachs had initially benefited from the subprime mortgage crisis in 2007, this was what ultimately triggered a worldwide financial crisis leading to the company being bailed out by the US Government; it’s safe to say that Goldman Sachs were not held in high esteem by the general public.

2008 was also the year Barack Obama won the US Presidential election; having gone from a relatively unknown Democrat to the leader of the free world in a relatively short amount of time. His success has been credited in part to the use of social media in his campaign; finally, social media marketing had truly arrived.

Understandably, due to the financial climate and their poor public image, the fairly conservative Goldman Sachs were reluctant to make the leap to social media but, after much convincing from their marketing department, leap they did.

Allegedly what changed their mind is that the firm’s marketing department searched the phrase “Goldman Sachs” on YouTube and turned up more than 34,000 videos, none of which had been posted by the firm; they realised that people would be talking about their brand regardless of their actions; there was a lesser risk in having an online presence rather than not at all. As head of brand marketing and digital strategy, Lisa Shallet puts it: “We’ve learned that we have to invest in telling our story online and protecting the Goldman Sachs brand.”

Nevertheless, the initial Goldman Sachs online output may have actually alienated people. In 2013 The Banker’s Umbrella commented on the bank’s Twitter activity: “what Goldman is doing is conducting a good old fashioned direct marketing campaign. All they are doing is giving you an advertising brochure and delivering it through social media”, they were simply drip-feeding their Twitter followers with a standard ad campaign, 140 characters at a time.

Even with the backdrop of corporate impersonality, Goldman Sachs is already particularly faceless; it has no branches so there is no customer and community interaction. Maybe this explains their initial failure online; Goldman Sachs failed to grasp was that ‘social media’ is exactly that, social. Slowly, Goldman realised that as it turns out, having no social media presence is bad, but having a bad social media presence is worse.

Luckily for Goldman Sachs they’ve had a turn around.

Now, in 2017, Goldman Sachs actually excel at producing shareable content, regularly uploading accessible videos and blogs about current events and popular culture – OK, so maybe not entirely relevant to the Goldman Sachs brand, but a step in the right direction none the less.

Last week they even tweeted their own #TBT (as pictured below); Goldman is finally taking off the corporate mask to reveal the real people who work for the bank – and it working. They now have well over half a million followers and have slowly expanded to social media channels they feel compliment their brand, engaging with consumers on LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.

By 2015 90% of Goldman’s marketing activity was online, vital for a company with no physical high street presence, and now in 2017 that figure is undoubtedly higher. Amanda Rubin, managing director and global co-head of brand and content strategy at Goldman, has said that “from a brand’s perspective, digital platforms offer us an enormous amount of data. By using that data, we are able to know what is valuable, what is interesting, and what is imperative.” We couldn’t agree more, as recognised Facebook partners we are in the lucky position of having access to valuable census data and so experience first-hand the influence this data can have on a campaign and, moreover, the impact that carefully targeted and relevant social media can provide.

Why Bespoke Business Software is Vital for our Company

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As a company that specialises in lead generation it is vital that none of our own leads is ever dropped. We at Air Social use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application to avoid that from ever happening. However, many CRMs come ready made with a huge amount of unnecessary apps that a compact team such as ours simply doesn’t require. With such an unwieldy amount of apps a CRM designed to organise a company may actually make matters more complicated, with actions getting lost in the system.

This is where Bespoke Business Solutions come in. They allow us to mould the software we use to suit our business, rather than force us to adapt to generic software. The CRM they have provided us with precisely does what we need it to do for example to assign and reassign roles, track new and completed tasks and keep up with each other’s meetings. As we work with many clients being able to assign hours is very useful and being able to log hours spent on certain clients is absolutely essential to the way we bill clients.
This level of organisation makes sure every lead is followed up, and nothing gets forgotten. Obviously for a business with more employees it would be less relevant to have a joint calendar with everyone’s meetings in it, but for our team its perfect.

On top of these benefits, having a custom made system it means if our business changes we have the ability to call up and alter the system. It is customisable and free flowing with our own business.

It also avoids some of the main pitfalls of generic CRM applications. The system that BBS have made toes the line between an overly simple interface that will quickly be outgrown by an expanding business and cumbersome systems where you have to go through multiple screens to process transactions. With BBS there is no refreshing, no scrolling up and down, minimal transactions from screen to screen – yet it delivers the same service.

So next time you’re wondering what the secret to our success is… Well, it’s a secret. But you can be sure our fantastic CRM from Bespoke Business Software plays a big part in the smooth functioning of our company!

Find out more about Bespoke Business Software here.

This Year, Keep Your Social Media Healthy.

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At this time of year all anyone seems to be talking about is their New Year’s Resolution; the latest fitness regime or tasteless clean eating diet, but here at Air Social we are more concerned with keeping our social media profiles healthy. So here, as a belated Christmas gift to you, are some tips from the experts (us).

1. Maintenance.
There’s only one thing that looks as sloppy as a lack of internet presence and that’s an out of date, underutilised internet presence.
An unkempt social media profile is a bit like bad dental hygiene, it needs looking after, otherwise people will literally stay away from you. If a Google search were to show two similar business and one was fully up to date – and the other hadn’t posted since 2012, some may well assume the business no longer exists. Frequent posting also keeps your business in the forefront of people’s minds so next time they need the services you provide – you’ll often be the first they come to. So, like brushing your teeth, social media has to be maintained daily – and no, not just the once.

2. You get out what you put in.
What happens when you eat junk food? You may put on weight. What happens when you post spam? You will lose credibility and your potential customers will lose interest. Finding meaningful, relevant content that will keep your customer engaged can seem like an ongoing slog, but it’s worth it.

3. Stay connected.
It may seem obvious to some, but so many small businesses still fail to have a cohesive set of social media profiles. By not linking your website to your Facebook, Twitter and Instagram you make it harder for customers to keep up to date with your business developments and conversely by not making your website accessible from social media you may lose out on real business.

4. Engage.
The clue is in the name. ‘SOCIAL’. The beauty of social media is that it gives an informal platform to listen to your customers’ needs, solve their issues and answer any queries; failure to respond to your online customers will simply be viewed as bad customer service.

There are many ways in which your social media profiles may not be selling to their maximum potential, and for most people even the four things listed may be a lot to juggle on top of running a company. For more advice and information on how Air Social can help you and your business call 01483 789 434 or email alex@airsocial-build-com.stackstaging.com

“Man has made his match”: Artificial Intelligence in the Real World

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‘Artificial intelligence’ is here to stay, there’s no doubt about it. Now, we at Air Social are all for innovation, in fact we thrive off it. But when everyone is jumping on the artificial intelligence bandwagon, we think we need to ask: when is it appropriate? And how much is too much? I mean, we’ve all seen Blade Runner after all.

For example, there’s a lot to say for a human touch, for example, what could be better than a smiling barista taking your order before handing you a hot cup of coffee with a delicately poured pattern floating on the top?

When we think of a good customer service experience, the words friendly and helpful spring to mind, also, the ability to cater for all needs; a bespoke service if you will. So what happens when that customer service gets replaced with a faceless app on your mobile phone? Well that’s exactly what Starbucks have decided to do.

Obviously their app has its perks (I can’t count the number of times my order of dry soy cappuccino, extra chocolate on top and two shots of sugar free caramel syrup has gone awry) but it’s an odd move from the company so intent on distancing themselves from their reputation as a faceless corporation, for example their ongoing campaign to put the customer’s name on the cup. This was a really great move for Starbucks back in 2012 and has inadvertently worked as a viral campaign too; not only do people frequently share their misspelt names online but also reminds us of the humanity of the baristas; we find ourselves actually celebrating the charm of human error. The app, although useful, completely contrasts the more human brand that Starbucks had started to create. It seems that Starbucks is using the right technology but with the wrong effect.

Now take the Amazon Echo which uses the Alexa operating system, the personal assistant Siri wishes she could be; Alexa has been credited as being life-changing for people with decreased mobility or the visually impaired. For example, one can change the thermostat or book a taxi without leaving your chair – or even looking at a screen. Things as insignificant as tuning a radio seem so simple to most but are difficult when you have a visual or physical impairment. With the Echo and Alexa that issue is eliminated.

Again, the technology comes with its pitfalls: last week a San Diego TV station came under criticism after a report about a girl who ordered a dollhouse via her parents’ Amazon Echo caused Echoes in viewers’ homes to also attempt to order dollhouses.

With Google and Samsung following Alexa’s lead, this mode of artificial intelligence is undoubtedly set to be sticking around. Of course there are simply some things that can’t be faked, that includes human connection, creativity and, as Alexa proves, just a dash of common sense; but despite this we can’t wait to see what lies ahead for artificial intelligence and what that means for the digital media landscape.

The continued rise of Facebook: can anyone stop it?

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It’s no coincidence that the fall of Vine coincided with the ability to put videos on Instagram. This happened only a year after the photo sharing giant was bought by Facebook. Now it’s Snapchat under attack as Instagram has launched its own ‘story’ function that mimics the whole concept of the app, but conveniently tucked into a corner of the Instagram interface. Rather inconveniently for Snapchat, it’s only growing in popularity.

The reason for this is quite simply that Instagram is a much more open platform; the beauty of apps like Instagram and Twitter is the ability to gain an insight into the lives of people we wouldn’t normally encounter. We can get up to the minute insights into what the Kardashian’s are wearing or the latest diet fad is first hand, something that is much more difficult on Snapchat.

Of course there are benefits to Snapchat; Snapchat isn’t based on likes or followers so there is no scope for fake news to be spread, features such as ‘Discover’ are heavily vetted so that content is of a certain quality and, most relevant to us, advertising is integrated into the customer experience so it is un-intrusive whilst also interactive.

There is a reason for this. “Snapchat makes discovery of people who aren’t in your phone book extremely difficult because they believe peer-to-peer sharing is stickier than a so-called influencer model,” says Rob Fishman, co-founder of Niche, a company that connects brand with social media influencers.

The combination of this and Snapchat’s venture into wearable tech means there may be a future for the app but whether it will able to hold its own against the Facebook empire remains to be seen, as in 2017 Instagram’s influence is set to grow even further. In terms of advertising Instagram is predicted to usurp Twitter, meaning Facebook will hold the gold and silver medals in the social media marketing race, a truly astonishing feat. Luckily for Twitter, Facebook has already adopted some of the character traits of Twitter, such as hashtags and an increased ability to share content and news, but has never been able to mimic the balance of intimacy and worldwide scope that Twitter delivers – it remains safe for the time being.

In our expert opinion Snapchat remains a contender – for now. And there is no doubt that Twitter will be around as a major social media platform for a long time to come, but Facebook ultimately reigns almighty.

team@airsocial.co.uk
01483 789 434
Leapale House,
Leapale Lane, Guildford,
Surrey, GU1 4LY

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