Are You Strategic about Social Media?

April 27, 2013 by jbdcolley Leave a Comment

This has been a busy week with a speaking engagement at Salisbury Big Business Event. I would like to thank everyone involved for making it a great event and I really enjoyed meeting a wide range of business people, exhibitors and other speakers.

Karren Brady, an eminent British business woman and Deputy Chairman of West Ham Football club gave a very inspiring keynote on her experience as a woman in the business of Football.

In case you were unable to make the event, I would like to share with you my thoughts about Social Media Strategy and how to use Social Media Marketing to really engage with your customers.

My talk was entitled “How NOT to be the next Comet – Marketing in the Connected Economy“. Comet was an electrical retail business in the UK which lost its connection with its customers and went bust. It metamorphosed from being a retailer to being a high street show room for Amazon.

I have made a 12 minute video, embedded below, in which I have covered all the main points from my Presentation and below this you can download the slides which are on Slidedeck.

The full slide deck can be downloaded from Slideshare and is provided for you below.

Marketing in the Connected Economy from jbdcolley

Comments following the Presentation

Here are a few of the Tweets and Comments I received following the presentation:

“If you are looking for a superb strategist, tutor and social media expert, John would be a great asset to help make the most of your business. John is personable and a professional, I cannot reccomend him enough.” Eliot Jones, President, Salisbury Chamber of Commerce

@personnelplace Very welcome, thanks for yours! Really enjoyed today’s presentation at SBBE.

@futrsocial thank you very much for a extremely informative and engaging talk yesterday!

@personnelplace Morning John – many thanks again for yesterdays seminar – such useful advice that I will be putting into practice!

@tylrsguesthouse Good presentation today @SalisburyBBE Thanks to @jbdcolley

@puncturesafew Very stimulating and thought provoking presentation you gave this afternoon at BBE Salisbury

@simonwardphoto A great talk from @jbdcolley about ‘How Not To Be The Next Comet’

@eliotcjones Great to listen to @jbdcolley @SalisburyBBEcorporate strategist, blogger and social media specialist. Thank you John for your advice

@wiltshirehour @KenziaDigital @SalisburyBBE How remiss of me ! Apart from previous mentions, credit due to @jbdcolley for his sound advice.

Kenzia Digital Salisbury Presentation – 12 Ways to be more Effective with Social Media Marketing

Amanda Kennedy from Kenzia Digital, a fellow speaker at the event, has kindly given me permission to share her complementary presentation which covers 12 specific pieces of advice on how to be more effective in Social Media Marketing. You can also find Amanda’s presentation on Slideshare here.

Salisbury Big Business Presentation from Kennedy PR

If you would like to know more about the Strategic use of Social Media for your marketing, why not get in touch with me to discuss how I might be able to help your business.

Why not sign up for my weekly VIP Newsletter to get exclusive content about Business Strategy and Marketing to help your business, including instant free Access to my Six Minute Strategy Review now.

Filed Under: Engagement, Slideshare Tagged With: Internet Marketing, Social Media

Do you know the 12 Steps to a Social Media Marketing Audit?

January 7, 2013 by jbdcolley Leave a Comment

Do you know the 12 Steps of a Social Media Marketing Audit?

If you are looking to review your Social Media Marketing Strategy with me or anyone else, I believe it is helpful to work together to systematically assess your current situation.

To do this I have devised 12 Questions – Six Offline Questions and Six Questions relating to your current Online activities.

I have also made this brief video to help to explain the questions and why I think they are important.

So to Summarise, the Six Offline Questions are:

Summarise your Products and Services
Explain your Pricing Structure
Who are your Customers? Where do you expect to find them online?
What are your current offline and online marketing strategies?
What are your channels to market?
What is your marketing budget? How do you currently allocate this?

The Six Online Questions are:

What is your website URL?
Which Social Media Platforms are you/your business on? Provide links to all pages/platforms
What online content do you produce?
How well connected are you Online
Do you use email to contact your customers? How?
What are your social media marketing/online Marketing Objectives?

If you want to discuss your Social Media Strategy with me today call me on +44 7813 672 612 or email me at jbdcolley[at]aol[dot]com

At the end of the Video (and the Slide Presentation) I briefly introduce you to the Six Pillars of Social Media Strategy which are:

Platform Strategy
Content Strategy
Influencer Strategy
Email Strategy
Social Media Marketing Funnel
Metrics

These are the Six Pillars I will use if we work together on your Social Media Marketing Strategy.

I have uploaded the Slides in the video to Slideshare and they are also downloadable for your convenience.

Online marketing audit 22 nov 2012 from jbdcolley

If you want to discuss your Social Media Strategy with me today call me on +44 7813 672 612 or email me at jbdcolley[at]aol[dot]com

Thank you for joining the Conversation!

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: Social Media

What are the Benefits of Twitter?

December 3, 2012 by jbdcolley 1 Comment

What are the Benefits of Twitter?

In the last post in this series, I discussed the Benefits of a Social Media Funnel.

In this post, I want to move on to look at some of the Social Media platforms and I want to start with Twitter.

Here is the video….

Twitter needs to be an important part of any integrated Social Media Strategy.

Its unique format means that you can have a conversation – due to the limit of 140 characters

You can listen to the conversations of those you are following and, just as importantly, you can listen to what others (including your customers) are saying about you, your company and your products and services.

The scale of the platform means that there is an incredible diversity of conversations going on all the time and when you combine this with the platform’s search capability you can use it to keep yourself informed on a wide variety of topics.

Taking the search capabilities a step further, you can use the platform to research topics as so many tweets link to great content which has been posted out on the web.

You can use Twitter as a syndication tool for your own content sharing blogs, podcasts and videos to name but three. Twitter is also very good at sharing pictures.

Finally, as you can follow an initial limit of 2,000 other Twitterers with very few limitations, you can search for people who are relevant to your business and extend your network by following and conversing with them.

I hope you find this discussion helpful.

If you would like to know more you can contact me directly for a no obligation discussion to see whether I can help you with your Social Media Strategy.

You can reach me by email at jbdcolley[at]aol[dot]com or call me on my UK cell phone +44 7813 672 612.

In the next video in this series I am going to look at the Benefits of Google+

Thank you for joining the Conversation

Filed Under: Engagement, Video Tagged With: Benefits of..., Social Media, Twitter

6MS Episode 60 Google’s Going Social – Are You?

November 23, 2012 by jbdcolley Leave a Comment

Google is Going Social – Are You?

I was fortunate to attend a seminar at Google in which there was a fascinating discussion of the impact of Google’s applications for business and the impact that creating an Open, Random and Supportive (as opposed to a Closed, Selective and Controlling) organisation with Google’s applications at the heart of the business.

The Google Infrastructure was extremely well explained by Thomas Power, one of the Co-Founders of Ecademy and now a Frontier Coach.

Google’s Social Ecosystem

Thomas summarised on a slide the four aspects of Google Social Ecosystem:

Engage
Play
Work
Empower

I have set out the elements of each of these for you as my original photograph of his slide was not very clear.

Engage

Google +
Profile
Circles
Hangouts
Events
Google Groups
Google Photos – Picasa
Search + Your World

Play

Google TV
Google News
Google Shopping
Google Finance
Google Wallet
Google Credit Card
Google Bank
Google Maps
Google Latitude
Google Earth
Google Travel
Google Glasses

Work

Adwords
Analytics
Apps
Mail
Calendar
Docs
Drive
Talk
Translate
Reader
Trends
Cloud
Query (Google Big Data)

Empower

Google Channel/YouTube
Devices - Nexus, Chromebook, Motorola
Android
Chrome
Google Fiber

This provides you with a check list to go and investigate further if you wish after you have listened to Thomas’s presentation. Read Frontier Coaching’s blog post, Google World Social Infrastructure and get the infographic here.

About Frontier Coaching

Frontier makes the daunting world of digital and social simpler and easier to navigate by becoming your digital companion to help develop your thinking, coach your organisation on the best practice models, systems and partners required to make this transformational journey.Frontier works with business of all shapes and sizes, and with a range of partners including the Digital Youth Academy to offer you the best mix of people, technologies and services available today.

If you would like to know more about Frontier you can visit their website here.

About LeadORS

If you would like to know more about Open Random and Supportive (“ORS”) and Closed, Selective and Controlling (“CSC”) Organisations and people you can visit LeadORS. LeadORS is a methodology created by Thomas Power, Penny Power and Darren Shirlaws which teaches Network thinking in Organisations

Full Disclosure: I have no financial arrangements in place of any kind with Frontier or with LeadORS.

If you find this interesting, please let me know by leaving a comment or sending me an email to jbdcolley[at]aol[dot]com.

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Digital Coach, Google+, Social Media

Can you be a Linkedin Super Sleuth?

November 20, 2012 by jbdcolley Leave a Comment

Can you be a Linkedin SuperSleuth?

Last week I raised the questions whether Linkedin had missed a trick?

In updating my old business connections using their business cards, I found that the old email addresses were not being picked up by Linkedin and therefore my reconnection requests were not getting through.

I would hope that Linkedin would take some steps to address this minor short coming in their otherwise excellent platform.

Is there another way to reconnect with your older network connections if you have their business card but they have moved job?

I thought I should be able to work round this. So here are my suggestions for a bit of Linkedin Super Sleuthing to solve the problem.

I must stress that I am only advocating these strategies for people you Genuinely know and not as a SPAM tactic.

These suggestions are also alternatives to InMail (of which you may have a limited number) or sending indirect requests through your network which can be a bit tedious for them if done too often.

Using Groups

See if you have any Groups in common. If so, it is relatively simple to go to their profile in the Group and on the right hand side you will see an option – Send Message. It could not be more simple – click on that and send him/her a message explaining that you would like to get in touch again. I would suggest that you explain that you have met when they were working at a previous firm (what ever is on the business card) and that you would like to be in touch again.

Then put in your email address and invite them to send you a connection or alternatively, if they would be kind enough to reply to the message with their current email, you will send them a Linkedin Connection invitation.

What if you have no Groups in Common?

Super Sleuth Tip number Two is to find an open group in which they are a member, join it, repeat the process above and then, gracefully, retire from the Group.

What if they are not a Member of a Group at All?

The next step is to see where they are currently working and check if there is a Company Page on Linkedin for them. If there is and you can find a 1st Degree Connection who works at the company, this will enable you to identify the company’s email format and you can replace the names and send an invitation. This sometimes is problematic if the email format uses secondary initials which you may not know.

No Common Connections?

Don’t stop there yet. The next tip is to go over to the Company’s website and look for a news or press release which often has a contact name at the foot of the release. This too will help you with the email format.

Often email details for the C-Suite are available openly and this is another way to solve the email format problem.

No Luck there either? Try Twitter or Google+

The next step is to go over to Twitter and search for them on Twitter. Many professional people, but not all, have Twitter accounts and you can you can @ them a message saying you would like to connect with them again. If you follow them and then they follow you back you can have a Direct Message (DM) exchange which is private.

If you do not have any luck with Twitter, the next Social Media Platform to try is Google+. Go to your Google + Account and open up your Circles. There is a tab “Find People” which you can click on. Once you recognise the persons profile you can drag them to a new circle. To reach out to them post a comment in your stream under “Share Whats New…” and reach out to them.

If all that does not work?

If this has not enabled you to reconnect, and presumably, you are pretty determined if you have not given up yet, then the simple solution is to call your contact at their company using the number from the company’s website. Not very Web 2.0 but effective!

The last strategy I would suggest is trying their mobile phone as many people try to keep their mobile phone number even if they move companies. You can start by trying a text message and, only if that does not succeed, try a call.

Have you got any suggestions for this issue. If you have I would really like you to share them with me and the Six Minute Strategist Community.

If you want to connect with me on Linkedin – this is a link to my profile. Send me a connection request at jbdcolley[at]aol[com].

Thank you for Joining the Conversation!

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: LinkedIn, Social Media

Has Linkedin Missed A Trick? An Open Letter to Linkedin…

November 13, 2012 by jbdcolley Leave a Comment

Has Linkedin missed a Trick?

I am a firm supporter of Linkedin and find the platform an excellent way to work with my business connections but I do have one gripe?

Let me tell you my story…

Over the 20+ years I have been in business, I have met literally thousands of business contacts and I still have 99% of their cards.

I met many of these people before Linkedin was even thought of and had to rely on a filing system and then software packages like Outlook and Address Book on my Mac. How quaint I hear you say !!!

I am now systematically reviewing my contacts and I am keen to connect with as many of them as I can on Linkedin to make the most of the platform.

The Problem is that many of them have moved jobs – and continue to do so regularly. If I have their card from their previous job and the email has been disabled (understandably) by their previous employer, then I cannot reconnect with them on Linkedin

Now I have to ask you – Am I missing a Trick?

Is there something I am not doing right?

It would be immensely helpful, in my view, if Linkedin gave us the option of adding our old business email addresses as a means for older contacts to reestablish contact with us. I know that these email addresses could not be verified by Linkedin but do they really need to be?

As my Primary address has already been verified, Linkedin knows who I am and that these other addresses are useful for contacts trying to find me.

This would of course be an option for me making it easier to be found and would not be obligatory. I would not have to add these addresses if I did not want to.

From the perspective of someone seeking to reconnect with a former contact, I would be able to legitimately use the address on the business card I was orginally given to make the approach, proving that I had prior contact with the person I am approaching.

I do not believe this is spam nor can I see any reason why the recipient would not want to hear from me. Indeed, if he does he need only decline the request.

The velocity with which people move jobs will not change but keeping up with them remains a challenge. I believe that if Linkedin would enable this change it would make it much easier to keep in touch with the business contacts in our network without affecting the overall quality of the Linkedin Platform.

What do you think?

Has Linkedin Missed a Trick? Is there a simple work around to this problem – if there is I would love to hear it? or am I misguided in wanting to make the most of an extremely useful business tool and should not be following up with contacts who have moved on to a new job?

You can find me at www.uk.linkedin.com/in/jbdcolley

Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below, especially if you work for Linkedin!

Thank you for joining the Conversation!

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With: Business Development, LinkedIn, Social Media

Can You Bank TO the Future?

November 9, 2012 by jbdcolley Leave a Comment

Can you Bank ON the Future?

Well, in this market, no one can.

However you can Bank TO the Future!

How is this possible?

Let me introduce the subject with this short video…

Simon Dixon has launched a UK Crowd Funding site – Banktothefuture.com – which is seeking to increase the competition in the UK Banking Sector by making it possible for investors with capital to directly access Entrepreneurs and Early Stage businesses.

The real innovation here is that Investors can invest through both debt and equity, as well as make donations in return for non monetary perks, such as pre-orders of a new product.

What are the challenges?

Banks currently do not lend to small early stage companies.

Early Stage UK Venture Capitalists represent a small part of the market and most will not invest in businesses with less than £1m in revenues (although there are a few rare exceptions).

The Stock Market is not available to very small, early stage enterprises.

The Angel Market is very difficult to access other than through Angel Network Organisations and although they help early stage enterprises with the process, they need to be paid for their work and introductions which can be expensive, especially if a relatively small amount of money is being raised ie less than £100,000.

What is Crowd Funding?

Crowd Funding enables investors to invest small amounts of money in a range of investments, thereby diversifying their risk through a portfolio.

The Crowd Funding Loan enables investors to chose which companies their money is invested in and removes banks from their traditional role of taking in deposits on the one hand and making loans on the other.

It is also possible to donate to Crowd Funds to help create businesses for a non monetary perks and help young businesses get started.

Online platforms enable donors and investors to directly reach entrepreneurs and enable them to invest equity, lend money or support by donating money in return for non monetary “perks”, normally a pre-order of the product being made by the new business.

Other examples of Crowd Funding sites include Kickstarter, AngelList and Investedin.

There are two models. One in which the project has to raise the amount it states it needs within a stated time frame. If the target is not achieved all monies are returned to the pledging investors. The second model allows the projects to retain the money even if the target is not met.

Bank to the Future falls into the former category.

So what does Bank to the Future do?

The Online process enables entrepreneurs to initially Crowd Fund the finance required to start their business by raising equity.

There is the opportunity to donate money to projects in return for non monetary perks, such as pre-orders of new products and thereby assist the enterpreneur to start his business in a more socially responsible way.

Donating allows investors to increase their Social Capital through Bank to the Future. (Click to Tweet)

The Crowd Funding approach enables entrepreneurs and investors to work together on terms that all participants accept. An investor cannot change the terms of a deal at the last minute to his advantage.

Later on as the business develops, the enterpreneur may have a better credit rating and be able to raise crowd funded loans from Bank to the Future Investors without having to surrender further equity.

What is the significance of the Crowd Funding Movement?

Since 2008 the difficulties small businesses have in raising capital or getting access to loans from banks have been widely debated. At the same time the Government (both Labour and Coalition) have consistently taken the position that the SME sector, which accounts for 67% of jobs in the UK, is vital to the recovery of the economy as it has the potential to create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

While the Small Business Sector has more than pulled its weight, it has continued to struggle to get access to the capital it needs to invest.

The internet has proven to be a highly disruptive force in many industries – think of iTunes and the Music industry and Amazon, initially with books and now just about every other product category in B2C retail market. There is no reason why financial services should be immune and with the continued development of online, disruptive business models emerging, market inefficiencies and the status quo are constantly being challenged.

So is Bank to the Future the new future of Banking? (Click to Tweet)

Full disclosure: I have no financial arrangements of any kind with Bank to the Future.

What Next?

Take a look at my FREE video Tutorial “How to Turn Your Great Idea into a Business” which is all about Starting a Business and Raising Capital.

Thank you for joining the Conversation.

Filed Under: Raising Capital, Video Tagged With: Angel Investors, Crowd Funding, Social Media

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