Start with your Database

So there you are, you've built your website, you have your Facebook page, Google+ and your Twitter pages up and running. But, hold on a minute... where are your followers?

You seem to be following everyone, and no one really seems to be following you. This is not what is meant to happen! You and your business have a lot of interesting things to comment and write about, and no one is reading!

What's the next step?

The title of this post is a bit of a give away. Start with your Database.

The most effective way to build up your followers in Social Media is to write to your own database and get them following, liking and joining your businesses social media pages. You can get your customers to join you by offering incentives through competitions, special price discounts and so on. Once they are on, make sure that the content on there is interesting and relevant and CONTINUOUS. Your followers will soon forget you if you are not posting regularly.

We work with a couple of foodie clients, and one of our associates regularly cooks and photographs recipes with our client's ingredients (check out Dorset Riverford). This makes their Facebook page highly attractive and informative as well as showing customers how those ingredients can be used. eezap.com and it's associates can do similar things for your businesses social media pages. This means that we keep those customers with us and coming back for more.

If you don't have a database, then you need to create one.

This may be a bit of a slog, since it involves some serious market research. Sit down with trade magazines, local journals and so on and find potential clients. You'll then need to go online and grab those clients' email addresses and store all this info on an excel spreadsheet.

Your other option is to buy data from local chambers of commerce and drop those into excel. Once you have set up your database, drop it in to an email app such as Mail Chimp and you are almost good to go. Write the email, click send and it's done. You'll soon see your following grow if you have created the right incentive and messages.

If databases make you go stone cold, then either wrap a warm towel around your head for a couple of weeks and slog through, or get in touch with eezap.com for some help.

Once you have your database up and running it's simply a case of writing to your customers and getting them over to your pages. Again, if you need some help with any of this drop eezap.com a line .

Good luck, Happy Christmas, and Merry Databasing. (Between Christmas and New Year is an excellent time to work up some data!)

What's Your Story?

There is regular talk on social media sites about narrative. Either personal narrative or business narrative, in either case the theory is that humans love and relate to stories, rather than products per se.

Take a company like Dorset Cereals. If you want to look at some really good use of social media, the DC team have got it down to a fine art. But even before social media had come along, the company worked on its story. After all, oats, raisins, and other dry goods in a box aren't on their own, that appealing. But give the box nice warm colours and create a narrative of honest Dorset goodness and it becomes difficult to tell what's more wholesome, Dorset, or the cereals from Dorset!

Once you have a narrative like that, social media becomes a little easier. So to those businesses that say that social media is not for them, or doesn't go well with their industry, we beg to differ.

What is your company's story? What is the extra something that you are trying to get customers or clients to buy into? Once you have defined this, then knowing what to say, or show, or connect to, via social media, becomes a whole lot easier.

 eezap! What's your narrative? Our website begins to say it in pictures. We use an existing physical network of intelligent ABs who have time to spare and the ability to get themselves around others' marketing aims.

Our clients know they are handing over their social media to clever communicators. We have the techies too, but there are quite a few of those around. It's our ability to communicate intuitively, minute by minute with a deep understanding of a client's key messages, which makes eezap stand out.

The fact that a physical network sits along side a digital one means the two work together to spread the word for our clients. Because eezap is a physical network of bright, worldly people, it can transpose very successfully to a digital network. Don't forget that a physical network itself becomes an ideas factory. Few businesses have the resources to focus a group of creatives solely on social media. eezap solves this by putting such a group at a client's disposal.

How is this reflected in our posts and blogs? Well, this blog in itself is a case in point. You can read it and get guidance. Follow us on Facebook and you'll begin to see posts which will prove instructive to you and your social media activity. And once you need to hand that activity over to an intelligent network of communicators, you'll know who to get in touch with. 

What's your story? eezap can help you define it, and then build the narrative online.

Twitter, Facebook and Google+

The three social media platforms that are the most talked about are the ones your business should consider mastering immediately. Think of them as The Friendly Giants: Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

Each platform has a slightly different appeal to its users. Facebook and Google+ are similar and centre on an individual’s Facebook or Google+ page. You’ll need to set up a page for your business in either or both Facebook and Google+. From your page you can then begin to link up with businesses and people that operate in your industry or are potential clients.

Twitter is slightly different. You’ll still need to set up a Twitter page, but Twitter emphaises the actual tweet, rather than your page. It’s usually interesting to look at different Facebook and Google+ pages, not quite so interesting to look at different Twitter pages. Tweets, rather than pages are the main attraction.

That said, it’s a subtle difference, and all three allow immediate interactive posting using a laptop or mobile phone. As a business, your skill in posting or tweeting is what will drive potential clients to follow you and visit your web pages. To achieve a good following, you’ll have to make regular postings that are relevant, amusing and not necessarily product driven. However, throwing in the odd offer for your products won’t hurt. 

Step one in developing a TFG strategy is going to be following others who operate in the same line of business as you, or simply people you are interested in following. At eezap.com we’re following other social media experts, business experts and internationally famous entrepreneurs. Why not? Anything they say that we find interesting, we’ll resend to our social media network. 

After following others’ posts and tweets, you might consider a social media strategy that takes account of the following:

• How are others using social media in your industry or locality? 
• What character do you want to have, and what guidelines would you give your staff for posting or tweeting on your behalf?
• Be as true to yourself and your business as possible, followers will respond to your honesty.
• Plan to tweet regularly, even drawing up a communication plan if necessary.
• Post material that can be shared or re-tweeted easily.

Once you’re posting or tweeting successfully, your followers will begin to re-send or re-tweet your posts. At this point, not only will you be communicating regularly with your immediate followers, but also with your followers’ followers, and with your followers’ followers’ followers. I could go on, but you get the idea. Your potential reach is exponential.  

Say you build up 600 followers on line, and each of those has their own 600 followers, your communication could be reaching at least 360,000 businesses or individuals. That's not including the followers that each of the followers of the followers has! The numbers are pretty impressive, and that's why, your business needs a well managed social media strategy.

One last thing, be sure to get the Twitter, Facebook and Google+ buttons on your website pages. Anyone that finds your website relevant and interesting can begin following you and advertise your website content to their network.  

If you want to discuss the possibilities around The Friendly Giants and how they can help your business reach a very wide network indeed, get in touch with eezap.com. We’d be happy to help you out.

Link your Blog to your Site

Once you have begun writing your blog, it helps if you link it  to your website and vice-versa. By getting your blog and your website linked, you'll be combining community and interaction that blogging offers with the powerful shop window that is your website.

So how is it done? If you need to tell people over cocktails what you're working on, the official terminology is: you're going to create an RSS feed of your blog and then feed it into your website.

There are a couple of steps to take to achieve the link-up between your business blog and website. If you're prepared to hang in there, this is all perfectly doable. If you can't manage it, eezap.com is here to help!

The first step is to get your blog picked up by Feedburner (http://feedburner.google.com). You'll need to do this anyhow, so that others can begin picking up the feed too. Once Feedburner is picking up your blog, and creating a feed, we then need some code to pick up the text and pop it into your site.

There are several websites where you can get this code. We used RSSinclude.com . Once you have told RSSinclude where to find your blog at Feedburner, it will generate the code for your website.

What this code does is create a rectangular space within a webpage of your choosing. That rectangle is filled by your blog. Again for the cocktail chat: you have used a widget!

In truth, the trickiest bit comes next. Unless you're on top of your html, this step will involve your web designer. You'll need to tell them where you would like them to drop in the code created by RSSinclude.com, and they will probably need to create a new space on your website for the widget.

Now in reverse: it's equally important for you to make sure that there is a link from your blog to your website. This is far simpler and can be done when you set up your blog. In Blogger it's done in the page layout options.

So why link your blog and your website in this way? Your blog is far more interactive than your website could ever be. Your business can build followers on your blog, and your followers can comment on what you write. That's the strength of the blog, but it can't be a website or a shop window for your business. Working together, your blog and your website can become powerful partners in increasing interest in you and your business.

In postings to follow, I'll be looking at how we bring in Facebook, Twitter and Google+ to make your site and your blog even more interactive. Before you know it, your business will build an online community using these tools!

Discovering How to Blog

Social media is your business tool to engage in one-to-one marketing. It should form a central plank of your marketing strategy.

So what’s the first step? You or your business could start anywhere, and it really depends on your defined aims.  At eezap.com we’re going to start with a blog. This gives us an opportunity to scope out what we do, but perhaps more importantly, we get the chance to put some content online. This allows us to begin building interest around our services. 

How do you go about setting up a blog? That’s easy enough since there are lots of options. For the eezap.com blog we had a look at Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad, tBlog and others. We are going for Blogger. It’s easy to set up, is well used and is free (not true with Typepad, which you pay for, but is ad free).

Now let’s post our first post. What is your blog going to be about? It needs to be relevant to your business, and you probably want to write it so that it doesn’t get too personal. Remember, what you write is going to be out in the public domain. Don’t be shy of including information that gives some of your expertise away. “Sharing is caring” as the saying goes, and you want your community to feel that it’s worth reading your material. 

Once you have written your first post, pop it up and... er... well, it’s not a case of build it and they will come. But at least now you have made a commitment to write a piece about your work on a regular basis.

You can begin to build followers to your blog. Your followers can comment and they can spread the word throughout their own social media networks, simply by clicking a button.

Plus, once you have got a post up, we can start customizing your blog, linking it back to your website and telling people about it. That means you can change content on your website by posting to your blog. This has many benefits which we'll explore in the next post.

Have you linked your blog to your website and vice versa? What was the easiest way you found of doing this?  Feel free to comment!