How many silver surfers do you know who can Tweet the proverbial hind leg off a donkey or clock up over 50,000 followers on Facebook?

Our Christmas blog has been inspired by a member of our Quest team and blogger Ashley Ridsdale who wrote about the late Ivy Bean, the oldest known social networker whose celebrity followers included Peter Andre, Chris Evans and Sarah Brown, wife of the former prime minister Gordon.

Ivy, who lived to the ripe old age of 104, first dipped her toes in Facebook, moving to Twitter after reaching the 5,000 friends limit – where she notched up over 50,000 followers.

In a media interview in The Guardian, Mrs Bean said that social media had given her a new lease of life. Prior to embarking on it all she used to sit around all day and fall asleep and had few visitors apart from her daughter. Thanks to social media she no longer felt lonely now she had her Twitter community to chat to.

Another fantastic example of how the web is helping to reduce feelings of isolation among older people sees a virtual centre which helps to enrich and boost the quality of life for homebound seniors.  The project is a fantastic collaboration between Microsoft, the City of New York and Selfhelp Community Services Inc.

The virtual center has saved the life of 86 year old Milton Greidinger. He said: “Before this project I was bored to death. I was just waiting for my time to finish. Now, all of a sudden I’m wide awake. I’m alive again.”  

The importance of social networking among the older generation has also been reinforced in a blog post from  David Cohen who relayed how a survey by My Voucher Codes revealed that 22 percent of 1,341 grandparents over the age of 60 in the UK are active on social networking sites, with 71 percent of those citing Facebook, 34 percent on Twitter and 9 percent on LinkedIn.

Who do you know who merits a silver surfer acknowledgement? ]]> http://questprblog.com/1864/will-2012-be-the-silver-surfers-year/feed/ 0 http://questprblog.com/1842/2012-social-media-predictions-guest-post-from-alia-haley/ http://questprblog.com/1842/2012-social-media-predictions-guest-post-from-alia-haley/#comments Fri, 09 Dec 2011 10:56:55 +0000 Sharon Cain http://questprblog.com/?p=1842

As the year comes to a conclusion, pundits have already begun talking about the social media predictions for 2012. In all fairness, you have to agree that social media has turned out to be a major hit in 2011, determining the longevity and success of various products, movies and even governments. So, no matter how hard you try to argue against it, social media will play a major role in 2012.

So, here is a look at some of the predictions:

Google+ and what will happen to it

Google+ obviously is not going to break over and surpass Facebook. There is still time for that but Google+ surely will hold its feet. One advantage that Google has is its wide platform and various other services like YouTube and Google search to which the Google+ can be integrated. Still, Facebook’s quality is better and it will keep on growing. Google+ can take solace from the fact that it is the second best out there. If they can lure in more people, they will have a bright chance.

A billion Facebook users

Facebook has 800 million now and it will be only a matter of time till it reaches a billion. Most probably that will happen by mid 2012. If Facebook was a country, it will be the third largest then. Google+ is surely not slowing them and with newer people from various developing countries coming in, the billion marks will be achieved very easily.

Integration of location-based services will increase

People have begun searching for bars, hotels and restaurants in their location through the internet. So, the demand for such services will increase vividly. Such services with the push technology will get integrated into mobile phones and tablets. The demand for such applications will also increase sharply.

News applications will grow

The Washington Post integrated its application in Facebook and it has become viral. Everyone is using it and reading news through it. In 2012, news websites will face a severe setback and their applications will get popular. It is a good thing after all, you are getting people to read news in Facebook and other sites instead of making them comment of pictures and play games. Moreover, it will also increase the user base to that particular news provider.

E-commerce will become a major hit

The integration between eBay and Facebook will provide the major key to this. In 2011, the number of people buying stuff through the internet has increased greatly and it is not going to reduce in 2012 too. Most companies have brought their stuff online and are even giving attractive options to people who buy through their website. Food, apparel, electronics and even health care items are very popular in the e-commerce world these days.

Whether you like it or not, social media is here to stay. So, better get used to it and try to reap off the best from it. And one more thing, the social marketing thing is also going to get very vigorous and so, you can never escape from all the advertisements.

About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. Beside this she is fond of gadgets. She recently bought a Steiner Binoculars. These days she is busy in witting an article on folding bike.

We all know that we act differently depending on the people we are with – and many of us have different personas for our diverse social groups such as work, family and friends.  

So has the advent of social media created a whole new level for us to create multiple identities?

Though social media is viewed as a way for us to be more transparent, does the online persona that we create on social networks actually resemble who we really are in the offline world? Are we using writing styles, vocabulary and topics on social networks to create an online persona for ourselves which actually allow us to be the person we would like to be in our everyday life? 

It can be seen that social media creates a level of equality which is often lacking in the offline world. All too often, and sometimes subconsciously, people judge each other on their physical appearance, their background, the way they speak, or their displayed level of confidence, but social media can disarm this judgement.  It allows us to hide behind the mask of a computer screen and decide exactly what we want people to know about us and what we wish to share with them. It allows us to express our thoughts and opinions confidently to those we wish to share them with. We are given the choice of whether we wish to reveal our identity, or whether we prefer to create a safety net with pseudonyms and anonymity.

Social media can be used as a mask which empowers the user to control who they want to be and how they interact with others. It allows us to infiltrate social circles by following topics of conversation and using our insight to meaningfully engage in them. We are able to gain a real-time understanding of what is happening in the world and in the industries we are interested in, and we are able to express ourselves how, when, and to whom we choose to.

Image accreditation: Eric QIAN: http://bit.ly/t5IzK2

Related blog post: http://ashleyridsdale.wordpress.com

Welcome to the first in a series of video blogs in which Sharon and Carol from Quest PR get the coffee on and respond to your frequently asked questions.

Send us your questions via Twitter and share your opinions with us.

If you want to learn how to produce your own video blogs, join our forthcoming workshops.

Just like other social media tools, Facebook can be very effective in helping businesses to communicate with their target audiences.

At Quest PR we maximise both traditional communications and social marketing tools to underpin our SME clients’ business plans. So our first piece of advice – before you think about setting up a Facebook page – is, as always, to carefully consider your key messages and the audiences you are trying to reach.

The Facebook audience is massive: there are over 30 million active users in the UK, a figure that has trebled in three years. Of that audience, the majority is female, 77 per cent of users are under 40 years old and over half are aged between 13 and 29. If this isn’t your core audience you should think seriously about whether Facebook is for you.

If you’re still convinced, the next consideration is that most people use Facebook to chat to their friends and play games. The way you communicate has to fit in with this to be effective.

This means content should be a mix of customer engagement, unique offers and articles promoting your corporate social responsibility. People don’t want the hard sell.

The key is to plan your content and tie it in with your marketing activities. Although you can’t simply recreate an ad, think of other ways to communicate, for example, how the seasons affect your business, the success of events and product launches, or a celebration of the company’s birthday.

Images are becoming increasingly vital to making an impact on Facebook. The five most recent images appear at the top of the page but can be manipulated. This creates a brand identity for your page. Some big stores like Debenhams use their page like a banner ad, giving information on sales and products, whilst others like Adidas post sporting images that match their brand.

The next layer of content is videos. Why bore your audience with a long paragraph explaining how to do something complicated when a short video can convey the same message in a much more dynamic and interesting way.

A really successful Facebook site will keep people coming back by regularly updating content and offering something of value. This might be letting people know about forthcoming events – which you can video or photograph. Transport the buzz back onto the Facebook site and complete the circle by asking people to comment on the event and what you could do differently next time.

Polls and applications can help you gather feedback or offer something extra to visitors. Although you may need to work with a developer, you can create tools that help your potential customers before they’ve even got in contact with you.

But how do you measure success? Don’t just chase ‘likes’. The link between likes and active engagement can be very tenuous: the successful celebrity pages with millions of followers show that only 0.004% of their ‘likes’ actively engage with the site.

It’s more important to focus on the number of unique users and to check whether your users are clicking through to your website. Ask yourself on an ongoing basis: how can the content help my customers get a better level of service or added value? Engaging effectively with your audience is key to them taking the next step of doing business with you.

Which companies’ Facebook sites work well? Share your thoughts with us!

We’ve had a fantastic week at Quest PR  where we’ve celebrated our 10^th Year anniversary in business as a  multi award-winning agency which  delivers ‘joined up’ PR and social media campaigns, media training,videos and video blogs.

We were joined by special guest Andrew Jones MP who made a toast and cut our cake made by Mama Doreen’s Cupcake Company  featuring coverage for clients including Fracino and Contis Group.

We’re extremely proud that some of our clients including Richard Bosworth from What If? Forums have been with us on our exciting and challenging  journey to date and thanks to Richard and valued fellow clients and business partners from organisations including AfPP, Jones Myers LLP, Emerging Real Estate, Campus PR and Clive Owen & Co LLP added to the champagne sparkle!

A very special toast to the Quest PR team for making the event very special for everyone. Cheers guys!

 Quest PR is delighted to be included in the latest edition of the fab Brand Yorkshire business-to-business magazine aimed at CEOs, MDs, professional services and owner managed businesses.

Below is our article on the importance of fusing PR and social media to turbo charge your business goals.     The seismic internet developments have revolutionised the way small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) communicate – and social media has unleashed a plethora of vibrant platforms through which businesses can engage, share and learn with existing clients, prospects, peers and business partners.

In a climate where already saturated sectors face the prospect of a double dip recession, the challenges of falling sales, low brand recognition and peer-awareness are intensified. Investing resource in integrated campaigns will facilitate the prolonged road to recovery.

With more and more contracts and referrals clinched via blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter – coupled with the ‘Facebook for Business’ online guide to stimulate business promotion via social networking – companies who bury their heads in the sand will find their social media savvy competitors stealing a proverbial march.        

Social media is most powerful as part of a ‘joined up’ communications programme which complements and drives business goals – whether they be annual targets for turnover, gross margin, costs and profitability, or a five year exit strategy in which PR and social media are integral to boosting a company’s profile and desirability to derive maximum sale value.   

All indications reinforce that companies whose social media strategies turbo charge their business plan and work in tandem with their traditional PR and marketing campaigns are best placed to enjoy business growth as well as saving time and costs.    

Quest PR, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, champions this approach and has trained hundreds of owner managers and entrepreneurs to adopt it – with powerful results – in regular workshops launched in April 2010.

 Achieving PR and social media stand out  

Many of us are familiar with the expression ‘Content is king’ and there many similar skills required to ensure success with marketing, PR and social media. Most crucial is compiling strong collateral to stimulate and interest your respective audiences.  

In the same way that weak storylines, overtly promotional press releases or bland comment from organisations seeking to position themselves as ‘experts’ in their sectors will not see the light of day in traditional print and broadcast outlets, businesses who push sales-led or outdated/boring content which fails to add value to their social media audiences will lose their followers and credibility.

In a relentless cyber climate where 100 million users on LinkedIn, 640 million on Facebook and 175 million on Twitter are vying for their voice to be heard – planning and rolling out interesting and provocative content to engage, share and learn with your followers is pivotal to success.

Furthermore, with 60 per cent of online content predicted to comprise video by 2013, incorporating video as part of your integrated campaign on your website and in blogs is vital. 

Rolling out content across multiple platforms

The formula below fuses marketing, PR and social media through economies of scale.

• Plan your content to avoid a ‘scattergun approach’ – what are you communicating  that is new, unusual or different to achieve stand out from your competitors? Set up a marketing, PR and social media planning template to enable you to see and follow through the joined up formula.     
• Don’t fall into the trap of ditching your traditional PR activities. As former print and broadcast journalists with organisations including Sky TV and BBC, we advocate harnessing these profile-building channels. Continue to test and measure and keep doing what works well – whether it is press releases, commissioned articles, winning awards to help secure contracts or attract top talent, or being invited on radio and TV as an industry expert. If the latter we’d advise being media trained to ensure you are invited back time and again. The increase in online media likewise presents unprecedented opportunities to boost your profile, your expertise and your search engine optimisation (SEO).    
• Listen before launching into social media – and seek out the relevant platforms to bolster the business goals. Where are your clients, prospects and partners engaging – and with who? Use tools such as Google alerts to see who is saying what about your brand, your industry and your competitors. This intelligence gathering will steer you to the appropriate tools and platforms. 
• Get close to your influencers such as your top referrers and the media. Take advantage of the proliferation of journalists on Twitter seeking stories, case studies and comment.
• After researching your target audiences, get your ‘ducks in a row’ by planning and launching your LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube profiles. Keep focused on who you are following and why – and sustain rich content to ‘feed’ these channels.
• Having developed your profiles, followers and ‘likes’ launch a blog with 3-4 posts to make it look more established. Tailor your PR material such as ‘How to’ top tips, new appointments/promotions, crystal-gazing or simplifying complex legislation into blog posts. Blogs enable reporters to better understand your business and expertise and more journalists validate interviewees after checking out their blogs and their LinkedIn credentials. Line up guest posts with key influencers with a flourishing social media following who will promote their guest contributions across their channels. Allocate time to comment on influencers’ blogs.
• Get video blogging (v’logging). Include a ‘meet the team’ v’log in your launch blog. Video’s powerful medium gives businesses a personality and vehicle to showcase their expertise and their ethos. In our experience, video is a magnet for your prospects to feel like they know you before commissioning your services. SMEs’ hunger to complement their PR and media training skills with video blogging ‘nous’ has been the catalyst for our journalist-led team to extend our training courses to include video blogging where we teach clients to write, prepare, film, present and edit video blogs. Google loves video and a video blog is 50 times more effective than a written blog in SEO terms.
• Increase your blog following via automated platforms such as Hootsuite or TweetDeck which will inform your followers across LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter when your blogs go ‘live’. These platforms enable you to schedule content in advance – an enormous benefit for time-strapped SMEs.
• Draw on PR and blog content to drive and engage in LinkedIn discussions and increase traffic. Be disciplined about the number of groups you join, and stay on track with your content. If setting up your own LinkedIn discussion group, ensure you have adequate resource to sustain it in order to keep your company at the heart of your discussions.
• Tailor your rich PR and social media content into regular e-newsletters featuring advice, forecasting, case studies and media appearances. Preview upcoming blog topics and invite recipients to join the blogging debate.
• Measure your return on engagement. As with traditional marketing and PR campaigns, establish up front what success will look and feel like. In addition to driving sales and leads, some businesses measure success via blog analytics and the number of blog comments and guest post invitations.
• Allocate a level of resource and ownership for your integrated campaign and be disciplined about adhering to it. Allow for additional set up time and stick to your planning schedule. Finally, sustain the killer content and momentum. In line with the adage that ‘enthusiasm is the electricity of business’, keep your campaign fresh and vibrant.  

For maximum impact fuse your marketing, PR and social media through a ‘Tell them, tell them you’ve told them – and tell them again’ formula as reinforced in our 12-step plan.

For example, the ‘tell them’ could, be commissioning and writing a PR article for your trade or regional press, the ’tell them you’ve told them’ can entail you adopting this article for a blog post and asking your LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter followers to comment on it. For the ‘tell them again’ you can tailor and revise the content to spark a LinkedIn discussion and also adapt the content for enewsletters.

With further tough times forecast, plummeting stock markets and major budget cuts on an unprecedented global scale, now is the time to reignite your communications strategy by maximising and fusing the old and the new. Investing time and focusing on ramping up and integrating traditional PR and marketing with social media and video will keep you ‘in sight and in mind’ when customers and prospects are ready to buy. Without a presence and voice, they may well approach your competitors who are engaging with them regularly through social media platforms.     

Share your thoughts and tips with us.

For any lonely soul out there that has managed to avoid dipping their toe into the pool of social networking, you’re a rare breed, because social media is everywhere these days.  If you absolutely insist that it’s not a necessary part of your marketing campaign, just consider the following points. You may need to rethink your strategy.

1.  Your competitors are networking online and offline

Your rivals will be aware that most people nowadays look for information online.  Whilst they wouldn’t forego their face-to-face networking, they know that a good portion of their market are sat behind a laptop screen.

Having that virtual distance may seem a little impersonal, but there’s no reason to think people have stopped buying from people.  That’s the ethos of social networking; building relationships, gaining connections, establishing trust – just as you would with the rest of the Old Boys/Gals’ Club down the road! 

2.  It opens up completely new markets

You may be lucky in that you can afford to advertise your business all over the UK and internationally too. Most SME owners tend to sell to their immediate vicinity, yet using social media gives you access to customers worldwide. Social media platforms all have tools enabling you to target niche areas or interests and location is no longer the be all and end all. 

3.  It’s very low cost

For the vast majority of the time it’s free!  The main investment you’ll present is your time – there’s little point using social media for a few weeks to be never heard of again.  You need a proper strategy, focus, discipline and knowledge of how to measure your success.

4.  It’s not going to disappear

Print media has positively shrunk in the last decade, mostly due to our progression into the digital world. Social media may have once been described as a trend but it is definitely here to stay. As buyers get younger and technology advances, more and more of your customers will do everything online; if you don’t join them, your client base will one day go the way of the dodo.

 5.  It works

Consider this genuine statistic: 50 per cent of social media users have purchased a product or service online because of content they’d read.  That’s half of all users – one in every two people using social media has parted with their money. Perhaps some of these would have done the same offline, but they didn’t, they found the provider they were looking for through their computer.

The main issue with social media is building awareness. There are so many companies using the main social networking platforms that new voices can easily be ignored.  Raising your online profile and establishing your company as experts in your field is far more than just telling your virtual connections what you had for lunch.

There’s no truer phrase than ‘content is king’.  Chattering away incessantly about what you do is like cold-calling companies on the phone. Most online customers will also be turned off with this approach. Social media works at its best if you can establish a two-way street of conversation with your potential customers. It’s social.  It’s not all about you.

Social media shouldn’t be the only way you promote your company, but it should be in the forefront of your marketing strategy.  Even after everything I’ve said, there will still be some who will resolutely declare social media isn’t for them, which is fine.  As we say in Yorkshire, “there’s more for them that do”.

Diane Hall owns Clerical and Content, a virtual secretarial company that considers social media a specialism.  A published author, clients seek her out for her unique content and social media expertise.  She is based in Pontefract, West Yorkshire; contact her on 07983 089621 or at diane@clericalandcontent.co.uk.

www.clericalandcontent.co.uk

As most of the savvy practitioners in the social media sphere have already been telling us, there’s a new kid in town and he’s big.

But before rushing to sign up Google+ to the team once it’s rolled out, businesses would do well to think about how and where this giant fits into the team.

The new tool is likely to be an asset but anyone who has attended a Quest PR social media seminar will know , that, in a new world, some of the old rules of the game still apply, chiefly “focus” and “integrated planning.”

As the question goes, when going after a specific target, who has the greater chances of effectiveness: the machine gunner or the sniper? The latter is focused on the target and has spent time judging the environment and preparing. The sniper knows exactly what they are going after.

The analogy applies in communications whether using the new tools, the traditional ones, or fusing both sets.

The acres of media coverage devoted to the arrival of Google+ have been numerous, stirring up a frenzy among the clickerati. But, while the jury is out for some as to whether or not the new giant will knock the incumbent titan Facebook from its lofty pedestal, we can reasonably assume that if it gets a good head of steam – Google already benefits from a huge user base harnessing a raft of free services – then, it could do it, while providing significant firepower to our business strike forces.

Whichever tools are used, the focused and planned approach will deliver the best results. The approach can be simplified into the following steps.

Where are we now?

Who are we? What do we offer? What’s the external environment telling us? What is the competitive environment telling us and how our clients and consumers behaving? What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats we face?

Where do we want to be?

What are the aims and objectives of using our media?

How do we get there?

Who are our stakeholders (external and internal)? Do they use social media? What key messages do we want to convey to them (don’t hit them with numerous messages as this will confuse them as to who you are and what you’re about)? Which tactics will we draw upon and how do we integrate and schedule them so that they support the overall communications effort in a tightly coordinated way?

And, finally, how do we know we’ve arrived?

As the old saying goes, if it moves, measure it. Otherwise, why bother? We need to identify the best means of determining whether or not the campaign has worked? Remember that there’s a difference between being efficient and being effective. And, just as importantly, what can we learn from the execution that can feed into the next plan?

Mervin Straughan is a communications consultant and qualified life coach (www.straughanconsulting.co.uk). He edits the tourism website My Goals Buddy and the tourism and lifestyle news site Beautiful North Yorkshire.

Many new social media sites heralded as ‘the next big thing’ have come and gone, but when Google+, a new social media site has been developed by Google – you have to sit up and take notice.

Despite all of Google’s failures in social media with Google Wave and Google Buzz, Google+ has attracted a great deal of interest and a high uptake, attracting 20 million users in three weeks.

So what is Google+?

It’s basically a micro-blogging platform which is half Twitter, half Facebook. It manages your contacts like Twitter. You chose who you want to follow and put them into ‘circles’ which allow you to just look at updates from particular groups of people. 

Google +1 is the equivalent of a “like” on Facebook and several company websites are already including the +1 button alongside their “follow on Twitter” and “Like” buttons.

Updates can integrate images, video and external links, are unrestricted and are shown as a stream of information, with the latest information at the top.

How original is it? 

There are some original ideas. Most relate to the Hang Out area. Google+ has integrated its chat service into Google+ and allows you to break out of the micro-blogging area to chat to friends by text or video, making it an alternative for Skype.

Is it for companies or for individuals?

Google+ is designed for individuals rather than companies. There have been company accounts deleted already, making it impractical to promote your business in the same way as Twitter or Facebook.

It is a way of promoting an individual’s profile and reputation and is a good platform if you have something to say or are a ‘thought leader’. The chat features might also be useful for collaborative workers involved in offsite project work.  You’d need to put some effort in to updating your profile, although being attached to the world’s biggest search engine must come with some advantages.

Is it worth the time investment? 

Many companies have invested substantial money and time into creating their profiles on existing social media platforms.  The real question is whether businesses will pour the same level of investment starting from scratch on Google+ – particularly when the medium is unable to support brands and companies?

I personally can’t see a deluge of them embarking on it – meaning it will remain a niche social media.

Other than linking up to other services already available, there isn’t a need for anyone other than the curious technology enthusiast to use the platform. They make up the majority of users on this ‘grown-up’ Facebook.

However it’s worth keeping an eye on as Google creates more and more cloud based services where documents can be created and stored on their systems rather than on your laptop using Microsoft software.  What are your thoughts on the benefits or otherwise of Google+?