Charlotte Kemp, Niche Training

Adding social media to your marketing mix should be a natural decision except that the bad press that some of the applications get make people wonder if they are not wasting their time.  Before you throw out this option consider if you would now also throw out your telephone for the private calls that staff make or if you would disable emails for the inevitable personal emails that circulate.

Social media is meant to be social.  But because it is relatively new, we are not always sure how to use it in a business model.  Consider your marketing strategy and deliberately incorporate one or two social media sites into that plan.  Do not let them be optional extras and do not do them when you are finished with traditional marketing or you will never take them seriously or see the value.

My recommendation is normally, but depending on the nature of the business, a Facebook business page and LinkedIn.  The Facebook Business page represents your business on Facebook and allows you to market in that arena, but don’t spam your friends.  You need to nurture a new audience.  I strongly recommend a LinkedIn profile for anyone with a professional career or who markets themselves.  It is one of the most highly regarded social networking sites worldwide for business and for job seeking too.   Get started with those two as a platform for the rest.

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By Charlotte Kemp    

When signing up on Twitter or before starting one’s own blog or Facebook Business page, I always counsel my clients to follow three types of people in order learn something of value that could be reflected in their pages and in their business.  Those people can be categorized under the 3 Cs:  

Colleagues – These are your own local colleagues with whom you work who may be tweeting or posting blogs.  This is very valuable for networking if you know you are going to see someone at an industry function and you can go to their pages beforehand and see what they have been posting and be able to talk to them intelligently about what is going on about their business.  But more specifically you should follow industry leaders, shining examples of people who are performing at the levels that aspire to and you can learn from them.  You can easily follow their blogs with an RSS reader like Google Reader and use what they write as educational material for yourself so that you can be challenged to bring the very best to your clients.  

Competition – You should know what your competition is doing, as well as which of your competition is using social media as a tool.  Also be aware of competition from further afield because with a connected world it is not only the person across the street who could steal your business with a better marketing strategy or price plan, but someone with a good social media strategy from the other side of the country could swoop in and scoop your clients before you know it.  Take nothing for granted and know what they are up to.  Be very aware of your field.  

Clients – Know what your clients are blogging on, tweeting or posting to their pages.  They may fail to tell you important information that you will be able to pick up from these postings. If you are paying attention, you will be able to approach them, even outside of scheduled meetings, and let them know you are aware of issues and respond with appropriate solutions.  Then you add real value in your relationship to them.   Remember that social media is about having that relationship with people, not hunting down leads or always selling your stuff.     And if someone follows you, reciprocate by following them back.  

You can follow me the popular sites using the following addresses.  Please let me know that you came from Women’s Lifestyle World. 

http://twitter.com/charlotte_niche

http://www.linkedin.com/in/charlottekemp

http://tinyurl.com/Niche-FB

http://tinyurl.com/F-Word-Book

Joslyn is 10 years old.  She loves to cook and bake, which is a bonus because I am terrible at both.   This last weekend while she was experimenting with some new recipes, she demonstrated some behavior that made me pause.  

First she brought me samples of the goodies she had just baked.  Then after she determined that I was okay with them, she asked me to bite into it again and this time she took a photo with the camera on her cell phone.  She said she wanted to see my expression of ‘Mmm” as I ate it.   As she walked away, I heard her talk into her phone, on the record functionality, ‘Taste subject seemed to like the recipe.  But it could do with more sugar.’  

A few minutes later she popped back in and asked, “Mom, could we put these pictures on my blog please?”  

Natural!  For this younger generation, interacting with technology like this comes as second nature.   They may have to learn some of the functionality, and definitely some of the etiquette, but they don’t have to go through the hurdles of overcoming the mindset change that we do.  For them, their work and achievements should be demonstrated online so that people can see what they are up to.  Their CVs are evolving daily before the world.  

I teach social media and I still have think this stuff through.  I still have to remind myself to post to the blog, to update it, and way after an event has passed I suddenly think that it would have been good to record it.  But the youth are way ahead in terms of doing this naturally.   

What does this mean for your business?  It means that if you can't communicate to them in a medium that they are familiar with, then you are going to lose their attention to brands or companies that are communicating their way.  And for goodness sake, that doesn’t mean spelling everything wrong just because they are students!  

A few cautionaries!  

·         Children should not be let loose on social media or technology unaccompanied or unsupervised.  The only reason my children have a cell phone at such a young age is to call their parents from the other parent’s home.

·         My daughter has a blog but only I post the items to it, although not nearly as often as she would like. 

·         Whether online or offline, our children are at risk from people who may want to do them harm.  We simply cannot lock our children in the house forever, nor can we keep them off-grid and think that we are protecting them.  Let’s be realistic and grownup ourselves and teach them how to be responsible and cautious. 

Please feel to contact me on This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more insights about social media and business.  For receipes however, there are other excellent contributors under the Tenants section of our site! ;-)

By Charlotte Kemp

You should.  

Just in case you are humble enough not to have done this before, it means to search for your name online to see if it comes up.   

You should search firstly for your own name and see if you have been mentioned, as well as who else in the world has the same name as you.  (Those other ‘Charlotte Kemp’s cause me a great deal of trouble!)  And you should also search for your company name, products and brands, as well as for key personnel.  But don’t stop there.  

If the point of using social media marketing for business is to raise your profile, then you need to know if you are being at all successful.  What results are you obtaining with your blogging and tweeting and updating and connecting with people online?  Is your name and company name being recognised more?  Are you being mentioned by other people or on blogs, in a positive light or perhaps badly?   

Searching on Google today means that you know where you stand at this point in time and if you have been mentioned historically; but with a social media strategy in place, you will have to keep searching every few days to see if the situation changes.  Being strategic is all about eliminating unnecessary repetitive tasks, so let me introduce you to Google Alerts.  

You can set up a Google Alert that will let you know whenever your relevant search term appears on any site or blog or is tagged to a video or photo online.  It can be sent to your email inbox either as it happens or Daily or Weekly depending on your sense of urgency with the information.   

And then it is up to you to respond.  Thank the people who have promoted you online and given you a shout out or linked to your site or blog.  Deal with any misconceptions or inaccuracies about your company that may have started.  Or discover that your company has not got enough online press and strategise for more exposure.   But at least now you begin to know whether your social media efforts are bearing some fruit beyond the immediate feedback from interactions with clients.   

Personally I have had great discoveries with Google Alerts, including finding out about people I didn’t even know who have promoted my speaking engagements, reviews of my book “I’m Not Afraid of the ‘F’ Word” that were syndicated without my knowledge and an interview with a journalist that went viral.  

To find Google Alerts, go to your Google home page, use the drop down list under the More option and find Alerts.  Under Alerts enter the term you are looking for.  Use normal Boolean search terms and quotation marks to include the whole phrase or else you will return results with either phrase instead of your whole name.  Indicate the frequency of results.  And let Google know which email address you would like the results sent to.  It can be your Gmail address or another email account.  

Now your ego searching is brought to you.   How cool is that!

By Charlotte Kemp, Social Media Strategist

What a useful term to describe how some of us feel about technological changes!  We all know friends and family who have emigrated and commented on the customs, accents and local insider knowledge of their new home that it takes them so long to get to know.  While they are learning, they feel a little lost, bewildered, on the outside and afraid that they might be missing out on something crucial because they are unaware of an essential piece of knowledge that they didn’t even know they were supposed to have.  That is always the concerned of the immigrant; the outsider. 

Digital Natives are people born inside of, or since the advent of the technological age.   It is a term coined by Marc Prensky in 2001 and refers loosely to people who are comfortable with technology because it has always been part of their world view.  Digital natives are people who will be comfortable with an online presence, virtual worlds and electronic proofs while a digital immigrant will still need a hard copy (something printed out).  I wrote about one of these digital natives who is my daughter, and how she automatically thinks in terms of technology even while she is learning what it is about. 

While this may often be demonstrated on generational lines, I have just as often come across two people of about the same age in one of my courses, where one grasps the concepts and is itching to learn more and the other suggests that I should start with the basics because that was too confusing.

Knowing these terms is useful because they give us a handle, a reference to hold onto.  When we are feeling bewildered in a strange country we know we feel that way because we are either visiting as tourists or because we have immigrated.  We don’t feel jealous or intimidated by the natives.  We turn to them as guides to assist us in settling in so that we feel more at home and enjoy our stay and want to return.   In the digital world, there are guides too – many people who are very willing to take the time to show you around and explain things, although most of them are younger than you. 

Niche Training has a number of courses designed to show you how to use Social Media for the benefit of your business, and we can recommend service providers for other computer training.  We will also be introducing a Facebook 101 course very soon by popular demand.  Please see our site on www.nichetraining.co.za for more information.