April 2016. This week at the AIB Start Academy was Week 6 and we are all about social media marketing. The morning session was hosted by  @conor_pope Conor Pope, Irish Times consumer affairs correspondent. There was a brief interlude with @DM_Digital Daniella Morrison, Head of Social media at AIB and the afternoon session was with @sparkfelicity Felicity McCarthy.   It was a big day with allot of information to digest. While it’s all fresh in my mind here are the key takeaways on the subject. Hopefully there’s a few gems that you can take away yourself and apply to your own ventures. My notes on Effective Social Media Marketing In essence social media marketing is all about finding your audience and building that audience across the various social media platforms. Top Tips: Keep sentences short, eliminate all unnecessary words. Don’t waffle. It’s a constant effort but if you keep at it the benefits will come. We want to deliver useful, transparent and engaging content that encourages interaction between  the Buska brand and our target audience. To our great benefit, Conor Pope took the time to review some of our websites and offered an abundance of of useful insight. All participants agreed that this was a very helpful use of our time today and we all walk away with some new (To Do’s) on what is becoming a long list. Social Media strategy- Be clear on what you want to achieve. What do you want from social media – you need to know what you are setting out to achieve. Is it; Awareness Sales Engagement Product Launch Your brand needs a voice and it is important know your voice & know your tone so that you can be consistent. Build trust. At Buska we are helpful & informative. We stress the benefits not the features. Buska Makes Moving Easy. See what we did there.. Try to break down your message ideally into 1 sentence that encapsulates everything. Here’s our best effort, Buska makes moving easy. It’s who we are and what we stand for in 1 short sentence.  Frequency – Tweet often. There are no limits but if you are trying to build a brand following you should be tweeting a minimum 3-5 times per day. Publish good quality and useful content. Know your customers & put the customer first. It is not about you, it is about the customer – this is the recurring theme of the Academy. Be original, be beautiful and be yourself & follow influencers. What’s your story. Tell the story of your business & put your customer in the story. Don’t sell on social media but it can be acceptable sometimes. If you can build awareness for your brand across social media the customers will know how to find you when they need you. What’s the customer’s story – tell that story. Can you get customer reviews, if so, get them, use them and share them. Sweating the assets – what potential content already exists in your portfolio. Can it be used as social content. You probably have more potential content than you think you  have. Tweets using # get twice the engagement. Don’t use more than 2 hash tags in your posts. Write with intention. Post original content and share content that is interesting to your audience. Make it beautiful. Know when your audience is on-line. Does it pass the filters? Tweets must be *Readable *Interesting * Compelling Wednesdays & Thursdays have lowest levels of engagement across all social media platforms. Leverage news events & act fast. Here is a great example of acting fast – the power went out at the Superbowl and Oreo Cookies did this; Measure your Success: Growth – Engagement – Response rate – Response time. Always exercise good judgement & common sense. Blog and link across all social media There is a time and place for lists which can be a useful form of content. Coming soon; The 9 things you need to know before moving house 11 reasons why you should rent Buska Boxes for your move. 3 Reasons Buska Boxes will make you move easier and less stressful. Our message at Buska in 5 points. Buska boxes are fit for purpose Delivered and collected once you have unpacked Environmentally friendly Cheaper than buying cardboard boxes Convenient. Twitter – Facebook – Linkedin – Instagram – Snapchat – Periscope – Pinterest. Your customers are all online – where are they. It is different for everyone and it was an interesting discussion point.  Develop a content plan. Useful Resources. Some useful resources for those of you with serious intentions. www.canva.com www.goanimate.com www.picktochart.com www.flipagram.com www.hootsuite.com www.buffer.com www.postplanner.com www.sparkdigital.ie As always, thanks for reading. Mark