Getting Started with a Social Media Strategy

Even thinking about creating a social media strategy can be a daunting task. If you aren’t familiar with social media, than how can you be expected to build a strategy on how your business can use it effectively? Very valid points, but the good thing is a social media strategy is really no different then any other type of business strategy or marketing strategy that you end up creating for your business. As with most strategies, a social media strategy starts with asking yourself a series of questions. Some of these you may already have defined in your existing business or marketing strategy and others may be new for you to think about.

Your Offerings

These questions focus on your products and/or services, how you are going to sell them and what the benefits are for your customers. Examples of what you want to ask yourself about your offerings include:

What product/service are we providing?
How are we packaging and delivering this product/service?
What are the key benefits of this product/service?
What is the major problem we are solving with this product/service?

Importance to Your Social Media Strategy Besides having a clear focus as to what you are doing with your business, knowing your offerings will help you to figure out what use cases you should be using on social media. It also may help you to identify what social networks you are interested in working with. If you provide film or photography services then Youtube and Instagram might be perfect platforms for you.

Your Key Audience

These questions all come down to the main group of people who will be interested in your products and/or services. You want to know their demographical information (age, gender, location) and also their psychographic information (lifestyle, interests) so that you can properly focus your advertising and connect with them.

Is there a particular age range you are looking to offer your product/service to?
Is there a particular gender you are looking to offer your product/service to?
Do people you are trying to sell to have similar interests or hobbies?
Is your product/service geared towards people who work in a specific industry or career?

Importance to Your Social Media Strategy Your Key Audience will most likely turn into the main people that make up your social media communities. By knowing who you are looking to connect with you can focus your content efforts, social advertising and even target your posts towards these areas.

Your Marketing Interests

What ways outside of social media will you be marketing your products and/or services? What are you interested in exploring as an option for getting your business out there?

Are you going to or do you already use direct mail outs?
Are you going to or do you already use radio ads?
Can you use any of the existing print, audio or video content you have as content for your social media efforts?
Can you time the release of your other ads to match the release of your social advertising?

Importance to Your Social Media Strategy The left hand needs to know what the right hand is doing, so make sure that you keep everything in line by building your social media strategy with all of your existing marketing efforts in mind. Also, your existing efforts is a perfect place to pull together artwork, content and ideas for your social media efforts.

Your Use Cases

What are you actually trying to do with social media? What is the main reason you are using it for your business? Importance to Your Social Media Strategy This one is probably the most important thing to think about when it comes to your overall strategy. If you are only on social media just because it’s what you are supposed to do or because every other business is doing it, well you probably aren’t achieving the goals that might be possible for your business. If you are looking for some ideas on what use cases have a look at this great article that covers some of the main areas that social media can help your business. Lastly, keep in mind that a social media strategy is always evolving as your business grows and changes, so don’t try to make your first draft perfect. Start by asking yourself questions like these and be open to change as you build your social media strategy.

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3 Reasons Why Having An Online Presence Matters In A Small Town

3 ReasonsWhy Having An Online Presence Matters In A Small Town

If you’re from or currently live in Atlantic Canada, you know that small towns are a big part of our culture. Small towns have the benefit of creating tight knit communities, where everyone knows everyone and everyone knows all the local businesses. It can be very easy in a small town atmosphere to think that you don’t need to seriously consider having an online presence. Here are 3 Reasons Why Having An Online Presence Matters In A Small Town.

Visitors

Vacation, visiting on business and visiting family are all reasons that bring people into your community. According to recent stats, 3/4 Canadians have a smart phone and access to mobile internet. So while the locals might know exactly where to find you, all of those folks who are driving through and googling for the product/services they need, might be missing out on what you have to offer.

Maintaining Relationships

Coffee shops, town hall meetings, grocery stores and hockey games are all the ways that people keep in touch in a small town. Think of your social accounts as just another method that you can use. It’s a lot easier to share that great article or video through a social account than by trying to explain to someone how to find it. Remember, social media and online activities don’t eliminate all the other ways you connect with people, they just give you one more place to keep in touch.

Build An Online Reputation

Maybe 5 or 10 years from now you want to look at selling your business or expanding to another community, by having a strong online reputation it can help an interested buyer, investor or the members of the new community get to know you. It’s a perfect place to create living record of your awesome business.

Life in a small town can be the best thing in the world, but don’t forget to make the most of the digital world that’s available to you.

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Fitting The Internet into Atlantic Canada

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We all know that Atlantic Canada is a beautiful place that is steeped in history. We have our main industries that have been around for as long as most people can remember. So where does the Internet fit in our world of Lumber, Potatoes and Fish? Pretty perfectly actually.

The Internet is the great equalizer when it comes to accessing information. Whether you are in New York City, London, Sydney or right here in Atlantic Canada, you will be able to access the same type of information through the internet.

In fact in Canada we are better off then many places in the world. The Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) pulls together stats every year to show the state of Internet in Canada, including where we rank in the world. According to their research, currently Canada ranks 2nd among it’s G8 partners for internet penetration. How does Atlantic Canada stack up? In 2012 the percentage of households with internet access looked like this: Newfoundland and Labrador 79%, Prince Edward Island 78%, Nova Scotia 80%, New Brunswick 77%.

The biggest impact to these percentages is they tend to be higher in urban areas, lower in rural and also vary in the same way by socio-economic levels. The good news is there is awareness of these differences at the government level and initiatives like this one in New Brunswick started in 2010 to improve access to high speed internet through providers that use satellite internet to rural areas. From another side of the equation keep in mind that every library in New Brunswick will give you free Wi-Fi access and even free access to a computer with internet if you need it.

Lastly, don’t forget the impact that smartphone and mobile internet is having on our access. Canada wide it is estimated that 49% of internet usage is accessed from a mobile device.

So why does Internet access matter? By being a connected area it not only allows us to grow our tech community, but fold in internet technology like social media and digital marketing in to our every day lives and businesses. Technology doesn’t have to eliminate the culture, history or industries we currently have, but it can help us to find more innovative ways to complete tasks. So take a few minutes today and think about all the things you do on a daily basis that are helped by having internet access. Now think about all the things you wish there was a way to do in a more innovative way. Chances are you may be able to find a full or partial solution to solving those every day problems by opening up to the possibilities that technology like the internet can bring.

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Why Should You Worry About Online, Social, and Digital Marketing?

Why Should You Worry About Online, Social and Digital Marketing?

One of the biggest questions I have heard from a variety of businesses across a collection of industries, is “Why Does Online or Social Even Matter? My business has nothing to do with technology, online marketing or social media marketing, so really why does this even matter?”

It’s a valid question and the truth is, if you don’t build your online marketing, social marketing and email marketing to align with your business goals, then it really doesn’t. Before you would spend a large amount of money and time investing on a new piece of equipment for your business, you would know what that piece of equipment is going to do for you. Put it this way, if you run a hardware store you probably aren’t going to run out and spend money buying pillows. Now, if you had a strategy and plan about how you will sell those pillows as the start of a new home decor aisle, then that might be a good investment. That’s what matters most when starting to look at building an online or social presence, is having a plan that will make your time & choices a good investment. How do you get started with building that plan? Well, first up is educating yourself about what is out there.

For today, start with a high level overview of how online and social media has been evolving in the last few years. You don’t need to understand all of the concepts or know exactly how you would implement them for your business right away, just review the material and be aware of the growth. Erik Qualman author of Socialnomics has made a series of videos over the years that highlights the gains of what social media can do. I’ve embedded them below so you can view them in the order they were released to start to see the growth of technology and social media towards the impact of marketing for businesses, big or small.

Introducing Generate Creative Consulting

Growing up in Atlantic Canada I’ve had the opportunity to participate in sports, the arts and a variety of volunteer activities. After receiving my post secondary education, I’ve also had a chance to work in start-up, small business and large enterprise companies. I’ve had many roles in all of these experiences, but there is one thing regardless of whether I was passing a puck, reciting a line, faxing for hours or presenting a slide deck that has never changed. My aim has always been to help people. Whatever problem I am faced with, I want to find a positive, creative way to help fix it. That personality trait is what has led me here, creating and announcing my own business, Generate Creative Consulting.

So why do something as scary and intimidating as starting your own business when there are many different ways to get out there and help people? Well, I’ve been very fortunate over the past 7 years to gain experience across many roles and industries. I believe this has given me a very unique skill set that I can use to not only grow my own business, but help others grow theirs. This past year in New Brunswick, the amount of deaths in the province out numbered the amount of births. Our province is dying because we can’t keep our youth here invested in building their futures and we struggle keeping our businesses afloat. Similar trends can be seen across the rest of the Atlantic provinces and Canada as a whole. This is a problem and I want to help people find a way to solve it.

What will Generate Creative Consulting actually do to help? I am a big believer that sometimes to solve a problem you need to look at it in a different and innovative way. Generate Creative will help you generate whatever kind of creative you need whether it’s ideas, content, community, strategy or even process. Our goal is work with any size business to ensure you have the support and expertise you need to compete on any scale. While our business offerings will be strongly tied to social media, online services and technology integration, I also know that sometimes the hardest problems are solved with the simplest solutions. So don’t worry that some young millennial will be forcing your business to Tweet or Facebook because it’s the hot new thing to do. In working with any client, I want to understand your business, your goals and your problems so I can help use my skills to solve them whether that solution is Tweet, a Facebook post or just making sure you have your voicemail switched on. Creativity knows no limit and doesn’t always need an internet connection.

I’m very excited not only for what this business will do for my life, but how I can help others with theirs. So please drop me a line to tell how I can help, to connect so we get to know each other or just to say hi. I’d love to hear from you and help fix any problems you need solved.

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