Wednesday 8 December 2010

Social Media Marketing in Startups


Working as part of a small team we strive to create and sustain a buzz surrounding our service, leveraging both traditional and new media channels. I have attended, presented and pitched at numerous events, exhibitions and networking groups, whilst simultaneously promoting the company via social media channels and communities in order to raise the profile of PhoneFromHere.com to customers, resellers and investors.

Examples of the activity we have carried out include:

• Using Twitter and blogging before, during and after events and announcements, to help to establish PhoneFromHere.com as industry experts and promote awareness of the service, brand and current activity.

• Engaging customers’ interest in the service by integrating limited free betas of the PhoneFromHere.com service in high profile community spaces such as MySpace, SecondLife FaceBook and LinkedIn.

• Use of YouTube to inform, educate and demo to customers and users alike, helping to foster conversation and enable PhoneFromHere.com to leverage positive reaction and understand/respond to any negative buzz.

• We also created a viral campaign using an iGoogle app to seed PhoneFromHere.com’s early adopter user base, this activity successfully acquired approximately 20,000 unique users racking up 350,000 voice mins.

PhoneFromHere.com’s Marketing Communication strategies have to date successfully delivered partnership opportunities with large international corporations such as Digium and created invaluable dialogue with brand names such as Skype, Yahoo and GoogleWave.

Can anyone do it? Personally I am active on Facebook, LinkedIn, Flicker, Twitter, Instagram etc and I also blog about my own interests and passions. I recently utilised a number of these Social Media tools to excite, inform and engage friends and family prior to our wedding event last July – www.WedStock.co.uk

Utilised successfully, Social Media tools can be leveraged to help achieve set business goals and objectives. Whether the focus of the activity is commercial like Dell or Best Buys, for example, driving web traffic and physical footfall to increase sales conversions or simply enhancing customer service.Alternatively, the benefits can be less tangible, such as building brand awareness, championing concepts, or generally creating discussion and buzz.

BUT REMEMBER… any Social Media activity should always tie in with other forms of online and offline Marcoms and as such this media, just like more traditional methods, relies completely on high quality, relevant and up-to-date content.

So start creating content and utilise the raft of tools out there to promote yourself and your business!

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