Outsourcing Your Social Media – What It Involves

 

“We do not have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is – HOW WELL WE DO IT”. – Erik Qualman.

It is swiftly becoming the situation that using social media is no longer a choice for businesses.  Just because you may not use facebook or pinterest does not mean that your potential customers are not using them. It is now a case of HOW WELL you use social media.

How well social media works for your business depends on how well you use it though.  Don’t expect it to be an overnight success  – social media is about building relationships, growing trust, building the blocks of brand awareness.  It is important that you measure your social media activities and results so you can evaluate, make changes, concentrate on what is working well, explore new methods. Social media is constantly changing too – this makes it interesting and exciting, however, for many business people who are already busy running their business, these changes can put them off, can make it seem too difficult and too time consuming.

I decided to write this post to offer a snapshot of what we at Write on Track can do for you, to get your business on track effectively with social media.

Outsourcing your Social Media:

You are busy doing what you do best – running your business. If social media is not something you are interested in or feel you have the time to dedicate to it, then outsourcing your social media can be the answer.

Content Creation

Outsourcing your Blogging – Let us write your blog posts

We love blogging! We both write a number of blogs (for ourselves and for clients) and I’m also the co-founder of Blog Awards Ireland. We can write your blog posts for you and the following list is what we tend to provide for clients (although they can be tailored specifically for your business):

• Average of 400 words per post
• Optimised by using highly searched keywords
• Photographs that are re-sized and named for SEO purposes (also for Pinterest)
• Call to action within the post
• Strong headlines

We can write blog posts for your business in a tone that suits your style, so you can concentrate on other aspects of your business.  All we need to do is set up an initial meeting with you and then we’ll communicate with you on an occasional basis by email.  We will monitor and evaluate periodically and discuss findings and any suggested changes with you.

Blogging Training

It can be difficult to start writing a blog – often due to a lack of confidence, bloggers block, not quite sure how to structure it or how to include a call to action. These are common stumbling blocks that we can help you to overcome.

We can arrange for any of the following:

• Blogging training in a small group
• One-to-one training
• Help you set up your blog
• Monitor your blogging by providing feedback on drafts

Additional Social Media

We can also take care of your other social media for you or offer training in the following:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Pinterest

We can do as little or as much as you would like us too. We can assure you of confidentiality, our trustworthiness, our flexibility and our ability to work independently, compile data, undertake research, organise information and above all, write well in an appropriate style for your business.

You can see the various packages we offer too. Do contact us if you would like to enquire about any of our training or if you would like to outsource your social media to us.

Public Speaking

We love talking about social media just as much as we enjoy writing blog posts and being active on all the social media platforms.  We’ve both presented at various conferences and for networking groups. Do contact us if you would like to engage either of us as a speaker for an upcoming conference or a networking group.

You can read more about us here and check out some testimonials too.

Photo: Cearbhuil Studios

 

How To Win With The Web

We have both mentioned the benefits of blogging in the past which include improved SEO, increase brand awareness and as a method to gain free press coverage.

I also find that things seem to happen in threes and I’ve recently been interviewed for three different publications – partly as a result of my blog for my other business at Garrendenny Lane.  On Monday, a journalist from the Irish Times phoned me asking if I would take part in an article on ‘mumpreneurs’ / mums working from home. She had heard of me from someone who said I was the first person came to her mind! Hopefully that will be out next Monday or the following week.  I was also contacted regarding an article in a similar theme for a business banking publication.  Some time ago, I was contacted for an interview for the Digital Hub website and am delighted to say that it was just been published and I’m the first in their ‘Winning with Web’ series.  In the interview, I explain the benefits of blogging as I have experienced them.

The Digital Hub are looking for other businesses to take part in this series so if your business is registered in Ireland and has survived, grown, expanded and/or transformed because of your use of the web, then do get in contact with them.

We see blogging as being the core of any social media presence and one of the services we offer is we can take care of your blog, from writing  your posts and spreading your wisdom across other social media channels to creating a social media strategy for you to work towards.  Running a business is time-consuming and many people feel that adding social media to their to-do list is just one thing to many. Outsourcing your social media leaves you time to get on with running your business.  Blogging will get your business noticed, it’s not going to happen overnight necessarily, it does take time but a quality blog will reap rewards, attention and sales.  Do contact us if you feel the time is right to outsource your social media.

Blog Awards Ireland – The What, Who, Why, Where & How

If you write a blog, be it personal or business, I do hope you will enter it in the Blog Awards Ireland awards coming up in October.  The nominations are now open until 16th July, you can nominate your own blog or place this button in the sidebar to ask others to nominate you (see instructions here if you’re not sure how to do it) and after the 3 rounds of judging, the 2012 will culminate in a gala dinner awards evening in the Osprey on October 13th.

There are 30 categories to choose from and you can enter your blog in more than one category so do have a look through and decide on those that are best suited to your blog. Entry to the Blog Awards is free. Do have a look at the general judging criteria to guide you in improving your blog over the coming weeks and don’t forget about the ‘Best Blog Post’ category too which will be judged by public vote. The other 29 categories will all be judged by independent judges.

Competition for Tickets

Tickets for the event will soon be on sale but you don’t have to wait until then to give yourself a chance of snapping up a pair of tickets as we are having a competition for 2 tickets and a night’s accommodation at the Osprey.  Don’t forget to like the Facebook page too.

Why enter the awards?

From having being in the finals in previous blog awards and social media awards, I can vouch for it being a fantastic feeling to see your work recognised on a national level. So many of us put so much passion, enthusiasm, talent and hard work into our blogs that it is great to see that being recognised.  Being in the finals (and also being shortlisted) for an awards can generate significant local and national press coverage for your blog and for your business which is, of course, also free.

Why have a blog awards?

Beatrice, Amanda and I decided to organise the blog awards for 2012 last autumn. (The Irish Blog Awards ended last March after a very successful six years and they were not going to be continued). Being passionate about blogging and having organised local networking blogging meetings for almost 18 months, we felt that Blog Awards Ireland would be a challenge that we would enjoy and succeed with running well. You can read more about our reasons in this blog post too.

The nominations have only been open a week and so many people have entered already, put buttons on their blogs and written blog posts about the awards that it really feels that it is taking off.  We have so much planned – both in the run up to the awards and for the night itself – that we know it is going to be a fantastic event. Yes, there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes and there’s also a lot of fun too.

We hope that you will enjoy the run up to the blog awards too and that lots of people will join us on 13th October for a wonderful night.

Review of National Women’s Enterprise Day Conference

I was delighted when I heard the National Women’s Enterprise day conference was being held in Portlaoise as it can be hard to get away to events like these when you have a young family especially when it is over two days.  I was even more excited when I was asked to present as one of the speakers in the social media workshop on the first day.

Damien Mulley was the main speaker and provided plenty of statistics on the use of social media in Ireland and internationally, as well as a handy demonstration of the Google keyword research tool.  I’m often surprised by the number of people who haven’t heard of using this free and useful tool and indeed, I mentioned it in my own talk.  Damien also spoke on how many of the google tools he uses – particularly the convenience of google docs. I guess there wasn’t time to cover Google + but I’d have been interested to hear more on this.

Eimear McCormack from JustEat talked about how they got what is seen as a ‘telephone offline’ business online whereby people can order their takeaway food online and how it is going global.  One of her main recommendations for businesses with a bricks and mortar presence, particularly hotels or eateries, is to register on Foursquare and get people to vie to be the mayor of their destination.

Tara Wilson-Black spoke about why she set up Irish Women in business, a forum for women to network online, to support each other and to find out information from each other. In a print business which can be quite male-dominated, she finds it invaluable being able to network with other women.

KarenO’Sullivan from the Talbot Hotel in Carlow spoke about their experience of using Facebook to promote the hotel and passed on lots of tips.  I spoke about why businesses should blog and how they can do it effectively.  People often wonder what traffic can they expect when they start blogging (and I’ll devote a blog post to this shortly) and I shared the statistics from two very different blogs that I started recently and my different ways of getting traffic to them and what I have discovered.  I hope it was delivered with passion and  enthusiasm and I received some good feedback afterwards so I was delighted with that.

I wasn’t able to stay for the dinner but returned today for the main conference.

There was a total of eight case studies which was great, hearing from female business owners about how they have succeeded in their businesses, how they have managed through the recent downturn and hearing what they feel every business owner needs to succeed. Aisling Hurley of Teamwoodcraft recommended any and every business award that you can as you can then benefit from all the free publicity.  Mary Fitzperald of Woodlands Hotel suggested using social media tools and learning how to use them well as an invaluable resource and Deirdre Murtagh of Causey Farm agreed, having recently increased their facebook fans significantly and seeing an increase in bookings as a result.

Debra Searle’s speech kept the audience spellbound and she received a standing ovation at the end. Her tale of rowing single-handedly across the Atlantic after her husband had to be rescued was told with humour and with pathos. She made the point that if a man had completed what she had done, he wouldn’t have received the same media coverage but yet, the fact that 2 other teams were both reduced to single members and both of those men contacted the rescue team to be collected from the middle of the Atlantic, the reason being they just couldn’t hack it being on their own.  The lasting message that I took from her talk and from the whole conference was you can choose your attitude. Just as she wasn’t necessarily able to prevent sharks swimming around her rowing boat, we can’t do anything about world economics but we can choose the attitude that we face each day with and she claims that is what got her across the Atlantic (that and sheer determination!)

Overall, it was an inspiring couple of days and I left with a bag full of goodies 🙂

I was delighted, by the way, to see a hashtag in use for the conference. If you would like to check out the tweets, just search for #nwed.  It meant that various people in the room could converse, the organisers could get instant feedback and it also meant that I could meet up with a couple of people at lunch that I’d engaged with via twitter over the course of the morning.

Lorna