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Posts Tagged ‘social media consultancy’

The “nice” Twitter Tip

May 14, 2016

What is the right thing to do when someone mentions you or your business/organisation in a complimentary, “nice” manner on Twitter?

Let’s take a simple example:

“Well done to @FuzionPRIreland for helping us above and beyond with our product launch” … a nice tweet by a client (it does happen!) that makes us look good in front of their followers and anyone who might spot the tweet.

Take a second before answering and forget about Twitter and think about what you would do in the real world if this happened?

Would you ignore the person who complimented you? Nope!

Would you thank the person who gave you the compliment? Probably

Would you like as many people as possible to know that a client was happy to go “public” with their satisfaction about your service? Probably

Now let’s look at Twitter and the do’s and don’ts in this scenario and consider how the ‘tweeter’ feels in each case.

Don’t ..

Ignore the positive tweet – “I said something nice and Fuzion didn’t even acknowledge me. I’m sorry I tweeted them!”

Retweet the positive tweet adding no comment – “Fuzion never acknowledged me but just retweeted the nice thing I said to make themselves look good”

(From my experience this is what most people do)

Do …

Thank the person/organisation who tweeted Fuzion by replying to their tweet “thank you so much for the kind words, it’s great to work with great people” – this way you have acknowledged them publicly and now all your followers will see a tweet that had some positive element at its source

And

Retweet their tweet but this time add a comment that both acknowledges the tweeter but also shows you are not being self serving: “It’s great to work with special people” – this way everyone sees that you are nice but also they get to see the original ‘complimentary‘ tweet

There you go … That’s my “nice” twitter tip!

You can tweet me at @GregCantyFuzion and thank me and see what happens!!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion PR, Graphic Design, Greg Canty, Marketing, social media consultancy, social media training, twitter
Posted in Communications, Social Media, Twitter | Leave a Comment »

Snapchat and feeling like a dinosaur

April 7, 2016

My two buddies were all excited about Snapchat and insisted on enthusiastically showing me how it works.

You take a picture of your face you press this button and then you choose an effect … Open your mouth and a tongue flies out, raise your eyebrows and water gushes out of your eyes, click here and you are wearing shades and a cop uniform. This is very strange ..

Ok …..What then?

Well you can put that out as a story for “all your fans” to see or you can send it directly to a chosen few.

How do I find people to follow, how do they find me…?

They show me posts by people they are following and it all seems a bit odd.. Most people seem to be messing around with nothing at all decent going on. Some of the people that I followed seem to be convinced that they are celebrities and keep talking to the camera about their day. You are not a celebrity!!

I must admit I quite admire the guy who records himself jogging…try taking a selfie mini movie while running! I’d like to see that on the claim form – how exactly did you fall into that pothole?

One woman I know quite well keeps posting from her bed, telling us how tired and sick she is (this is done with full make up by the way!) and moaning about all the married men who are coming on to her. Really (I feel like calling her and having a quiet word)??

I find one US politician, Cory Booker who seems to be using it in a semi intelligent way and of course Kim Kardashian is offering us another version of her reality TV life. Social media guru and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has effectively become an actor and this is another platform for him to do his thing – he likes eating bananas, I’ve discovered!

When you open up Snapchat the camera on your phone is automatically looking at you….Ok, you can take a picture or film yourself. What do you say?

Is it like Facebook…not really, Twitter….Definitely not, Instagram…The most like it but the posts just stay for 24 hours.

I don’t like it, it seems incredibly egotistical and I’m really uncomfortable because I don’t really know what I’m doing and I haven’t quite figured out how to use it..but I will!

This is good … I train and advise people on using social media all of the time so this is a really great learning for me.

I now know how they feel – I had forgotten what it was like to feel like a dinosaur!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Tags:Cory Booker, Fuzion, Greg Canty, Snapchat, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in Communications, Personal Marketing, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Acknowledge and Engage with your audience

February 17, 2016

Stephen Donnelly of the Social Democrats did really well during the General Election Leaders Debate on RTE this week. He comes across as an articulate, intelligent and impressive individual and his performance was one of the things that many people were talking about after.

He won over some of the audience!

While he is very impressive it is very hard to buy into a manifesto that wants to keep taxation high and let the state use those funds. If I thought the public service was capable of spending this money wisely and efficiently there might be some merit in his arguments but this just isn’t the case.

Also this high personal taxation philosophy is a huge deterrent for human talent to work and live in Ireland. Sorry Stephen – people want to be able to enjoy the spoils of their labour and will move to more favourable regimes such as the UK to make that possible.

However, Stephen did impress..

My other half, Deirdre Waldron said as much on Twitter (I would consider her to have a lot of influential followers) and effectively she gave his performance a big ‘thumbs up‘ publicly. She wasn’t the only one who did this I noticed.

The Golden Opportunity

While this online endorsement is great for Stephen it leaves a huge ‘Opportunity‘ door wide open for him to walk through. Of course it’s up to him and his team to grab this opportunity.

What if he could do something really simple to grab this tangible goodwill and take it to a higher level?

What if he could do something really easy to take this positive feedback and convert it into a supporter or a fan even?

What if he could take a few little seconds and grab a simple chance to show an online audience that he is a really great and very popular guy?

What if he decides to do nothing?

Do does nothing ..

Dee is thinking …hmm, I said something complimentary and it wasn’t even acknowledged. That’s not very nice, I won’t do that again.

That positive impression has wilted a little

He likes the post..

Dee is thinking…hmm, It’s nice to see that he acknowledged the positive thing that I said. He is one of the good guys.

That positive impression has been reinforced and she might even repeat the positive posts about him in the future.

He engages with the post..

This is the ‘Holy Grail‘ of social media and it is the big prize, the gift, the one thing that is waiting there to be easily plucked from the tree.

Stephen tweets back: “thanks a million” or even better “thanks a million Dee, I appreciate the positive feedback” or even better again “thanks a million Dee, our campaign is really connecting with people”

Dee is thinking..hmm, this guy is the real deal, he would be a great person to have working for us in Dail Eireann. I’m going to follow him and listen carefully to all of his proposals and arguments and I might take his local candidates more seriously.

Now Stephen has won her over and one vote turns into two and so on..

Why is it not happening?

Maybe this very sharp and intelligent guy who is out there giving it everything, just doesn’t get this simple trick? Maybe he just doesn’t have the time? – I’m sure he doesn’t but he can surely get someone who understands his message intimately enough to assist him with his Twitter account.

These are easy wins for Stephen and so many of the other politicians who have positive momentum. If they are serious about getting each of those precious votes then grab the golden opportunities by jumping in – Acknowledge and Engage.

For the rest of us the argument is exactly the same with our online communications:

Acknowledge your nice posts
Don’t be afraid to have a conversation
Say thank you!

The opportunities are there …grab them!

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training from our offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Tags:Deirdre Waldron, General Elections, Greg Canty, Social democrats, social media consultancy, Stephen Donnelly, twitter
Posted in Communications, Irish Politics, Personal Branding, Personal development, Personal Marketing, Politics | 3 Comments »

But what if someone says something wrong?

October 29, 2015

I was in the middle of a social media training session with the senior team of a client and Mick, who was one of the elder statesmen in the group asked a question.

This brand new world is a scary place for Mick who has been doing his own thing in his own way for a long time and now that day has come. The company believe that they are missing out by not fully embracing technologies that might deliver them business and LinkedIn is the platform they chose for me to run a training session for them.

I’m guessing that Mick and probably some of the other guys have been hoping that this day wouldn’t come but eventually it has arrived and I was the ‘scary monster‘ who was standing up at the top of the room talking about this dreaded LinkedIn, the thing that they feared could possibly render all of their skills, crafted over many years out of date and useless.

His body language, disguised with a little bit of humour screamed “I am choking, please let me out of here!“.

He sat there during the session saying very little.

At the beginning of these sessions I spend a lot of time with the team figuring out what ‘stories‘ they want to tell about their organisation.

“We are an experienced team, we have our own R&D department, our technology is ahead of everything else in the marketplace, how the company came about is very compelling, we work with some of the biggest companies, we are successful, we are expanding, there is a genuine 24/7 service and the culture is very strong.”

This is a company you would want to do business with.

We explored how we could communicate some of these things on an ongoing basis with a combination of blog posts, published posts, company and personal status updates on LinkedIn.

I always stress that you must be clear what your objectives are and the messages that you want to communicate. I talk about developing a ‘message board‘ that is built into the organisation social media strategy for the company and this should be shared with all team members to ensure they understand what the content guidelines are.

Out of the blue Mick popped up with a question: “But what if someone says something wrong?“.

I think he had accepted that it was time to face his fear and now he threw out his real fear that in ways has been fuelled by media reports about damage that has been done to organisations by stupid things being posted by people working there.

What could we possibly do to prevent that from happening?

Ironically he made this comment right in the middle of that part of the training where I am setting the content guidelines with the team.

On the phone, chats with team members, meetings with clients, conversations at conferences… we all have the potential to say something stupid or damaging but we are trained and trusted to do our jobs and represent the places we work for properly.

Social media is no different and you do have to trust your teams but you must give them clear guidelines and explain what is expected of them.

Unfortunately those ‘stupid’ mistakes happen when this is not done and when someone inexperienced (typically when someone is “good” on Facebook) and lacking in knowledge about the organisation is given free rein to post for the organisation. It can also happen when an outside agency is appointed to post on behalf of the company without proper briefing and controls.

Mick, you are right but we will make sure this won’t happen here!

p.s. Mick knows his customers and his organisation better than anyone and will fly once he loses his fear.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, linkedin, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in Communications, LinkedIn, Marketing, Personal development, Social Media, Staff training | Leave a Comment »

The Golden Era of Social Media

October 14, 2015

Will we look back at this time and talk fondly of the ‘golden era’ of social media….?

I write this as we have just heard that Twitter have announced that they are laying off up to 336 people, 8% of their workforce. When the most beneficial of all the social media platforms has reached this point it makes you wonder.

Like every other business they must make money!

Roll forward just 5 years. Will we be saying..

“It was an innocent time when for free we all opened personal accounts on Facebook, we connected with friends, shared and uploaded our pictures. It was pure, we were able to communicate and voice our opinions without interference.

Businesses jumped in and opened accounts for free and publicised their wares.

It was really enjoyable and effective with all of us being able to see content that we wanted to.

Unfortunately it all changed when it became big business (like every other business they had to make money!) and now it is just like a huge advertising platform, which no one bothers using any more because we stopped seeing the content that we wanted.

And what about Twitter …We had such fun opening accounts for free and following who we wanted and them in turn following us and interacting as much as we wanted.

Eventually they wanted all of our personal details for advertising purposes and business accounts became different to personal accounts.

Of course the ‘free ride‘ had to finish at some point – we were naive to think it could continue the way it was.

Looking back, considering all of the benefits I enjoyed I think I would have been quite happy to pay a subscription instead of seeing it ruined the way it has been.

It’s a pity it’s gone.

Do you remember when LinkedIn was free and you could connect and post content until the cows came home, all for free!

It’s ironic that it’s half as effective now as it was when it was free!

As for Instagram ..we had great fun posting fab photos and interacting and now unfortunately its full of adverts and corporates posting commercial pics that make our skin crawl!

As for things like Foursquare, Google+, Snapchat, Pinterest and Periscope …. we used them all for about 6 months and then we got bored.

As for social media taking over from newspapers and traditional media – what were we thinking?

Did we really want a world where no one was paying journalists to investigate, where great writers and columnists could not make a living, so they stopped … Crazy!

It did seem like this would happen for a while because we stupidly thought that we could get everything for free – when did that ever make sense?

Inevitably Apple, Microsoft and Google have mopped up everything online and the lesson that there is no such thing as a ‘free lunch‘ has come true.”

I miss those days and wish I could ‘tweet’ again one last time.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training in Dublin and Cork

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, Jack Dorsey, social media consultancy, twitter
Posted in Facebook, LinkedIn, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Do you need a fighter?

June 11, 2015

I was part of an interview panel recently for a client and during the course of my pre-interview preparation I did my usual checks online with the various candidates.

This normally reveals a lot – you can see how strong their presence is online, you can see how good their communications skills are and you can see the things they care about.

Often what you discover from their social media activity can confirm what they have described on their CV’s, it can further illuminate who they are or it can even bring everything into question – is this a different person?

I love the LinkedIn profiles in particular and the great ones have genuine recommendations written for them supporting the work they did in particular roles, which makes it really easy to assess them.

You can also see other evidence of their lives, their blog posts, the websites they are listed on and even some media coverage they have been mentioned in…all very interesting.

In one individual’s case I quickly found a newspaper article whereby they had taken and settled a constructive dismissal case against a former employer!

According to the article the case was settled on the steps (of course!) and both sides were quoted as saying “they were happy with the outcome” – no doubt a cheque was written and this person backed down.

The unfortunate thing about the article is that this person was the only person named (the organisation was named but not the individuals involved) and as a result they have this against their name for people like me to find on a simple Google search.

Their CV obviously didn’t mention this incident – how could you even go about presenting this information to a prospective employer in a positive way? The CV told a different, quite positive story.

My immediate reaction was alarm bells – is this person trouble and are things not so rosey in their garden?

And then I reflected – maybe this person was bullied, maybe they were one of many in the organisation who were mistreated and instead of quietly moving on just maybe they were the ones who were strong and brave enough to stand up for themselves and make sure that this behaviour stopped?

Maybe they did this to ensure the practice of bullying stopped within the organisation?

Instead of being a huge negative maybe this incident gave a huge hint that this person was a strong person with high principles who was prepared to stand up and fight for what is right, even if it had the potential to make them look bad. In this case you could definitely argue that it did.

Isn’t it possible that a person like this is a rare gem and not the ‘troublemaker‘ we first thought?

The unfortunate truth is that in most cases this person won’t even get as far as an interview because we do jump to conclusions quickly so what can that person do?

Taking control

They most take control of their ‘story’ online – make sure LinkedIn, Twitter and even Facebook tell a really positive story. Get those recommendations from previous employers and other people in business who will enforce the good stories.

The other big thing that person can do is to start self publishing online – start blogging, start guest blogging, push that expertise and passion out there and quickly that Google space will be filled with their own material and those old articles will gradually get pushed down the ranking and will not be found.

If they get to interview and the ‘topic’ comes up they should be prepared to tell the real story.

In this case the person had withdrawn from the process even though we were quite happy to interview them.

If they are a fighter they also have to fight for their own online presence and reputation!

A fighter could be the very person you need ..

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training in Ireland from our offices in Dublin and Cork

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, ireland, social media consultancy, Training
Posted in Bullying, Personal Branding, Personal development, Personal Marketing, Recruitment | 3 Comments »

Recommendations Rock!

April 21, 2015

Do you remember the old days of the “reference“?

That magic piece of paper from a previous boss or the parish priest that says you are a great person and someone who can be trusted to do a good job!

These pieces of paper were little treasures that we kept safe and produced when required on interview day.

Even now whenever any of our team move to pastures new (why anyone would ever leave Fuzion is a mystery to me!) they ask us for a ‘reference‘.

They clearly don’t need it for the job they have just accepted but they might end up using it for the next role they go for. More than likely whenever it will be used it will be at least two years old.

This reference is written in the knowledge that it will only ever be shown privately in very specific circumstances.

For me the ‘real’ references are the recommendations that appear on your LinkedIn profile.

As far back as April 2010, Fortune magazine in an article about LinkedIn were advising that “if you were serious about your career then you should be proactive about getting recommendations“.

These are much more powerful that the traditional ‘reference‘ in my view. This is someone going on record for everyone to see that “Greg is a great fella“. A good recommendation on your LinkedIn profile by a credible person speaks volumes about you as a prospective employee or as service provider.

Furthermore a bank manager, a landlord or a supplier might find such a recommendation just as beneficial.

I get asked a lot by people about how to go about asking for a recommendation. If you have done a great job for a boss or a customer then it’s appropriate to ask and mostly they will be happy to oblige (they must be a LinkedIn user).

Ironically one of the best ways to get a recommendation is to first give one. This is a powerful gesture between you and that person – there is nothing wrong in recommending your boss (a very fair person, who I thrived under, who gave me fantastic direction etc) or a customer (a pleasure to deal with, very professional and fair) .

On LinkedIn once you recommend someone the question is then asked of them “would you like to recommend Greg“.

I must practice what I’ve been preaching and write a few recommendations

Who is first? …

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training in Dublin and Cork

Tags:Fuzion, Greg Canty, linkedin, Recommendations, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in Personal Branding, Personal development, Personal Marketing, Recruitment, Social Media | Leave a Comment »

You get what you pay for – maybe you get a lot less?

March 9, 2015

You get what you pay for ..maybe when you pay you get less?

At nearly every talk I attend about social media these days a business Facebook user asks the question about the crashing reach of their posts – a few years ago when you posted something this post would reach a large number of your users (fans) who had signed up and followed your page.

Over the last few years the ‘reach’ of your posts has been crashing and we are now at a stage when some posts will get just a handful of views.

PR versus Advertising

A savvy customer will believe editorial or an article they read a lot more than an advert – a standard mechanism in the PR industry values media coverage three times more than the equivalent advertising space. (Have a peep at a blog post that our own Edel Cox has written on the topic).

After all if you pay to say you are great it’s not worth as much as someone else saying you are great!

The very same argument can be applied to your posts on social media.

As we have mentioned above Facebook have well and truly entered the ‘show me the money‘ era as fans of your page are no longer seeing your posts that they have signed up to see. Sooner or later this moment was going to come as all the social media platforms must make money just like any other business.

If 10% of your fans are seeing your posts then you are doing extremely well. From my experience those doing better than this are generally either giving away bucket loads of free stuff or have fallen into the trap of posting irrelevant funny videos.

The only way to really ensure that your fans are seeing your posts is to ‘boost‘ them. This is done simply by paying a few quid (the amount will vary depending on how many fans you have) to ensure that your post is pushed out by Facebook to your existing fans and beyond that if you wish.

The big problem with this approach is that suddenly these posts appear in your fans timeline with the word ‘sponsored‘ above them. Your post that was never intended to be an advert has now become an advert and just like the PR versus advertising argument its value has reduced to a third.

In my view the only way around this is to find other ways of talking to your “tribe” – we need to post frequently on Facebook (carefully choose the times that your audience are online) so that we are not fully reliant on the adverts, we must start using the other social media platforms such as Twitter or Instagram (which are still relatively “pure”) or try to get your fans to sign up for your e-newsletter, which isn’t quite as conversational.

The important thing, however you go about it is that your tribe believe and trust what you are saying to them

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer Social Media Consultancy and Training in Dublin and Cork

Tags:Advertising, Cork, Dublin, Fuzion PR, Graphic Design, Greg Canty, ireland, Marketing, social media consultancy, Training
Posted in Advertising, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media | 4 Comments »

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