social media training | Greg Canty Fuzion Blog

Posts Tagged ‘social media training’

Who does the world think you are?

June 19, 2013

Apparently I’m someone who is interested in Adult Fantasy Games, the odd bet and I wouldn’t mind driving the new Volvo V40.

I’d like to go on holidays to Tuscany after needing the help of a Retail Consultant and playing some more adult fantasy games!

When I get serious I’m interested in ERP (excuse my ignorance but I have no idea what that is) for small business, a white board device for waking up ideas and I might even like to earn some extra money.

When I’m done with all of that I might like to find a new file sharing platform while I take on my one year diploma course in Corporate Governance with DCU.

Finally I might be interested in switching to UPC.

Interesting person!!

Social Media Advertising

This is a sample of the advertising that is being targeted at me across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

With all of the different social media platforms it is possible to do some very specific targeting with your advertising campaigns.

Facebook – this probably has the biggest targeting capability as it can focus on your location (as precise as towns), age, personal status and declared personal interests.

For the advertiser it works on either a pay per click basis (you only pay when someone clicks your advert) or on impressions (the number of times your advert has been shown).

You set a daily budget and you also have the capability of setting a maximum amount per click. The big limitation with Facebook advertising is that most people are in a very social frame of mind when they are using the platform so it probably isn’t great for “heavy” topics.

With Facebook you can also enjoy an element of what I call “endorsed” or “trust” advertising – where you see an advert and it declares that one of your friends likes that brand/product. If you want extra oomph from your page posts you can invest a few bob to push them out to the people who have liked your pages and their friends.

We have found it to be quite effective for many of our clients.

LinkedIn – the targeting capability for advertisers is really good here with options around location (just country so far), age, seniority, the size of the company the person works for, job role, sector and you can even target Groups that have been set up. This also operates on a pay per click basis (these are quite expensive) – you set the maximum per click and a daily budget.

I haven’t used it yet for clients but I have experimented with it for Fuzion – we have won some business as a result.

Twitter – advertising on twitter is still in it’s infancy and my feeling is that targeting will be more difficult because a user provides limited information when they set up their account. However if you read the blurb twitter reckon you can target by gender, geography and special interests (it must track the content of your tweets or maybe who you are following to assess this – it might be tricky to target the huge number of users on twitter who lurk and never tweet). You have a choice between promoting your account or pushing your tweets into peoples twitter feed).

We haven’t used twitter advertising for any clients yet.

Collectively across all platforms there is a lot of information and capability that can help you target customers – the skill is knowing who your customer might be and using the targeting tools to attract their attention.

For the record when it comes to me other than a trip to Tuscany (off there next week!), Facebook marketing and pulling my hair out with Sky last Christmas the world just doesn’t know me at all.

I definitely have no interest in adult fantasy games… (al least that what I keep telling everyone!)

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion with offices in Cork and Dublin in Ireland provide Social Media Consultancy and Training services.

Tags:facebook, Fuzion PR, Greg Canty, linkedin, social media consultancy, social media training, twitter
Posted in Advertising, Facebook, LinkedIn, Motivation, Online Advertising, Social Media, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Snap into it

May 17, 2013

Anyone, anyone, anyone?

“Snap out of it” I had to tell myself.

I do a lot of social media training and consultancy both directly for clients and as part of organised courses for the Enterprise Boards and the Digital Marketing Institute.

I use a suite of materials to deliver this training including some very detailed notes that cover the whole area including blogging, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and some of the other emerging platforms and trends in social media.

In the last few weeks I have found myself delivering a huge volume of training and on this particular day I found myself delivering a module to a client group in the morning and a similar programme in the evening to a group of SME’s as part of training for one of the Enterprise Boards.

Facing into delivering the same material on literally the same day and feeling really tired my motivation level had dropped.

I started to question myself as I drove to the hotel:

Was I getting bored with my own material?

Would I be able to deliver a good session?

I was wallowing ..

Hold on (big conversation with self!)…you have been crafting your training materials for a few years, you have continuously improved the programme, you not only understand the material intimately but you know how to deliver it in a way that keeps the group engaged and learning – Besides you know you are passionate about this whole area.

This group of SME’s have signed up for the programme, they have given up their evenings to learn about something that could make a big difference for their business and you know you can show them how, in a really practical way.

After giving myself a few virtual slaps in the face and a big kick up the bum I managed to change my gears and open that door – “who wants to tell world about how great their business is?”

We had a great session ..in fact it was the best reaction to a session that I had in the last few weeks and after it I was buzzing.

What you get from any group at a meeting or a presentation is often down to what you bring in the door with you ..your frame of mind, your attitude, your belief, your energy and your enthusiasm.

Snap into it ..

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion with offices in Cork and Dublin offer social media training and consultancy in Ireland

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, ireland, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Marketing, Motivation, Personal development, Positivity, Social Media, Training, Twitter | 5 Comments »

Are you leaving breadcrumbs?

April 20, 2013

“You are doing a lot of work in Dublin these days” she said to me.

“We are, but how did you know that?” I asked

“Oh ..I figured that out from your Facebook posts” she said

That conversation was about five years ago and it was at an event for a client in Dublin – for me it was what I call my “penny drop” moment about social media. At that time I was using Facebook, just like everyone else posting the odd thing about what I was doing and where I was going. In fact, I think I wasn’t that sure what I should have been posting and even how relevant social media might be for business.

It dawned on me that with every post you make people are watching, digesting and forming impressions about you and what you are all about. Often they won’t comment, reply or even “like” your posts, but they are listening and soaking up what you are saying.

From that moment I realised the power of social media and the importance of having a clear idea about what picture of you and your business you want to portray.

Every status update, every tweet, every retweet, every like, every share, every favourite, every discussion, every hashtag and every blog post are all little breadcrumbs that you leave to bring the reader to a place you wanted to take them.

Are you leaving breadcrumbs?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion with offices in Cork and Dublin offer social media training and consultancy in Ireland.

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, social media training
Posted in Blogging, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media, Twitter, Web Marketing | 12 Comments »

Flying solo or wearing the team shirt?

April 13, 2013

“I don’t want them as one of my contacts” he said “why should I?”

I was in the middle of a social media training session with the team from one of our clients and it looks like we stumbled upon an awkward moment!

During these sessions I carefully work with the full team and we determine carefully what the objectives are for their social media activity.

The team had agreed that “raising awareness” for what the organisation does was a big issue and they were going to use social media pro-actively as a vehicle to spread the word.

We were in the middle of a practical session on LinkedIn and we discovered that the person whose account we were using for demonstration purposes had a large number of ignored connection requests.

“But I don’t know them” he said

“Here you have people wanting to connect with you and you are ignoring them” I explained ..”not only are you losing an opportunity to connect and spread the word but you are giving the organisation a bad reputation by ignoring people”

Hmm … The room was silent, he wasn’t budging!

“How about, accept the requests, thank them for connecting and ask them how their business is going ?” ….. “after all, it’s not a marriage proposal” – I was trying my best!

Nope … nothing doing.

I had done enough talking and cajoling for one session so I left it – at the end of the day it is up to each organisation to set a policy for their use of LinkedIn.

The thing with LinkedIn is that people don’t connect with Greg Canty , they connect with Greg Canty, Partner with Fuzion. You and your role in the organisation are locked together as part of your identity.

The team may argue that their LinkedIn presence is their personal space – while this is true they are also wearing the team shirt and should turn up and play for the team.

What do you think ?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion with offices in Cork and Dublin offer social media training and consultancy in Ireland

Tags:Cork, Dublin, Fuzion, Greg Canty, linkedin, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in LinkedIn, PR, Web Marketing | 28 Comments »

Thank crunchy it’s Friday?

April 12, 2013

Friday afternoon and I was in the middle of a social media training session with the team from one of our clients operating in the professional services sector.

One of the directors was in the “hot seat” sitting at the controls of his LinkedIn account, which like most people with a profile he never uses.

He never posts, he never interacts but he does press the “accept” button with some of the connection requests he receives.

I encouraged him to post a status update ..”Go on, be yourself and post something“.

He surprised everyone by posting “Thank crunchy it’s Friday” ..

I asked the group what did they think ..two of his colleagues thought it wasn’t quite in keeping with their business and profession, another said he misspelt the word crunchy and some of the others thought it was a good thing to post..after all they explained it was Friday and that’s what most people at work would be feeling.

My own advice and my own experience would have me agreeing with the guys who felt “thank crunchy it’s Friday” was a good thing to post.

It’s really important that you are true to yourself, that you post something that connects with people, that you allow people to see the lighter side of your personality and that you don’t try to post something “heavy” on a Friday afternoon …the most important thing is that you make some noise and start posting on a regular basis so that you and your business will register on people’s radar.

Thank crunchy it’s Friday …what do you think?

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer in-house social media training and consultancy services in Ireland

Tags:Fuzion, Greg Canty, ireland, social media training
Posted in LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Staff training, Web Marketing | 12 Comments »

Newspapers and Social Media – Parallel Media?

March 7, 2013

Saturday morning and I’ve just read through the newspaper, The Irish Examiner, which we have delivered with the milk on a Saturday!

From the age of 13 till 21 I delivered enough of them when I had my own newspaper round ..

To be honest I often never get to read it. I pop it on the kitchen table, with every intention of having a peep at it later and often this never happens and it stays there unread.

Today I read it cover to cover including the supplements and it really showed me what I am missing, why we need newspapers so badly, even in a world where we can get news instantly via our social media channels.

I’m a self confessed lover of Twitter and I tell people at my social media courses and our clients how powerful the platform is – even if you never decide to tweet you can follow your favourite newspapers, radio stations, journalists, celebrities, sports stars, friends and other interesting folk.

Fire it up anytime and you will see a constant stream of updates from everyone you are following. You can use the powerful “search” function and track anyone that is tweeting about a subject.

That sounds pretty incredible – it is.

Why would you bother with a newspaper?

Reading the paper today it showed me some really valuable things that Twitter or any of the other social media platform could not bring me:

Emphasis – The editor and the team will decide the stories that are bigger and the ones that are smaller, those that deserve more space and the ones that deserve to be closer to the front of the paper. Twitter will be delivered to me in messages of 140 characters or less, regardless of how important each tweet is. The skill involved in organising and prioritising all of this is so valuable.

Organisation – The newspaper is organised into a particular sequence, which makes it really easy to find the topics that you are interested in. I can organise the twitter accounts I am following into subject matter lists but this still misses the skill delivered by the newspaper team.

Investigation – We badly need teams of journalists who will investigate topics of interest. We need teams of journalists with a great “nose” investigating issues that may not yet be of interest but they have an instinct that something is wrong. Social media definitely helps with all of us having a voice to highlight issues that we feel are important – we need great journalists using their skills to pick up on these.

News – With so much information hitting us via all the various channels it is really important to pick up the newspaper and glance through all of those headlines so that we don’t miss the “important news”. I learnt a lot today quickly by flicking through the paper.

New Stuff – Reading through the paper today I discovered bucket loads of really interesting “stuff” that I would never have stumbled upon. I wouldn’t have been looking for it online so I would not have found it. The team at the newspaper carefully pick through the world of information, new books and new music and deliver what they feel will be of interest to their readers. I also discover new things every day via social media that is equally of interest.

Skill – We need the skills of the journalists, the writers and the editors to deliver us news and stories in a way that grabs our attention and engages with us. We would be lost without these skills.

Look and Feel – While I love my technology and my gadgetry, my iPhone and my iPad there is something very special about the printed material, the paper, the pictures and the layouts. It’s an enjoyable experience to pick up a newspaper with a cuppa and digest all the news and information that’s on offer. Using an App like Flipboard on the iPad to flick through news and information is convenient and enjoyable but it can’t replace the newspaper experience.

While many feel new media will replace traditional media I’m not that sure – both are valuable in quite different ways and we will benefit from both, we need both.

It’s not either or ..it’s Parallel Media.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Fuzion offer social media training and consultancy from our offices in Cork and Dublin

Tags:Fuzion, Greg Canty, Irish Examiner, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in Entertainment, Social Media, Twitter | 8 Comments »

Facebook – Targeting your posts

October 21, 2012

It won’t fit everyone!

Maybe you don’t want every post from your Facebook business page reach every single viewer.

A great feature has just come on stream with Facebook which gives you the ability to control exactly this scenario.

Why might you do this?

With a particular post you might want to limit it to fans of your page who live locally or who are in a particular age group. Sometimes you may want to just target your post at members of a particular sex or with a particular personal status.

A department store who are running a special promotion on bra fitting may not want to interrupt their male audience with such a message, running the risk of them deciding to unlike the page.

A restaurant may not want to annoy viewers who are single when they are promoting specials on Valentines day – it might just annoy them!

How does it work?

Who do you want to see this post?

When you are writing your post before you publish it you can choose to target the audience for this post be clicking on the “target” button, which can be seen on the bottom left corner of the post window alongside the timing button. (you must first enable this feature in your page settings – see below)

From here you can make your audience selection, which gives you a wide range of choices enabling you to limit the reach of your post. Once you decide to publish, the post will only appear in the newsfeed of those fans that match your selected criteria.

The criteria includes gender, location, age, relationship status, education and interests.

If your fans choose to share that post it will only appear in the newsfeed of their friends that match that criteria.

The post will appear on your wall as normal visible to everyone who visits your page.

Enabling the Post Targeting feature

If your want to use this feature you must first enable the post privacy gating feature for your Facebook page – what a terrible name for the feature!

To do this you must go to the edit page menu that appears at the top of your admin panel. From here click into the manage permissions menu and you will see the “post privacy gating” option towards the end of the page, which you enable by just clicking the box.

Once you have done this the “target” feature\icon will appear as an option in the post comment window as already described.

Well done Facebook !! – its a great new feature.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

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

Tags:facebook, Facebook targeting of posts, Fuzion, Greg Canty, social media consultancy, social media training
Posted in Direct Marketing, Facebook, Marketing, Social Media | 5 Comments »

Social Media – End of the Auto-Post?

July 2, 2012

How often do you post an update on LinkedIn? – thought so !

Over the last few days you may have noticed a message from LinkedIn advising that your “tweets” will no longer appear automatically as status updates on LinkedIn.

If you didn’t have this feature switched on it obviously makes no difference to you but if you did you need to consider how this affects your social media activity.

Twitter to LinkedIn

I’m not sure what is behind this change but I am suspecting that LinkedIn may want you to post directly from their platform – at least this way you will have to open up your LinkedIn dashboard to make a post and hopefully (for them) notice some adverts that are of interest to you. Clicking these makes them money by the way!

The big problem that I see here is that most people do not consume their social media from LinkedIn – yep, we connect, search for contacts but very very few of us are actually consuming – am I wrong? Is this their effort to make themselves part of the conversation and more relevant?

LinkedIn to Twitter

You can see from the graphic above that it is still possible to push your LinkedIn posts to Twitter once you click the little twitter box at the bottom of the post.

Twitter to Facebook

Another recent development I have noticed is that my Twitter posts are no longer being pushed to Facebook despite all the connections being switched on. I have disconnected and refreshed the connection but it has made no difference.

I am starting to think that Facebook like LinkedIn want the user to log on directly to their platform to post updates, again in the hope that you will spot some adverts and make them a few bob!

Facebook to Twitter

I’m not sure if it is a coincidence but in line with this lapse in functionality Facebook are promoting their auto posts to Twitter feature quite actively when you log on. Hmmm ..

Automation isn’t always good ..

Consequence?

So what does all of this mean to the heavy social media user who is quite active on all platforms and was enjoying the benefit of these time saving applications. Effectively you could post once on Twitter and this post would replicate on both Facebook and LinkedIn. This is what I was doing myself.

Maybe it’s a good thing?

I think you should embrace the change and treat it as a good thing.

Auto posts from Twitter were never the best idea for a number of reasons:

You can allow yourself to post more often and repeat posts on Twitter (this frequency could come across as “spam” on Facebook and LinkedIn)
If you have posts of a visual nature you are better going to Facebook and posting there directly – when you post from Twitter any link was just appearing as a link.
The platforms are quite different and while auto-post can be ok most of the time, often your “tweet” may be inappropriate on LinkedIn and maybe on Facebook
I find that if you use the “auto-post” feature you actually start to miss some of the action on the other platforms – they all do a different job for you, don’t forget that.
Users of LinkedIn and Facebook may not get all of the @gregcantyfuzion and the hash tag #FF, #Positivity “stuff” and can find it quite annoying and distracting from the actual message

My best advice is to treat each of the social media platforms differently, post separately as appropriate and for ultimate control use tools like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite as time saving devices. Using these you can select the destination for each of your updates (be it to any of your twitter accounts, your facebook personal or business pages).

The schedule facility on these platforms is an extra bonus, which can also be very handy.

LinkedIn

Regarding LinkedIn status updates I don’t see the change making the platform more relevant – If anything it could actually have the opposite effect!

If you wish to make an impact here try:

Participating in discussions on Groups you have joined
Start discussions in Groups you have joined
Start Asking and Answering Questions that have been posted for your industry sector/area of expertise

But I don’t have the time .. (this must be the one thing I hear most from people about social media)

Heh, that’s not my problem …if you have figured out that social media is good for your business then you’ll make the time!

Happy Posting ..

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion PR

Note:

If you need a helping hand with your social media effectiveness check out our Social Media Training / Social Media Consultancy services.

Tags:facebook, Fuzion PR, Greg Canty, linkedin, social media consultancy, social media training, twitter
Posted in Facebook, LinkedIn, Marketing, Social Media, Training, Twitter | 10 Comments »

The Social Media Salesman

April 29, 2012

Birth of a Social Media Salesman

“This social media is a total waste of time, we’ve been at it now for over a month and it’s brought us no business” …. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that!

The prospective client that was in with us had a wine wholesaling business and had decided to take it online and had set up an e-commerce website and had also joined the world of social media with Facebook and Twitter pages and even a wine blog.

He was really frustrated as the orders weren’t rolling in and he was about to totally abandon his online efforts.

OK, I started having a peep over their activities and how they had approached their whole online efforts.

They had completed one blog post, they had just made a handful of social media posts in the month and they hadn’t interacted with anyone else on line. They had very few followers on twitter and even less fans on their Facebook page.

The guy who was responsible for the posting was too busy with his day job and was squeezing in his social media activity whenever he had some spare time if he remembered.

“Fair enough ….. now tell me how your main business works?” I asked.

The company had three sales reps who reported into a sales manager. Each of the reps headed out each day in their company cars with their order book and called into their list of customers and also popped into some prospective customers. It took a good few years, a lot of hard work and determination to build up the business to the level it was now.

On each call the reps chat about their range of wines, the special offers, the new products and exciting things happening in the industry. They obviously chat about other things with their customers – everything from how their business is going to general chit chat. It’s really important to build a relationship with the customer and to understand them if you want to do business with them. “That’s what the good salesman will do” my prospect explained to me.

Why do we expect the same results from our efforts on social media without the same effort?

With all of our clients when we provide social media consultancy we look for a “Social Media Champion” from within the organisation who knows the business really well, who is willing to learn about each of the platforms, who understands how to communicate comfortably on them and who is prepared to put in the necessary time and effort to connect with users and to achieve results.

Mostly this is not a full time job but the “champion” must be given the time as part of their role to do this properly – think of this person as a Social Media Salesman.

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion

Tags:Fuzion, Fuzion PR, Greg Canty, Social Media, social media training
Posted in Business Planning, Marketing, Social Media | 13 Comments »

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