Web 2.0 + Social Media

I'm a social media consultant and I've had allot of success in the social realm mainly because of two reasons:

#1 - there are so few people who understand social media let alone practice it with profitable results.

#2 - All the advertising platforms from Bing ad center, Google Adwords to Facebook Ads are either at fire sale prices due to few advertisers or offer a powerful ROI that simply cannot be beaten.

Here's a few of the ways I've used social media with clients:

#1 Establishing Market Trends:

Establish with great accuracy what industries are growing and which are in decline. See the section below.

#2 Marketing + Promotion:

There is a growing pool of mediums that give a high ROI to companies that can optimize and leverage social media and web 2.0

#3 Recruitment:

Recruit valuable staff such as managers, engineers and sales staff independantly and from competitors

#4 Competitive Intelligence:

Competitors that don't understand social media put a wealth of competitive intelligence up for grabs and make their entire organization transparent to competitors.

#1: Establishing Market Trends

A powerful example of social media in establishing market trends:

Above is an interesting diagram that I gave to the owner of Melbourne's biggest latin nightclub in 2011. The nightclub owner wanted to run latin dance classes, but he didn't know what style was in demand and would generate an income. Instructors from "Zumba", "Salsa" and "Samba" touted their own flavour of dance class but yet this nightclub owner had only a very slight idea of what was most in demand and would turn a profit above the others.

The clear and direct knowledge and marketplace understanding this line diagram contained represented $14,000 per year in good decision making to this nightclub owner.
One day, still uncertain of which class would be best to teach, the owner asked me "which dance style should we teach?" I told him "I'll get back to you". The next day at his nightclub, I gave him the above diagram and showed him the current and historical dominance of "Salsa" since 2004 within Melbourne. I used social media and Web 2.0 APIs to establish very accurately the current climate for dance classes in Melbourne and he was impressed.

A healthy and growing market is where this nightclub owner wanted to be - not an old commoditized market rife with competitors and low margins. This report very succinctly and factually established the strong performers (Salsa), declining market places (samba) and the one-minute-wonders (Zumba) leaving very little room for risky speculation and guesswork.


#2: Marketing + Promotion

Above is the diagram of the social media advertising campaigns I had run for the owner of this latin nightclub over 4 months. I was able to optimize his campaigns to target people interested in Salsa, bachata, samba, latin entertainment and live latin bands. As a result of optimizing the campaigns, I was able to increase the campaigns CTR (by almost four times), time on site and achieve just short of 7 million impressions, 2,930 clicks with only $2,750.

Those figures represented a powerful return on investment for this owner, he certainly could not have achieved this ROI from flyer distribution or a direct mailing.
This is only one example of advertising on social media but we also used photography, videography and viral marketing online through facebook, youtube and vimeo - each of which proved to valuable in promoting nights at this nightclub. There are many other businesses out there that can benefit from social media advertising and there's a few things I know about advertising in this space that other people simply don't (particularly in the world of optimization). Contact me by calling or submitting your details on the form above if you are interested in using social media to market your company or business.


#3: Recruitment

At another client; a 140 person, $27million telecommunications company we used LinkedIn to study our competitors and most importantly to study their staff and engineers. In the enterprise telecommunications industry (hospitals, large buildings etc) telecommunications was being completely transformed by Microsoft Lync which when introduced made a large number of existing technologies expensive, inflexible and obsolete.
This put a premium on engineers of Microsoft Lync and other emerging technology - you simply couldn't find good engineers with these skills because the technolody was so new. We used LinkedIn amongst many other methods to recruit valuable engineers from competiting companies that could not offer their engineers the same salary and benefits that our company could.

Social Media isn't simply about marketing, it's about interacting. Marketing is the obvious way to exploit this interaction but recruitment remains a powerful and largely untapped resource of social media that is little spoken about.

Speak to me if recruitment is an area interests you and your company.


#4: Competitive Intelligence

Social media "gurus", "professionals" and journalists constantly spout the universal value of social media for marketing to every company, regardless of size or industry. Then they push their own flavour of DVD or CD onto all those that listen. As a result there's many companies doing social media when they really shouldn't be or these companies use social media incoprrectly and are revealing valuable facts about their company that put them at a competitive disadvantage.

The image above is the twitter stream of a competitor (hidden) of a telecommunications client I worked for (that I mentioned in the "recruitment" section).

This competitor revealed much about what industries they were going into, what groups they are affiliated with and occasionally what skills they need in an engineer. From this my client was able to establish what strategic direction the company was going in and why. We passed on our findings to the CTO who was responsible for strategic technology decisions within the company and he was amazed by the degree to which this company made its strategic interests publically available.

There's many hidden benefits to social media that I'm still finding through working with clients. If you want to get a professional perspective on social media and how it is affecting your company get into contact with me by submitting your details above or calling me directly.