Tag Archives: social media marketing sheffield

Social Media Management Sheffield Discuss the Value of Pinterest

In addition to accounts for personal users, Pinterest also allows businesses to create business pages that they can use to promote their company online. These pages could be described as ‘virtual shopfronts’, allowing Pinterest users to browse items for sale on their website. And it’s big business; brand studies have continued to show that Pinterest is more effective at driving salesthan other forms of social media. As well as images, business pages can also include various data, topics and information such as prices of products, ratings of movies or ingredients for recipes.

How Pinterest Works

It’s free to sign up, and Pinterest users can upload, save, sort and organise images, or ‘pins’ through collections known as pin boards. Users can browse the content of others, and save individual pins to their own pin boards using the ‘Pin it’ button. If browsing a website other than Pinterest, images can be pinned to users’ pin boards using a ‘Pin it’ button that can be downloaded to the bookmark bar on your web browser. Users can also ‘repin’ pins from others on their own pin boards.

Social Media Marketing World 2015

Last month, San Diego hosted the “Social Media Marketing World 2015″ conference, where several social media professionals shared their expertise on established and developing trends in social media. According to the conference, Pinterest has been dubbed ‘the new Google’, due to the fact that it has a powerful search which many people actually turn to before the search engine giant. It might sound unbelievable, but the reason for this is that many people simply prefer the visual search results that Pinterest offers. Pins on Pinterest also have great longevity too, for example, if you share a pin today, it will still be coming up in search results weeks, months and even years later.

Sheffield Social Media Management Services

As the 4th most popular social media channel in the world and an invaluable tool for driving sales, it’s never been more important to get to grips with Pinterest and start reaping the benefits. Seven Creative offer ongoing Sheffield social media management services which can include contributing to and monitoring your business’ Pinterest account. Call them today on 0114 383 0711 today for more information about how they can help you.

 

5 things you must do to have a successful website!

As a Sheffield based marketing agency, we are aware that there are lots of small to medium sized businesses out there that don’t have much of a web presence. We’ve put together 5 simple but very important things you need to do to have a successful website.

Make your website mobile-compatible

Sadly, lots of small to medium sized businesses websites are not compatible with mobile devices. People are moving away from their desktops at a rapid pace, preferring to browse the internet on the go on tablets and smart phones. If your website isn’t suitable for these devices, for example, not optimised for smaller screens, you and your business are missing out on a huge audience.

Social-media-management-sheffield

Be active on social media

As we know, social media marketing is powerful tool to market your business. By not embracing social media, you are not only falling behind your competitors, but also missing out on a huge captive audience. Your social media accounts also need to be connected to your website!

Have an email link and contact number on your homepage

It is absolutely necessary to have an email link on the home page of your website for consumers to contact your business. Email is a really convenient way of getting in touch, and without a visible email address, you may be missing out on inquiries,  questions from potential customers and even sales.

It is also incredibly important to have a phone number listed on your homepage. Some questions are better answered by phone, and some people prefer to speak to an actual person as opposed to emailing.

Generating phone calls via your homepage makes customers feel comfortable, while not listing a phone number may make people question your legitimacy.

Have an inquiry form built into your website

A form-fill option on your website is a great way to allow consumers to request information. Information inquiry forms should be built into your site, connected to a CRM, an email system, and an ecommerce system. That way, the lead is not just being collected, it’s also being prepared for the business owner to communicate with and generate business via that lead.

Make sure your website is search engine optimised

What’s the point of having a website if no one can actually find it? When people visit a website, a lot of them will have found it through search engines (hopefully!) Key words are essential for being discovered on search engines. This includes keyword research and creation, on-site search engine optimisation and off-site link building. These are all important elements for driving traffic to your website; they will make your site search engine friendly, improve your website’s rankings and allow your business to gain exposure.

As a web marketing agency based in Sheffield, we know how important it is to have these points in place. If you are worried that your website isn’t working for you as well as it could do, or you are missing any of the above, don’t panic – we can help.

Contact us by telephone on 0114 383 0711, email chris@sevencreative.co.uk, or click here to fill out the contact form on our website.

Social media successes and failures

Social media marketing can be a fantastic tool for promoting your business online and marketing your brand. Done properly, social media can generate a buzz that has the power to be seen by thousands if not millions of people. On the other hand, a post that goes bottoms up has the potential to be seen globally.

Here at Seven Creative, we’ve put together a few of our favourite social media successes and fails for you amusement. Enjoy!

Social media successes

Honda’s upside down approach to social media paid off in a big way when they offered $500 to the most active Pinners on the social scrapbooking site Pinterest to take a 24 hour break from the site to promote the new CRV. Ingeniously, they called the break a ‘Pintermission’ and then asked the winners to create a board about all the activities they enjoyed on their day off. Honda reached more than 5.5 million followers of the chosen Pinterest users  with this campaign.

We love the chocolate Facebook thumbs up created by Cadbury too. And no, not just because it looks delicious! Constructed as a Thank you to their fans, a real time video feed of the construction process drove massive fan engagement and resulted in a huge quarter of a million people actively involved in the campaign. They also gained an extra 40,000 fans! I wonder how many more they would have gained if they’d promoted a competition to win the giant choccy hand??!

Cadbury-Facebook-Thumbs-Up

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Social media mega-fails

McDonalds dropped a real clanger with their social media activity which resulted in their campaign being terminated within just two hours. Using the hashtag #McDStories, Twitter users were ‘supposed’ to share heart warming anecdotes about their McDonalds experience. Instead,  tweets about food poisoning, fingernails found in burgers and chicken nugget horror stories went viral. Well, we could have predicted that!

American Apparel’s Hurricane Sandy promotion backfired spectacularly after it offered customers 20% in an email stating “In case you’re bored during the storm, 20% off everything for the next 36 hours.” In reality, those 36 hours turned out to be devastating, with more than 130 deaths, 4 million with no power and billions in damage. American Apparrel apologised saying the campaign came from a good place. Too late, damage done!

Australia’s SellItOnline.com said that it would donate money to Tasmania’s bush fire crisis, but only if people liked its Facebook page. Understandably, an angry fan responded, “Don’t take advantage of this situation. If you’re for real, donate through the right sources. Don’t manipulate social media for your own benefit.” Another wrote, “F*** off with your opportunist marketing trying to take advantage of other people’s tradegy. If you were a decent company you’d just be putting a message up saying you were donating x amount and earning some kudos.” Mmm you’ve got to see their point……

If you’re struggling with social media, and would like some advice on setting up and or managing your businesses social media accounts, Seven Creative can help. We offer a social media set up service, social media management packages, and even regular social media workshops in Sheffield. Contact us on 0114 383 0711, email chris@sevencreative.co.uk or contact us through our website.

‘Social media is vital for business’, says Harvard

If you’re wondering whether dedicating time and effort to social media is really worth it, this new research may just make your mind up!

The Harvard Business Review recently published a great article about social media that we think all Chief Executives and Managing Directors NEED to read! The latest report from CEO.com and business intelligence firm DOMO has confirmed our view that social media is more pervasive than ever among consumers. In fact, a whopping 50% of the population currently uses Facebook and more than 37% use Twitter.

The report found that among Fortune 500 CEOs, only 7.6% are present on Facebook, only 4% use Twitter, and less than 1% use Google Plus. However, there is evidence that this may be changing.

A recent survey conducted by IBM found that out of 1,709 CEOs, only16% used social media. The study predicts this figure may grow to 57% within 5 years and that social media will become one of the two most important forms of engagement with employees and customers, second only to face to face interactions.

Thankfully, Managing Directors and Executives are finally recognising what the team here at Seven Creative already know – using social media to communicate and engage with customers, suppliers and their own employees, means their company will be more adaptive, agile and of course, more successful.

As experts in social media, we value the many advantages of using social media very highly.  And we receive ongoing confirmation from our customers that our management of their social media channels generates more business, provides access to potential customers, and provides effective  communication channels for existing customers.

Using social media is so effective in fact, that The BRANDFog 2012 CEO Survey found that more than 82% of respondents are likely or much more likely to trust a company who engage in social media. The study also reports that 77% of respondents are likely or much more willing to buy from a company whose mission and values are defined through their involvement in social media.

Here at Seven Creative, we agree that social media is vital for business. It will give your business a strong potential competitive advantage, not only by providing communication channels, but by boosting traffic to your website and increasing sales. But what if you don’t have time? What if you’re busy running your business?

We understand social media marketing, and we know that using it in this dynamic, complex and ever-evolving marketplace requires knowledge and experience. Seven Creative are experts in the field, and we can offer you a full spectrum of social media integration services. In other words, we can do it for you, and therefore remove the time and the hassle that social media can become if it’s not managed correctly. And to keep you in the loop, we’ll let you know exactly what we’ve done in regular reports,  proving to you that we’re getting results!

For more information, contact us through our website  or visit our Facebook page!