QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

Answer: Twitter is a 140-character long conversation generator. It allows its users to send out short, quick statements, comments or feedback to their followers.

The tweeters that are more successful are the ones that share engaging and more importantly relevant content with their followers. It should not be used to simply promote your products and services but to create a connection with your followers. Be yourself, represent your brand; adjust your tone of voice. It is OK to go off topic sometimes, give your tweets a personality. Encourage a few advocates in the company to express themselves within a framework of do’s and don’ts on topic and things they can tweet about. 

If it’s prime reason is to serve as a customer service channel, try to reply directly to your tweeters, listen to related topics of conversation and feel free to respond; say for e.g. if you are a nail care company and someone has tweeted about suggestions on how to get healthier nails – share your expertise. Also ensure you are following the right people outside your core customers - those that may be key influencers who may retweet your tweets along with some interesting news feeds and industry leaders.

Answer: You need to first ask yourself what are you trying to achieve by extending your marketing communications into social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube to name some of the most popular channels. Is it to extend your brand awareness, attract a wider audience or target a different group of people? By first understanding what you want to achieve, it will help you map out a social media strategy that is right for you business. Don’t forget that social media is all about having regular, frequent conversations with your followers so it will need a level of resource to maintain and keep it relevant. Facebook followers expect new content/conversations at least twice a day and tweets should be daily not weekly or monthly. Don’t take on too much at the beginning, experiment, and listen to what is being said about your business, industry. Follow the trends and current conversations to create the right buzz around your brand and messages.

Answer: More and more people are now accessing the Internet via their mobiles. In fact it is predicted that by 2020 80% of all web access will be via a mobile device. By 2015 more people will be accessing the web via their mobile rather than their PC. So yes m-Commerce (as it is known) will be become an opportunity to grow your e-commerce business to a wider audience.  The start-ups costs are pretty low and could reap huge benefits. One multi-channel retailer is currently generating around £2M through their iPhone app, which only cost around £10K to develop.  To most people, their mobile is their most precious possession With the rapid growth of smart phones and the growing market of apps, each mobile is pretty much personalised to their owner. It’s their music, organiser, diary, window to the web, access to emails, social network communicator, and games console/entertainment on the go, and of course their wallet. So the one to one marketing messages sent via a mobile device become even more powerful, impactful and personal.