1. How to juggle jelly-fish (or get started on social networking) Helen Hammond Managing Consultant – Elephant Creative Solutions Marketing Manager - Wards Solicitors w. www.elephantcreative.co.uk l. http://uk.linkedin.com/in/elephantcreative t. http://twitter.com/helenhammond e. [email_address]
I’m not a techy and I’m not an expert in how to use IT to solve all your business development problems. What I do know and what I do believe in is common-sense marketing and using all the tools available (and calling on the right people for the job) to develop your practice. If you keep an open mind you can see the benefits for yourself. This presentation is in 2 halves. The first half looks at the background to social networking and the “what’s in it for me” side of things (in terms of why and how to use it). The second half looks specifically at Linkedin and goes through some ways to use it to make a difference. I’m not going to show you how to make a profile or do any of that… I shall assume you already have one, even if it’s not filled in yet… but I am going to show you some things that you can directly apply to business development needs and processes.
www links pages through metadata ie. references. Social Networking works in the same way but by linking information about people. It is a www of people. Social Networking is about maximising the return on this web. It allows for social filtering on context rather than just words. It flattens boundaries and opens doors (eg. the CEO circulating the report versus the employee circulating the report). It allows us to be more aware and engage better with people. It is even easier to get to key people and to understand what makes them tick. Like networking… but better! How has it changed the business landscape? Push-me, Pull-you. Previously we interrupted lives. Because you couldn’t know everyone much of this was seen as spam so you had a high amount of effort for lower return. The basic dynamics of push and pull marketing have been changed. Push - social filtering allows us to specify frequency as well as content. Because it is from someone we know (or knows someone we know) it has validity and credence. It isn’t seen as spam. Pull - you can opt in to pull information to you. You read a blog and start to feel you know that person. The relationship is starting to be built. We value content our friends read, often over information businesses send out. Eg. Chicago Bulls. In essence by being in the “group” it breaks down barriers and allows you share information more effectively and to more people. The hard work of cold-calling and walking into that networking group is done for you!
Research Marketing BD Profile development
Plus… “you can’t market private client” “you can’t use social media for our clients”… I’ve heard it all before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFZ0z5Fm-Ng Show video in full. Approx 4mins.
All roads lead to you. You can improve your SEO, you can improve your profile and make sure your marketing and BD are done in a joined up way. No point having a good website, and a good profile and a good new page and a good newsletter and not having them all talk to each other.
Research. Keep up to date with the methods you use.
It’s really no different from traditional networking. It’s all about individual people, individual personalities and talking. You get to find out in advance what their issues are and go from there. Like going into the conference having already read briefing notes on all the delegates. You can also demonstrate your values better. So, if Thring Townsend are all about x y and z then you could communicate them through social media by…
Needs to be regular Consider a combination of bespoke articles and also feeds from other sites/resources - there is no shame in sharing! Pithy & opinionated, not sanitised Share the load Ghost writers
Not just for “the kids” Listen first, what are others saying about you? Talk to people about your work - far more relevance to private client teams as dealing directly with people Share your culture and build personality Integrate video & twitter Hypertargeted adverts - Estimated reach 64,780 people who live in the United Kingdom who live within 40 kilometres of Bristol or Bath between the ages of 35 and 55 inclusive who are married Change that to 60+ then you’re looking at 4.580 Can do the same with Google, Linkedin and Twitter (although none so well as Facebook)
Personal development Networking Research Profile raising Being able to send your CV out to everyone without looking odd! Developing referrals - over 900 private client solicitors in the UK on Linkedin, in the Bristol area alone there are over 112 IFAs and 477 accountants
Wills and Estates Planning groups STEP Trusts and Estates groups 6 groups about family law UK Same on mediation and ADR 189 groups for solicitors Law society GWE Business West
Perhaps you might want to make approaches to local businesses to do lunchtime meetings about Wills… do your research? Find out about their employees before you go etc
Advanced search on people helps to target and research. Can do Boolean searches: X NOT Y X AND Y + = must include, - = must not include “ xys” “ xyz” AND (joe OR bloggs) Very specific. Hyper target.
Why did I spend so much time going through the other things? Link them all up. One point of data entry to cover off twitter and facebook and linkedin. Not a new fangled thing = how people are communicating.
Time - everyone is sitting there either worrying about not having enough time or worrying that people will spend too much time on it. First - tackling not having enough time Second - tackling spending too much time
Will be sending you an email with the slides, a ‘getting started on Linkedin guide’ and also a list of UK law firms on Twitter… so you can have a nose. Set a small, do-able goal and give it a go, measure and try again.