Social Media seminars: Why business shouldn’t be scared of Social Media!

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Fynn Valley golf club, Ipswich, Suffolk. A great location for a Social Media seminar

Social Media seminars: Why business shouldn’t be scared of Social Media! (Part One)

Suffolk Chamber of Commerce present some great opportunities for local business people to meet, network and help each other and I was recently invited to attended a seminar at Fynn Valley golf club.

Suffolk e-Business Club – Social Media.  Is it right for you and your business?

Kurtis Tournay-Godfrey was kind enough to invite me and this is how the seminar was introduced:

Despite the hype ‘Social Media’ remains a mystery for most of us.   Join Ashley Riley Communications on the 26th May to learn why Social Media is important and how it could work for your organisation.

When thinking about Social Media most of us wonder how we will create the time to use yet another marketing and communication channel, this session will help you to learn why social media came about, if you can reach your audience and if you should shift resource to using it.

This won’t be about how to use Twitter and Facebook (although we’ll tell you where you can find this out) but it will empower you to make informed decisions and create effective social media campaigns.

Guest speaker Ashley Riley (website http://www.ashleyriley.co.uk/)

Ashley Riley is a communications specialist whose career has seen him working in some of the most high pressured business environments.  He passionately believes every business has a story to tell and last year set up Ashley Riley Communications to work with SMEs.

This event is designed to be practical and non-technical.  It is suitable for all small and medium sized businesses, but will be of specific advantage to those businesses where there is no formal IT and Communications function. (I would like to add a personal comment here and make it abundantly clear that Social Media is NOT IT and should never been looked at as IT!  Social Media is easy to use and if you can send an email, you can use Social Media!)

Ashley Riley and his colleague Ken gave a broad overview of how communication has changed since the introduction of Social Media, how Social Media can help business people and some very interesting points were raised.  It should be mentioned that Social Media communication is a vast topic and during the brief amount of time allocated, Ashley covered quite a few of the basic principles.

Personally, as a professional who spends the vast majority of his time involved in Social Media in one format or another, I found the questions from the audience both enlightening and informative.  I spend a lot of time with people who have randomly ventured into Social Media but need help making the best of it and also frequently deal with people who own great looking websites that no one looks at.  Here at the seminar I was presented with some business people who had very little or no real knowledge at all about Social Media or how best to use it.

Here’s a list of some the questions the audience raised:

1. Where do I start with Social Media?
2. How do I address complaints?
3. What policy should I have with regard to staff using Social Media?
4. Should I have a separate business and personal Facebook page?
5. Why are blogs so much better for traffic than websites?
6. How hard is it to engage on social Media?
7. How do I deal with bad Facebook comments?
8. Why do I get some much spam on my WordPress blog?

To me, these questions are all very easily answered and if you have similar questions please contact me, my advice is free and I’m only a Tweet away!

So, some very interesting questions were raised and what became apparent to me as a Social Media professional was that people who don’t actually live and breathe Social Media on a 24/7 level are still a little anxious about quite a few aspects, particularly regarding how and where to start.  This is human nature and I wonder who wasn’t just a little concerned about drowning before they jumped into the deep end of the swimming pool for the first time? Let’s face it there’s a lot to choose from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, WordPress, Digg, Empire Avenue, Posterous, Quora, Behance, etc, etc.

Asking the best place to start with Social Media is a very good question, but I was very surprised that no one asked how much it would cost to create and run a very basic Social Media campaign, how much time and expertise would be involved, what the real benefits would be or what kind of return on investment could be expected.  I will address all these questions in Part Two of this article.

As is often the case with seminars, I only got the opportunity to speak to a few of the attendees, but the audience was a very good cross section of local businesses and this proves to me that everyone is sitting up and listening to what’s happening with Social Media.  As I always say, ‘Communicate adds value’ and people are starting to realise that Social Media is the perfect way to communicate with both your existing customers and potential new customers.

I will be following up in Part Two with an analysis of this Social Media seminar.

A big thank you to Kurtis Tournay-Godfrey and Suffolk Chamber of Commerce for the invitation and continued support.

I would also like to thank Jenny Holmes from Fynn Valley golf club for her assistance during the event.  The last time I was at Fynn Valley golf club was for a wedding and I thoroughly enjoyed myself on that occasion too; great food, beautiful location and therefore it’s very easy for me to give a great recommendation!  Thank you very much Jenny!  You can follow Jenny on Twitter @fynnvalley or go to http://www.fynn-valley.co.uk

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