Many organisations are reluctant to delve into the world of using social media as a marketing tool. To some organisations, the idea seems too risky of negative exposure, is far too time consuming and the just the thought of online social networking causes some to turn and run towards the less ‘geeky’ and more safe, tried, tested and traditional marketing methods. However, by doing this you’re only putting off the inevitable that sooner or later you’re going to have to embrace it or you may be left behind.

Fear not, the best thing is that using these tools to tell your customers about your latest promotions, latest products, your events, jobs available, your opinions current affairs and anything else you like is incredibly easy. They’re all designed to be completely user friendly to even real non techies and once you’re set up, a little time and thought is all it takes.

Actually, that’s not the best thing. The best thing is communicating with your customers and potential customers on social networking websites is arguably the most cost effective advertising its possible for you to do. If you’ve got the time and the inclination it’s completely free! Don’t think either that it’s just the kids who are Facebooking, Tweeting Or Flickring (errr sorry, must be a better work for interacting with Flickr!), 35% of visitors to Facebook are 35-54 years old and who are the people with the most followers on Twitter UK? Barack Obama, Stephen Fry, Jonathon Ross … not exactly the voices of our teens.

Having a single brand website for all online activity is becoming a thing of the past. Sure, you’re always going to have your core website as a central hub to your online strategy and activity but to maximise exposure across the web including search engines, it’s advisable to create a ring of online content and activity across the web, all pushing people back to your core website and then back out to the networks. For example, you might have regularly updated Facebook fan pages, MySpace profiles, Bebo profiles, numerous blogs, regular news updates to your followers through micro-blogging platform Twitter, Flickr slideshows, etc all linking and integrating with your core website.

Everyone’s heard of Facebook (and if you haven’t you won’t be reading this). Facebook has 21.8 million UK members. You can set up your fan page, invite all your friends to join, get links to the fan page on your core website and articles, thus driving members. You can communicate with your members by posting articles, starting discussions, sharing photos and videos. Use the network as it is intended to be … a social network. Talk to your customers and keep it updated. When you’ve posted your latest news, you can send alerts to all of your fans. All for free.

Blogging can also be a wonderful way of interacting with your customers and potential customers. It’s generally used as a less direct approach to sales as the tone that would be on your core website. Here you can create a following by writing regular articles containing content that the public may actually be genuinely interested in. For example, if you owned restaurants, rather than constantly pushing people towards your restaurants, the subtle approach maybe to talk to people about food, cooking, recipes, the lifestyle. If people relate to your writing, ethos and beliefs they’ll associate this with your brand and could result in indirect sales. My main tips would be keep blogging at least once a week, offer people something so they have a reason to come back, keep linking to other websites and organise links back to you and try not to see it was a chore, it’s something you need to live and love. Also, blogging is perfectly set up to provide you with fantastic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Blogs are perfectly set up for SEO, after all, they contain text, links and tags, everything Google can read and lots of it.

Because of users like Stephen Fry, Jonathon Ross and the BBC, Twitter is the new darling of social media. It’s been around for a while now but is quickly becoming huge. Twitter allow you to ‘tweet’ or post micro-blogs of up to 140 characters per post. It’s a great way to instantly inform your customers of what’s going on and what you’re doing. Top news stories are now being broken on Twitter before they hit the news networks due to the platforms speed of delivery … so if you’ve got something to sell or offer your customers, send them a short sharp tweet and word will quickly spread.

All these platforms and more allow you to set up a presence and interact with customers and potential customers for free. It takes time but for this you need to make the time. Every time you run a marketing campaign not matter how big or small, update your posts on your networks and write a quick blog. Try to make it part of the whole campaign process.

My only other words of advice relate to the content of your posts, blogs, updates, etc. Whilst in your core website you can directly sell and promote yourself, in your networks you should be more funny, light-hearted and indirect. The hard sell on social networks is akin to being sat in a pub chatting with your friends and being approached by a stranger asking you to buy his goods. The seller risks making the people relaxing with their friends feel uncomfortable and less likely to buy now or ever.

Done the right way, social media marketing is truly cost effective. The potential for fast communication with huge numbers of people all under your own control and in your own time. Why not give it a try and most importantly try to enjoy doing it too!

If you have any questions or want to learn more about social media marketing, just shout.

James Wray

Follow Magnitude on Twitter
Join Magnitude on Facebook

Hello you mighty blog-reading folksters!

It’s been a while since my last blog-session but five hail mary’s and a ‘hell yeah’ and I’m back and mean business.

Everyone seems so down in the dumps at the moment and I for one want to put an end to it. Yes - pasta is more expensive and my collectible Buffy dolls are now worth more than my house is - but you know what? Life is still pretty darn amazing for the majority of us Brits and let’s not make bones about it.

We have food, we have shelter and the most any of us have to worry about is a few months in the dole line. There are plenty of people who are suffering far worse from the current situation and charitable donations from people like us are at an all time low. That’s why I wanted to highlight the upcoming Comic Relief and talk about what I am going to be doing to raise some mullah!

First and foremost, I am rallying the Magnitude team to take part in some simple money raising. I have also threatened to turn up to work in a cow costume and demanding people pay for the pleasure of seeing me in it (well wouldn’t you?!).

However most importantly, I am throwing a party in the evening, fancy dress of course, where people have to come as their self-invented superhero (e.g. make your own costume, choose your own power and weakness!) Guests will pay £5 to enter. At the end of the night a hero will emerge as ‘Most Original Superhero!’ and be the lucky recipient of half the door takings. The rest will go to the Red Nose Crew!

However, if I win I will give all the money to charity - so in a bid to get more cash over to those really suffering at the hands of ‘The Crunch’ (my evil nemesis) - can anyone think of a winning costume for me?!

There’s a lot of worrying and nay-saying doing the rounds at the moment and it is understandable given the constant reminder on our TVs, radios and web searches of the current recession and it’s annoying little brother - the credit crunch. And even those of us who have yet to feel the frosty bite of dropping figures look to the future with a sense of fear and uncertainty. Will our clients continue to spend as much? Will we lose them to cheaper competitors? And, if they do, where will our new business come from?

Read more…

Amends are the thorn in every agencies side.

The brick wall we all fight against at the end of every project.

The things that make us question our sanity and ask ourselves: ‘wouldn’t life be simpler if I worked at Late Shopper?’

Why, we cry to the gods, does someone hire us for our expertise and then feel they know better at the final hurdle?! Read more…

Ok, I’ll admit it, as an avid Firefox user I have been the first to stick the boot into Internet Explorer in a question of standards. This level of arrogance is almost expected of me as a developer, which is why I was so surprised to find that Microsoft’s up and coming offering, IE8 is making some huge steps towards standards compliance among other things.

Sure, as I have been browsing around the internet this week I have come across a lot of pages that are broken in IE8, I expected this and thankfully so did Microsoft and with one click of the new “Compatibility View” button the pages were rendering correctly.

That’s not the only reason IE8 impressed me though, the page rendering is much faster than its predecessor, the interface is much tighter and as a whole, client side scripts seem to be much improved.

I don’t think I’ll be jumping the good ship Mozilla just yet though, there are still some large issues that must be addressed (in my opinion) before IE8 is let loose. The new accelerators, while a solid idea, fall short of useful, often getting in the way of what I really wanted to do. Similarly, the developer tools, while being an extensive resource of information, are far too slow and end up feeling more like an obstacle course on the route to knowledge.

All in all I feel that Microsoft are now paving the way to redeeming their reputation on the world wide web, in the browser stakes at least and who knows, if adoption of IE8 is good, maybe we can finally forget the thorn in every developers side that is IE6.

Here’s hoping!