Social Media

A necessary evil or a great opportunity?

However you feel about Social Media platforms - it is difficult to deny that they can be an incredible tool to reach people and to promote your brand, organisation or project.

Carefully managed, this marketing tool becomes invaluable to you and can generate a vast amount of leads - hopefully turning into profit or increased engagement and audiences.

But you have to start with one vital question:

"What exactly do you want from it?"

Sounds like a simple question doesn't it? But is is not.

Having a detailed and long-term plan for social media engagement is vital - knowing whether you want to use it to improve exposure, promote and new product or brand, actually sell products on the platforms, increase footfall to your premises, promote an event or engage with customers via blogs and posts.

Decisions, decisions, decisions . . .

Social Media can be a black hole - for both your time and your money.

Sheldrake Hills has vast experience with Social Media, using it to promote businesses as well as events, personalities and products.

Here are some of the things to consider when planning social media campaigns:

Platforms: Which ones from the ever increasing list of available platforms will you use and how many at the same time? It is no longer an option to just "chuck it on Facebook!". You will need to analyse the demographics for each platform to match with your target audience to make the right decision.

Content: This is a minefield all of it's own! Your content needs to be engaging and more importantly, relevant to what your aim is. It is very easy to post something that will not attract views - or will actually do harm to the brand. A clear plan and campaign must be agreed before starting any posting of content. And ensuring consistency in message across different platforms is essential while tailoring the message to a specific audience.

Management: How and who will manage your social media feeds? Will this be done by a member of staff and controlled "inhouse?". Or will it be passed to a third party to manage? And how will it's success and failures be measured and reported? All of these questions needs answering before undertaking a campaign of any kind.

Engagement: Allowing someone else to create "posts" for social media on your behalf is a big step and needs to be carefully planned, rigidly structed and compliant to your policies and needs. Does that mean you have time to do it yourself? Do you have someone you can trust who can engage on your behalf - and remember - rarely are all responses to a post positive - unfortunately it tends to be the other way - so you must ensure you have policies in place on how you handle any negative comments and whether or not you engage.

Sheldrake Hills can assist with all these elements - from offering advice to completely managing your social media campaigns on a daily basis.