Thanks to the epic team at Missing Link who took my blog post and converted this into such an amazing lockdown video.
They were inspired and did this with no notice or cost! How amazing? Reach out to their group CEO Rich! if you wanna know more about what they do and how they optimize audiences!
Be more awesome.
The Bearded Fen podcast is a lifestyle podcast that engages with people within the Motorcycle, Tattoo and Craft/Artisan community. In these two podcast you will hear stories that you wouldn’t normally hear in an interview about the future of email, where instant messaging fits in when it comes to communication, social media, and the bigs boys like Facebook, Google and Amazon, as well as online shopping in SA and chat about whether Google is listening to us. We also chatted about business coaching, my business bikes and breakfast events and then Andrew helps me choose a new bike.
Check out episode 1 here:
https://fireside.fm/s/PgvD3Vmx+cTLcRQ3B
The bonus content below.
https://fireside.fm/s/PgvD3Vmx+E539rNfW
ps. Ep.1 is all bike related, while Ep.2 is way more general in scope! E N J O Y.
Contact Andrew [The Bearded Fen!] https://www.instagram.com/beardedfenpodcast and info@beardedfen.co.za
“Transparency may be the most disruptive and far-reaching innovation to come out of social media.”
Many brands and business are on social media. Why? Because they feel they have to be. In this master class we will take a reflective view as to why you are on social media, what exactly you are trying to achieve and what does success look like. If you’re an agency running social media on behalf of brands, a brand running your own social media or a business with your own social media channels, then let us help you look at your social media truths and execute your social media according to a strategic plan.
Social Media is not just another marketing channel, but where you can have meaningful conversations with your customers, potential customers and people who are interested in your brand. Social media enables you to humanize your brand, drive brand advocacy and referrals, but can also open you up to risk if not managed properly.
COURSE OUTLINE
The HALF day hands-on practical Master class will feature sessions that include:
○An overview of the landscape and best practice per channel
○How to effectively set up a social media team and with what skill set
○A simple tool that will allow you to plan, deliver and measure results
○We will do a practical plan on how to map this out for your channels
○Accessible tools to help you manage your social media
○The good, the bad and the ugly
○An overview of getting visibility beyond organic algorithms
Most importantly, this workshop shows how how to position yourself on social media, understanding how to structure and set up your team, as well as creating content that’s right for your brand.
HOW WILL YOU BENEFIT?
On the day, you will be taken through a program that looks at your existing social media channels and how you can improve on them by taking a step back, rethinking your team, your resources as well as how you plan content effectively.
This investment should enable you to run your social media effectively, which in turn drives benefits for your business whether it being positive sentiment or driving leads.
This will be an informal but interactive day. All participants are encouraged to participate,
ask questions and make observations from their own perspectives and experiences. There will also be practical activities to ensure you walk way with useful implementation plans on running and executing your social media effectively and efficiently.
IDEAL NUMBER AND PROFILE OF PARTICIPANTS
Maximum 20 participants
The course content is universally relevant to all businesses, regardless of industry or size and will help a freelancer, community manager or a corporate marketer come to grips and plan their future social media requirements.
COST OF WORKSHOP:
The total fee for this process is R4699 per participant INCLUDING VAT. This includes refreshments, breakfast, as well as any materials provided on the day.
WHO IS DELIVERING THE CLASS?
Elena is a seasoned publishing, content, social media and digital marketing professional. Previously head of social media and content at Aqua (now Wunderman) she now consults to numerous agencies and brands. At the forefront of social media marketing in London in 2010, Elena has gone on to clock up career highlights such as establishing the MTN Group’s social media policies, guidelines and strategies across 22 Opcos; as well as creating a social media command centre for a global beverage company.
Known locally to many agencies as a secret weapon to bed down new clients (on-boarding teams, setting up policies and guidelines, writing strategies), she is also adept at working direct with clients to manage their agencies.
Brent Spilkin over the past 7 years has helped over 150 advertising, media, marketing, PR, digital, software, branding and content businesses and their owners develop, manage crisis, strategize and flourish. He has clients throughout South Africa, Israel, The United Kingdom and The United States that now generate over two billion Rands worth of annual sales revenue. His mini-MBA text book is now lectured through reputable private tertiary colleges. He is a loud-mouthed, tech-adopting, motorcycle-riding business coach who won’t settle for mediocrity.
He has an endless supply of hope when it comes to the resurrection of a beautiful, successful South Africa in which he wants to live and thrive.
BOOK TICKETS HERE:
An SOP is a procedure specific to your operation that describes the activities necessary to complete tasks in accordance with industry regulations, provincial laws or even just your own standards for running your business.
Any document that is a “how to” falls into the category of procedures. In a manufacturing environment, the most obvious example of an SOP is the step-by-step production line procedures used to make products as well train staff. An SOP, in fact, defines expected practices in all businesses where quality standards exist.
SOPs play an important role in your small business. SOPs are policies, procedures and standards you need in the operations, marketing and administration disciplines within your business to ensure success.
These can create:
Developing an SOP is about systemizing all of your processes and documenting them. Every business has a unique market, every entrepreneur has his/her own leadership style, and every industry has its own best practices. No two businesses will have an identical collection of SOPs.
Below is a listing of just a few typical SOPs, which you will want to consider writing for your own small business.
Tips
In my experience, companies with well built, managed and maintained SOP’s are far less likely to make the same mistake twice and are often more resilient internally. An SOP can often be the difference between getting new work and not as clients can see the value of a well-run organisation.
Having received more than my fair share of branded disposable pens and matching lanyards over the years, I feel its my duty to inform brands and agencies to stop trying to buy my loyalty with cheap plastic gifts and branded promo-gear.
My loyalty should be curated, nurtured and rewarded.
Let’s be honest, you are looking to use me as another marketing channel and hoping that my mid level influence can help grow your brand or deliver your campaign objectives. It can, but only as long as I already believe in your purpose and buy into your marketing message and most importantly, love your product.
Influencer marketing is a very smart way of using a third parties voice to authentically portray your brand in a way that would only seems paid for and fake, if it were coming directly from the brand. Influencer marketing has been around before the dawn of social media, before the web and before traditional marketing was even dreamt up. Storekeepers would ask patrons to spread the word, and if the customer had a good experience, would do just that. Nothing has changed except the medium on which we spread the word.
I understand what you, the marketer, want to use me for and feel that I should be fairly rewarded for my part in your process. It is paid-for media and the reward should be cash.
My voice to my followers is far more powerful than any other medium you have in your vast arsenal of marketing channels. The consumer of today no longer believes your polished message and scripted values. The consumer of today wants to hear an honest message, one that is unique to the influencer but the truth no less. Consumers want someone that will answer the questions asked, with deep insight into the product and will kill for the brand if he is truly an ambassador.
Would you rather have a message being broadcast to thousands of people that don’t necessarily care or a conversation between an ambassador and a few real potential clients of the brand, who will most likely spend money with you? Influencers who believe in the brand will not only drive awareness but will drive an action that is valuable to the brand.
Involved affiliate marketing has proven to be hugely successful in industries like travel, fashion and restaurants. This is because people will trust the voice of a virtual stranger over the “your call is important to us” tone of taglines. Influencers have taken the time, often over years, to build credibility with their audience and have their own authentic voice and tone, which resonates with their own audience.
Influencer’s audiences are often incredibly niche. Understanding whom their audience is absolutely key to using an influencer to sell the right product to their niche audience. My personal online audience has evolved drastically from a comedic one to an entrepreneurial business base in the creative and tech industries. You can’t expect me to promote food brands or fashion, as my listeners know that this is not what I talk about and it won’t appear credible. I have taken years to have the right followers for my brand, my business and my messages, and if you want to gain access to this market and put my own credibility at risk, then you should pay for the privilege. If you are financially compensating someone then you also get the right to guide the conversation towards your own goals and expect certain clear deliverables to be executed by the influencer, in the influencers own unique tone and fashion. Giving the influencer the freedom to express your message intheir incomparable voice will deliver the greatest results for your business.
You want your influencer to feel rewarded, acknowledged, loved, important, or any combination of those and ensure that they are partners in your communication strategy.
so
Before web 2.0 and the rise of social media, influence was exclusive to a privileged few who held unrivalled sway over public opinion. Today, individuals on social media get to pick and choose who and what they listen to and those who once had little chance of being heard can now broadcast their messages across the world.
Influencers are now niche promoters and brand advocates that are active on social media sites and blogs and brands are now naturally hungry to take advantage of this phenomenon. Brands will seek to turn that influence into a marketing opportunity but aren’t always sure how best to go about this.
An influencer is the mutual friend connecting your brand with your target consumers. For influence to take place, the influencer needs to behave authentically and when communicating about or on behalf of a brand. The balance between being seen as an online billboard and someone that is being paid to recommend a product in a credible way is often misunderstood and the value in using influence marketing lost.
There are five key understandings that allow you to define what the right influencer looks like for your brand:
An influencer differs for every brand because, first and foremost, they are a contextual fit. This is the most important characteristic when targeting the right influencers for your brand. The example I always use is that Justin Bieber can’t sell insurance without looking like a fraud to his followers because they are teenager girls who aren’t interested in that.
Defined as the size of the audience or the number of followers the influencer has on a particular platform. Influence describes the ability to affect action from within that audience. When Reach and Context work together, you have success.
This is the influencer’s ability to cause action by their audience. This characteristic comes naturally when you target individuals that are in contextual alignment with your brand and have a far enough reach.
Influencers don’t force themselves upon an audience as their followers choose to follow them on particular channels like Twitter or a blog. Thus, their audience is engaged and is there to hear about the topic being discussed. This is why the need for a contextual fit is so important.
Positive engagement is a great indicator that the content is interesting to their audience. This means that something about their content is evoking a reaction and that there is the potential for an action to occur.
Once you understand these, the next step is giving your influencer an image you can best match real influnecers to. Decide on what type of personality you require and if you need an activist, an informer or an authority to best promote your campaign or product. Next pick a genre. Examples include technology, fashion, travel and marketing. Niche this genre further into LSM, geographical position and age group.
Pick a topic that your ideal influencer sometimes talks about on social media or their blog and decide what type of reach and actions you will require from the influencer. Do you want likes, follows, engagement or visual content creation? Always ensure that the influencer is aware of your primary audience and your campaign objectives from the start, giving you the best chance of success.
Always remember that reach is vanity, engagement is sanity and relationships are reality.
<This post was originally written for Digitlab and can be viewed here>
Here is the official video that I shot in March 2015 in Val Thorens for iStore.
Everything was shot on on iPhone 6 while we stayed at Club Med Sensations.
You can view the video here or on the iStore blog below:
http://www.myistore.co.za/everything-you-are-about-to-see-here-was-shot-on-an-iphone/
YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world and has over one billion unique visitors each month….
…But brands are underutilising it.
Here is a startegy with case studies that can help you build, sell and execute a better YouTube strategy for your clients.
Download the PDF here:
Ryan Sauer loves to be the center of attention, its half the reason he loves lecturing so much. Ryan is called “Sourz” by his close friends from the late 90’s and “Ryan” by everyone else that met him post Y2K.
The strange thing is Ryan grew up with little to no technology in his life, his parents were so slow on the digital revolution that Ryan went from Betamax to DVD, never knowing the true joy of VHS.
So how does a boy born technologically challenged, grown into a man worthy of lecturing Marketing masters students at Wits Business School? Beats us.
Ryan loves digital marketing like fat kids like candy.
In 2009 he decided at the age of 22 with his vast expanse of wisdom in industrial psychology and HR management to open a digital consulting agency in JHB (bright idea) and has grown his operation from 2 clients barely spending enough to buy a bag of chappies, to over 74 clients spending just enough to buy 2 bags of chappies.
Ryan’s agency specializes in customized digital solutions that generate results for their clients with a measurable ROI.
Some of the services Ryan offers include:
We also specialize in:
So if you need an agency that is small, agile and has moderately attractive people you don’t mind meeting with, give us a shout.
CONTACT
082-788-2249
Email : ryan@searchoc.co.za
3rd floor 5 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg.
Twitter @searchoc
