Our Blog

Business Transformation: Social Media Planning

With Hollywood jumping on the bandwagon and creating such blockbuster films as ‘The Social Network’ and winning four Golden Globes including Best Film, there is no escape from the hype of Social Media. But like so many mediums and in fact so many technology mediums let’s face it, Social Media could be here one day and gone the next, just think back to Friends Reunited, MySpace or BEBO, so this begs the questions should you get involved and will this help you win business?

Like any new technology people either choose to jump straight in and see what happens or they wait, and watch and see how other are using and benefiting from using this technology. I think the former is fine when you are using the social element of the media to keep in touch with family and friends but I would err on the side of caution when thinking about using the tools for business. Just like a website this is another shop window to your business and anyone in the world can take a peek inside.

Creating a social media strategy should be classed as a Business Transformation function and I would urge any business owner that has say to their staff we must be on Twitter, Linked In and Facebook ASAP, just do it, to stop and read your sites and then you will see why you need to create a plan. Social media is instant and with the ease of a click an innocent message, picture or post can be shared with the world without the consent of the original author. When developing a Social Media Strategy take a look at your competitors, read what they are saying and see what they are posting and decide if this really is an area where you want your business to participate?

Once you decide that you want to get your business involved please remember the plan. Another very important point about developing a presence for your business via these sites is that content is king and even more importantly fresh content is king, so within the job roles of the business you will need to create a plan of content and publication and stick to it, otherwise your presence will diminish and potential customers will stop following and consider other options, maybe your competitor. Make the decision and treat it just like an investment, are you in or are you out and there is no harm in being out at this stage of the Social Media evolution.

I would like to share my social media story: It was late August 2010 and even though I had been in business since February I had not been using twitter for very long. I think I had about 9 followers and one of those was Tom Perry, EMEA Marketing Director, ShoreTel. Tom had been on my target list for a little while and I thought I really need to find a creative way to get a meeting. I was getting to know Twitter and its functionality and I thought I would try out a ‘direct message’. Given you have just 140 characters to get your message across it is a great tool for teaching you to be succinct. It worked and we had a brief exchange of direct messages resulting in a date in the diary. So there it was I had secured my first new business meeting via social media. I met with Tom we had a great conversation and understood how we could help each other and before we knew it, we had agreed two projects together. I am sure meetings of every kind are being set up all over the world via twitter but I just thought I would share my experience as it quite liberating and profitable. 

Field Marketing Contracts

A ‘Field Marketing Contract’ (FMC) is a business development service that is designed to provide an experienced marketing professional to join a vendor or partner for a fixed period of time to complete either a single or a number of projects with agreed KPI’s and deliverables. This type of contract could be anything from a one off project to 1 day per month or even 4 days per week depending upon the nature of the timeline and deliverables of the project.

Increasingly across many industries marketing departments or individuals are being asked to deliver more by their business leaders but with no increase in headcount or budget. In this type of scenario this FMC solution works best as the vendor or partner can benefit from employing a third party to deliver the required project or projects to a date and within a specified budget. They do not have to waste time and budget with recruitment.  All they have to do is spend the relevant amount of time, ideally face to face but in some cases over the phone briefing the consultant on the project deliverables.

I have delivered on a contract with Brocade as part of their EMEA Marketing team from February 2010 through to July 2011. I started working in the field marketing team focussed upon the Tier 3 countries Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and South Africa. I then managed the EMEA Demand Generation function from June through to November delivering both ‘Brocade is Now’ and ‘Brocade One’ campaigns into UK, German, France and Middle East. My current project is to manage the Field Marketing Function within EBG North region, Benelux & Nordics.