The beauty of social media

It’s always interesting to see how different businesses approach social media. Everyone has their own way of using it and their own style – most obviously because everyone’s looking for different results.

That’s the beauty of social media; it’s flexible and able to deliver a variety of results that can be tailored by you, if you plan your activity strategically.

For example, if you wanted to use Facebook to nurture clients and build on relationships - your approach might be very different to a business that needed to really push their services. It doesn’t mean that one approach is wrong, there is no right answer - as long as you are achieving what you want to achieve from your activity.

This Twitter profile @LeonRestaurants – are using Twitter to build on their company’s success by listening very intently to their customers and their advice, complaints and praises. You can see from their tweets that they are really listening to what people have to say about their business, taking it on board and using it to steer their company in the right direction.

If a customer tweets them saying that they’ve experienced bad service or poor food – they are responding almost immediately with apologies, complimentary gifts and requests for explanations on how they can improve. What better way to achieve perfection than by listening to what you’re doing wrong and fixing it. They don’t seem to be using Twitter to push their restaurants or even their food - they are merely at the moment using it like a customer service tool. If you’re a new company, then this must be an extremely effective way for you to gauge how your business is being received – the results are straight from the horse’s mouth and come with the opportunity to go back and speak to the customer directly.

A business that wants to use their Facebook page to nurture their clients, keep them informed of activity within the company and generally engage and enjoy their customers interaction – might go about it in a similar way to an egg production business we found on Facebook called ‘Castel Farm Eggs’

Carvill Creative stumbled across a really great interview with ‘ Castel Farm Eggs’  who are based in Guernsey – you can see their Facebook page here . You should be able to see from their page that their approach is fun, imaginative and clearly working for them – using amusing photos and catchphrases to engage with their community and in turn build awareness of their brand. You can’t help but think that if an egg farm in Guernsey can make social media work for them, then anyone can!

Castel Farm is already very aware of the benefits of Facebook, arguing that:

‘The great thing with Facebook, for example, is that it is interactive, whereas a website only really tells you how many hits you have had, and a contact link etc…its very one dimensional.’

When asked later on in the interview – ‘How much business can you attribute to social media marketing in comparison to other forms of marketing? They responded by saying:

‘This is really difficult to quantify, but we have definitely had orders from these sort of platforms; we are also acutely aware that our end users are the people of the Island, so to stay in touch with them and let them now what we are all about is great, a sort of “electronic word of mouth”. But what you also achieve is a sense of fun that can really humanise your business.’

You can see the full interview with Castel farm eggs at this page  .

The interview really highlights how much can be done with these channels if they are utilised correctly, it’s not all about using them for direct sales – they can very much help to seal the deal but along the way they serve a lot of other purposes as well.

If you think your company can benefit from social media, think about what you want to achieve from your activity and give us a call. We will help you plan and implement a social media strategy that is right for your company. You can call us on 01628 634066 or email vikki@carvillcreative.co.uk for more information.

For more tips and advice on using social media follow us on Twitter - @CarvillCreative

 Enjoy the post… Vikki

Carvill Creative – the online visibility experts. A digital marketing agency based in Maidenhead, Berkshire.  Carvill Creative covers all aspects of online visibility – website effectiveness, social media marketing, social media management and social media training, user focused website planning and conversion focused website design.

Passionate about Online Visibility - creating an integrated approach across websites, blogs and social media platforms.