Social media provides incredible free marketing opportunities and makes it easy for independent consultants to spread the word about their services.
Having an active social media presence helps to makes you and your business more ‘discoverable’ It’s also a great way to grow your network, engage with potential customers and a reach a larger audience. Using social media can also significantly improve your brand awareness, and it is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business.
The earlier you start building your brand, the faster you’ll see your business grow but there are a few useful things you need to know to help get your posts seen. One of the most difficult is not linking away from the platform you are using. We’re still struggling with that one.
We held our second Business HR event of 2019 in central Manchester on 13 February with guest speaker Alex McCann who founded Altrincham HQ. Alex is an expert in the field of social media and had lots to share with us.
Our Business HR group provides engaging sessions for independent HR practitioners and our events always begin with networking and what a spread Squire Patton Boggs put on in their ‘out of this world’ offices in Spinningfields. Alex rocked the pre-event networking session. First Brownie point. He engaged with so many ‘eager to learn’ delegates, building a real rapport.
Alex took us through LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook in the space of 90 minutes. What an achievement. Had this been a half or full-day event, we would have learned about growing platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram and so on but Alex tailored his session so we could get the most out of the event as independent professionals.
We thought we were Social Media Savvy but we learned so many additional ways to maximising the business return on time investment on social media. A great way to measure your effectiveness on LinkedIn is using your SSI score.
What’s your SSI score on LinkedIn (within your industry and network?)
Your LinkedIn SSI measures how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships. Your score is updated daily so see where you are now and aim to increase your score.
Alex was so easy to listen to (great pace and clarity). He didn’t speak at us; instead, instead Alex engaged with us all, answering questions as we went along and he ticked all the VARK boxes in our opinion.
Alex has us engaging in reflective tasks and his particular method began with him asking us each what our perfect social media platform would look like if we could start from scratch. We then listed the five social media business accounts we found the most engaging, professional, we designed and so on. The next task has us reflecting how wellour accounts compared with these channels. Gloops!
We learned about trendjacking – It’s a thing and one of the key takeaways was to keep it human. That’s right. Gone are the days of stuffy business suit corporate-speak (that’s if you want to truly engage with your target clients). Social media is all about being social, appealing to your target persona and building strong relationships Target personas are the prospects you want to and attact.
Do you know your target person? You should. It’s absolutely necessary if you want to generate the right leads.
Five things to do on LinkedIn
- Connect with people on a regular basis
- Optimise your profile by using a high quality headshot, add your professional title, include a summary and ask for recommendations
- Check your KPIs Find out who is reading your posts and which posts generate the most engagement
- Aim to post 20 times per month – that’s right 20 times per month
- Finally, engage, engage, engage with others in your feed
No need to question why Altrincham HQ won the Talk of Manchester 2018 award for ‘Best Social Media Company in Manchester’ and Kudos to Alex for slipping love sausages into a learning event tailored to independent HR professionals (and on the eve of Valentine’s day).
About our speaker, Alex McCann
Founder of Altrincham HQ
Alex has worked with thousands of local businesses, helping them to develop and deliver their social media strategy and he will help you to identify some practical actions you can take to improve your business use of social media significantly. Alex is ranked number one for Social Media Marketing in the UK via independent customer reviews on Freeindex.
Why not head over to our events collection. We’ve captured tweets and key takeways in an easy to browse format.
CIPD Manchester Branch 