On Feb 1st and 2nd we’re holding a fantastic one-day training course called ‘How to build a social media campaign’. We’ve run it several times over the past two years and it has never failed to sell out, this time was no different with Feb 1st selling out in little over 48hours. This time around, Nixon McInnes consultant Clive Andrews is taking over the reigns from Beth Granter in what’s sure to be a masterclass in using social media to your best advantage.

There are still some places available for Feb 2nd and details can be found at mediacontact.ie/ChannelOne, you can also book online here. But for now, have a look at the 5 most important things we learned from this course when we attended last year….

Break down your audience

There are three categories that you can use to help you think about the internet population and how they exist in your network.

90% are Lurkers and Spectators. They consume your content including blog posts, videos, podcasts etc. They spectate and see everything but don’t necessarily interact with you.

9% are Intermittent Contributors and Editors. They contribute now and again with comments but other priorities dominate their time. (partially engaged).

1% are Heavy Contributors and Creators. They participate a lot and account for most contributions (fully engaged). These are the people Seth Godin refers to as The Tribe. The Tribe are your diehard fans.

Use this model to build up a persona profile of your target audience. And work at moving your audience from the 90% bracket into the 9% bracket and your all-time aspiration – the 1% bracket. More about this theory here including a few interesting stats http://www.90-9-1.com/

Reward the tribe

If someone comments on your blog, Facebook, or retweets something that you’ve said, they are precious. Nurture them, reward them and build relationships with them. Always say thanks, or add something else – make an effort to return the effort. Provide special offers and discounts to them, for example when I registered with mylunch.ie I was entered into a draw and won a food voucher for Tribeca restaurant in Ranelagh.  You could set up a loyalty scheme that they will benefit from, maybe surprise them with a gift. Sometimes we post a good book to the customer who has engaged with us the most that week.  You could even meet for a cup of tea or coffee. These are the people who are active in the social media space and they have the power to influence your reputation in a positive way or in a negative way – they will tell their friends and colleagues about you .

In the words of Will McInnes ’social media is like word of mouth on steroids’. You are guaranteed to generate more sales from recommendations on Twitter and Facebook. By rewarding this group you are starting your plan to move them into the 1% category.

Be a curator

Become a source of knowledge about many things that are useful to your audience rather than just a source of knowledge about your business. This way you will add value to what you’re giving to people and they will respect you for it. So retweet tweets that you think are interesting, share links, post reviews and offer opinions on subjects outside your specific area. This will help you build a bigger and broader audience. It could also mean talking about your competitors in a positive way. Don’t worry that you are giving them free publicity at your expense, rather look at it that you are giving a rounder view of the market and showing that you are aware of what’s going on outside your network. You should also share as much raw data with people as you can. The more they learn from you and like what they’re learning, the more they will match their needs to what you can offer them.

When you make a mistake, apologise

If you make a mistake the best thing to do is throw your hands up and acknowledge your mistake, then move to fix it. This way you will turn something negative into something positive. If you try to cover it up, you will be found out and the mistake will be amplified. It can be a bit of a contentious issue and we had a really interesting discussion about it on the course. One worry was that if only a few people saw the mistake originally, are you bringing undue attention to your mistake by acknowledging it to all and sundry? But mistakes can even show the human side of the people behind the business.

Everyone knows that mistakes happen; our theory is that you’re not judged on the mistakes you make but in how you deal with them. Here’s a brilliant example of how to apologise when you do something wrong http://tinyurl.com/37jaojx

On a smaller level, if you are dealing with an individual complaint, take the time to respond in the right platform. If someone slates you on a chat forum, or posts a negative comment on your blog, think about responding there in the first instance. You should also respond in language similar to that in which the complaint is made, but take care to be respectful. If Jim has spent €60,000 on a car that has broken down after a month, he probably won’t appreciate a ‘Hey Jim’.

Never attempt to censor negative comments about your brand. It will come back to bite you in the ass, and only exacerbate the negativity.

Give social media its credit

Don’t just lob the job of ‘doing the social media stuff’ at someone in your office. Put it in their job description and make it official. The reason is two-fold: firstly you should reward and acknowledge work done: account for blog posts written and tweets tweeted, and secondly, someone needs to be officially responsible and answerable for what you’re putting out there. It’s your reputation after all and it needs to be taken seriously.

They are just some of the things we picked up on the course. The real learning happens when you’re discussing these ideas with peers and getting guidance from the experts about what is likely to work and what isn’t. Doing exercises and having debates is some of the ways that you’ll do this this on the course.