Great talk on social media strategy

Great talk this week by Matthew Yeomans, who’s written #FAIL: The 50 Greatest Social Media Screw-Ups, and editor in chief of Social Media Influence.

As well as this, he writes for Guardian Sustainable Business and advises companies on media content strategy. The session was entertaining and he provided some fantastic advice about being a good writer/editor for social media.

Here’s a few nuggets from the evening:

• Know what’s going on outside your marketing calendar – especially important if more than one department has access to posting social media – you don’t want to be conflicting/contradicting yourselves.
• Be genuine – people will relate so much better if you are.
• Social media is another publishing tool available to you – make sure you have checks and balances in place in the same way as if you were publishing – consider yourself the editor. This means getting your posts checked/proof read before going live.

In terms of content, this was excellent advice – consider – what is it people actually want? Matthew mentioned four things:

• To be entertained
• Knowledge
• Response
• Leadership

Most of all, be useful, honest and respect the reader. Act like an editor and tell your story in a compelling way.

It was a great talk – we enjoyed it and the social media examples were excellent – a few of which we’ve listed below. If you’re looking to get inspired with social media, it’s worth talking to Matthew. You can also follow him at @mateoy.

Three cracking social media examples

We are Brooklyn – good example of smart storytelling

North Face – an interesting way to publish your sustainability annual report

Red Bull – mission to the edge of space. Remember Felix’s supersonic jump from 120,000ft? We heard about it on the news, but Red Bull championed it and built up a fantastic campaign online. Check it out below. A brilliant example of content marketing.

Thanks Matthew, great talk.