Cheltenham Social Media Café

The third installment of our series exploring local people’s social media experiences comes from Holly of Vivid in Tewkesbury. Here’s what she had to say about using social media at work.

The interview

For anyone unfamiliar with Vivid, please describe what you do.
 
Vivid is a PR, marketing and communications consultancy based in Tewkesbury. Headed up by directors Hilary Allison and Caroline Rawlinson, we’re a small, all-female unit with a passion for helping organisations find the best ways of getting heard by the people that need to hear their messages. Our clients come from a wide range of sectors including healthcare, public sector and food & drink and we’re committed to helping local businesses and charities maximize their potential.  
 
How does Vivid use social media and what got you (and the rest of the company) into it?
 
We use Twitter to keep up to date with what’s happening in the PR industry, and in the industries of our clients. It’s also a great networking tool, a way to stay in touch with our stakeholders and to build awareness of the Vivid brand. We’ve also got the Vivid blog – we use this to share our news as well as discussing issues that affect us professionally. This includes things like writing about our experiences with new social media applications and taking part in debates within the PR industry to help establish us as experts in our fields. We’ve also got our Friday Favourites, a weekly round-up from the whole team of interesting things we’ve stumbled across throughout the week.
 
We’ve also been training some of our clients in effective social media usage, writing social media policies and managing various social media accounts for our clients. We also offer social media monitoring services that allow our clients to keep track of the online conversations that are happening about them and their competitors and publish social media news releases alongside our traditional press releases.
 
For me, it’s something I began to take a real interest in at university. My final dissertation looked at citizen journalism and the effect the web was (and still is) having on traditional models of news giving. I also did a bit of event promotion for an illustrator that used social media tools amongst other things – it’s definitely my favourite method of creating a buzz around an event. 
 
It’s something Vivid were beginning to experiment with at the same time I was looking around to see if there was an opportunity to use my skills in a PR context – perfect timing really! It’s something we all believe is really important to consider when you’re planning any PR or communications campaign as a part of an overall strategy.
 
Have you noticed any appreciable benefits? If so, what are they?
 
Definitely! For me one of the best things about being active on social media sites like Twitter is the opportunities that fall straight in your lap that you might otherwise have missed. It’s a great way of connecting with people doing interesting things locally, and I learn something new every day just by following people with good links to share.
 
For Vivid it’s given us a new channel for communicating with our clients as well as keeping people in the loop about who we are and what we do. And by using tools like social media news releases to promote our clients we’re able to gain extra exposure for them and demonstrate our commitment to staying at the cutting edge of PR.
 
It also got us a bike! We signed up to 10:10 this year, and we decided that one of the things we were going to do to cut carbon would be to get an office bike. We put out a request on Twitter and pretty much immediately Mike from Tap Business Development got in touch to say we could borrow his!
 
Holly, if you could offer a single piece of advice to other businesses about using social media, what would it be?
 
Not to be afraid! I think people can get scared of doing it wrong or not saying the right thing, but as long as you make sure everything you write fits with the ethos of your business you shouldn’t go too far wrong. There’s also (I know, this is a second piece…) loads of useful information online to help you on your way. Sites like Mashable, the Next Web and Econsultancy are all good places to start. 
 
How should people follow Vivid online?
 
We’re on Twitter – follow us @WeAreVivid. You can also subscribe to our blog. To track down individual team members have a look on LinkedIn – Hilary, Caroline and I all have profiles!
 
We’re also in the process of developing our customised Facebook page to coincide with the launch of our new website – watch this space!

Hello, the other day we heard from Gerard of White Search about how he uses social media for business. Today it’s the turn of local artist Angela. Here’s what she had to say about social media!

The interview

Hi Angela, can you tell us a bit about your business and what you do?

Hello! I’m an artist and illustrator based in Gloucestershire. I paint brightly coloured, happy and sunny seascapes, landscapes and other commercial art (think; box canvases and lots of thick acrylic brush strokes!)  I’m only a newbie start-up business and still learning lots everyday.  I like to network and meet other artists and creative peeps.  It’s great to share ideas and creative chatter!

So what got you interested in social media and how do you use it?

I knew that I had to embrace social media in order to make myself known -my customers are people who would use social media so it made sense for me to use it as a marketing device.  If you aren’t using social media as a creative in this day and age you are invisible.  It’s that simple.

Have you seen any appreciable benefits using social media? If so, what are they?

As a sole trader, using social media helps you to network with other creatives.  I’ve made so many friends and contacts through it – someone is always there to lend a hand or give advice or recommendations. Freelancers tend to help each other out, giving you a special circle of support, which is really important when you work for yourself because the days can get a wee bit lonely sometimes!  I’ve also received a lot of customers through Twitter, I’ve found TWITPIC gets a lot of interest (I should use it more) because people love looking at other people’s photos – I know I do – and when I’ve posted artwork via Twitpic I’ve usually sold that piece there and then.

I was lucky enough to have Fearne Cotton tweet a link about my website over Christmas which saw over 2000 hits to my website in under 1hr.  This really proved to me how unique and powerful Twitter is.

If you could offer a single piece of advice about social media, what would it be?

Make sure you don’t spend all day on Twitter!  Don’t become a twit-addict!  Twitter can be a wonderful way to waste time in the day, so try to limit your usage.  I now only ‘tweet’ in the morning for 30 minutes and after dinner for 30 minutes.  That way I still get work done!  Of course social media is getting bigger and bigger by the day and there are always new things to learn.

Is there an aspect of social media you’d like to learn more about?

I’d like to learn more about marketing online in general, which I’m still getting to grips with, but as they say ‘ Rome wasn’t built in a day’ so I am just embracing Twitter and FlickR for the time being and that seems to be enough!

Anything else?

Facebook didn’t work for me.  I don’t think it works for every business.  I found that my customer base weren’t Facebook types and only my immediate friends and family were joining my facebook page, so I shut it down.  Facebook can work for you if you’re, say, a hair or beauty salon though (as you can offer rewards and special offers) but for freelance artists and creatives, I wouldn’t recommend it.

And how should people follow you or find out more about your business online?

If you want to find out what I’m eating for dinner and what flavour of ice cream I’ve just dribbled down my pyjamas! Just click to follow me.  It’s that easy!  I’m @art_by_angela

I also have a website that I’m updating soon and I have a blog which I need to start making entries in again after a long ‘blog holiday’   www.angelabrowningart.com

We want to know how people and businesses in Cheltenham are using social media and what they’ve learnt from their experiences! With that in mind we’ve done some research for what we hope will turn into a series of related posts. Many thanks to Gerard for giving us the first insight into how and why local people are using social media.

The interview

Gerard, what’s your business about and what type of services do you offer?

At White Search we offer a range of online services based around Search: SEO, Google AdWords traffic generation, local search optimisation, web design etc. Beyond that we try to offer honest independent online marketing advice to local companies who are struggling to make sense of where to start in terms of their online identity. We try to guide them in the right direction even though that often means making use of other company services before our own. We’ll even talk to them about social media and how they can start using it for their business goals themselves.

What got you into social media and how do you use it now?

Back in the day of being nosey and trying to find people on Friends Reunited I think!  I use it on a personal level to keep up to date with friends and what’s going on locally, plus on a professional level to keep in touch with latest developments in search.

Have you noticed any appreciable benefits from using social media? If so, what are they?

The breadth of opinion and knowledge you can read on any subject is staggering.

If you could offer a single piece of advice to other people about social media, what would it be?

Be careful what you share, remember its pretty much all in the public domain and difficult to control.

How should people follow you online?

Anything professional based goes via the White Search twitter account. Personally – via my twitter account, I’m still working on how exactly I divide these but it seems to work ok for now!