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!
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