Tag: marketing

Being based in South Yorkshire, it’s only natural that I headed to the Sheffield branch. I found out about it in a chance encounter with one of the reps when their bus was on tour in the local area and I was intrigued as to what it was all about. Whenever I see the term “social media” I’m naturally inquisitive. This was some time ago, but with a new found drive to develop my skillset, I decided to book myself on one of their “classes”. I’ve got nothing to loose anyway.

I headed here: https://learndigital.withgoogle.com/digitalgarage/f2f

It wasn’t the easiest to find at first but I just had a look at what courses they had to offer and booked myself on the first one: Social Media Strategy. I also really want to do the Digital Marketing Strategy one but thought I’d go for social media first.

Yes, I may be a digital marketing professional but it certainly do not mean I know everything. Far from it! The nature of marketing is ever changing and in the digital world this can be on a daily basis. It’s so important to keep your eye on the ball and recognise that there are skills to be learnt and platforms to discover.

The whole process of booking onto my first class was simple: just a quick online registration form with an email for confirmation. A couple of weeks later I was sat in an very industrial looking shop-space which ultra modern furniture, staffed by cool, hip, causally dressed Google Professionals. Obviously everyone knows Google is an American company, but it always gets me how different the work environments can be in a US company.

Anyway, I was greeted by two older ladies who were only there to learn how to use social media and another lady who was wanting to learn how she could use social media to help promote her new holistic business.

“What a mixture of people?!”

This made me feel really happy to know that there were people, on a Sunday, willing to give up what people would normally class as social or relaxing time to work on their professional skills. It really gave me a warm feeling and I couldn’t help but have admiration for all those there. A few others arrived, from a self-employed make-up artist trying to break into B to B to an entrepreneur who had launched her own kids clothing line, it was quite clear there were similar motivations as to why we were all there.

So what did I learn?

Well the class lasted around an hour and a half, and looked at:

• why you would use social media to help a business
• how you can decide what content to share
• who your audience is
• what platforms to use
• and how to measure your success

I kind of felt like an A* student. I knew all the answers. Not in an arrogant way but I’ve spent five years getting to know my audience on social media. I know we don’t just have one target audience, but many. This is very important when using social media. The lady, Annie, who lead the class, looked at me to give answers to her questions when I suppose those who were there who hadn’t even started their business social media experience were looking quite confused, I was smiling with an element of reassurance.

Often, when using social media for business purposes, you can loose sight of the purpose of the platform. You forget you are targeting people with feelings, you forget that when a lot of your audience are on these platforms they are doing so for leisure purposes. They don’t want to see you directly seeing to them. You need to be of value. Whether you’re sharing a recipe or a how to video, it’s better to become a friend or advisory rather than just fire out information constantly.

Overall I came out of the session with a great feeling of reassurance. I’m doing everything I should be doing. It’s a great pat on the back to know that years of hard work, testing, failures and successes have paid off. I know I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am excited about setting direction and trying some of the new ideas I’ve been given.

I love how learning brings people together