Social Media Spain

Business owners and managers in the Mojacar, Vera, Turre, Garrucha area of southern Spain maybe interested to know that Social Media Spain will soon be holding a short ‘Marketing Seminar’ to help the local business community to understand more about marketing their businesses. The event will be FREE of charge!

Whilst we will discuss the current approach of ‘traditional’ marketing, especially print, which seems to prevail in this area, much of our talk will be on the use of Social Media for marketing and growing one’s business.

Details of the event will be posted here on this website shortly, but I can tell you that we are restricting numbers to 30 businesses in this, our first seminar. Should we have call for it, then we shall consider repeating this event.

Please return to this website to establish the details.

As more and more ’switched-on’ businesses, generally in the US, turn their marketing attentions to the use of social media, the big question is “What will happen to those businesses that don’t utilise social media marketing?” Or, perhaps the question should be “What happens to those businesses who are late into the social media scene?”

Here’s an interesting fact. We’ve been in discussion recently with a middle eastern company regarding their lack of use of social media, and the fact that they should be using this functonality to grow their brand and drive business forward. What’s so interesting, and they are not untypical of many businesses outside of the US, is that they had no idea of what social media is, and no strategy for adopting such. With a local representation and a global target auidence, their product sector is ideal for utilising social media and yet nowhere within the 50 staff strong business was social media even on the radar.

In this part of southern Spain, where we are based, the businesses are barely getting to grips with the internet let alone social media. Approximately 80% of businesses here don’t have websites, and this is a tourist resort! Little wonder why the area has little or no tourists, despite 320 days of sunshine per annum.    

My evangelical concern therefore is what will happen to those businesses that just ‘don’t get it’ [social media that is] or just can’t be bothered? Clearly there will be a big shift of business towards those businesses who do make the effort and embrace social media, naturally in an effective way, not for spamming, and that a take time to invest in the growth of their chosen business. Bars, cafes and restaurants in particular should be jumping on board the band wagon and learning about how to grow their businesses through social media. Social media marketing lends itself so well to the small business and especially those in the food retail trade.

Of course, here the local eateries will make the excuse “But my clientele don’t use social media networks. My customers are generally retired people with little or no interest in social media.” Really? So why is it that the local radio station has developed a following on Facebook of in excess of 3,300 people in the last 6 months? Do those 3,300 people, even if not retired, not eat-out? Only one percent of those ’radio station followers’ could fill your establishment or potentially double your evening’s income!

Our predictions are that in 2 – 3 years time, if you haven’t developed a ‘following’ of loyal customers via social media, your business will be retrenching. Sure, there will always be businesses that continue to do well, because they have got the product right, but they won’t be growing at the same rapid rate of their competitors. The growth, whether you accept it or not, is already being centred around “what’s happening on social media networks” – events are advertised through them, (they are already to a limited degree, but it will be come the norm), discounts and promotions are offered, and the news communicated. Social media networks are already fast becoming the ‘directory’ of  ‘What’s On’. If you aren’t in the directory, you won’t be seen to exist. If you wish to be in the social media directory, then give us a call at Social Media Spain.

Don’t let your business get left behind…

On the FIRST day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“If you are a business and you haven’t yet got, at least, a blog website by now, then GET ONE! How do you expect people to find your business without a website of some sort? If you haven’t noticed you are in competition with hundreds of other businesses all after your customers. Blog websites are free, and a smart move would be to buy a domain name and point it to your site – the cost? Approx €15.00 per annum tops!”

Stop moaning about the recession and start investing in your business! Get cracking now!

On the SECOND day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Before you blindly go off and buy a domain name and establish your free blog site, do some homework. That means go and research the name you wish to use…is it search engine friendly? Is there much competition out there? Is it easy to get traffic to your site using the preferred name you’d like to use? All this research, and more, has to be done up front BEFORE you start buying names!”

On the THIRD day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Ok, having done your research, bought your domain name and built your blog website, now start adding great content to make people return to your site to see what else you have in store!”

On the FOURTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Where your blog site allows you need to add a capture box to allow you to capture readers email addresses, for say a newsletter, so that they have given you permission to write to them later.”  (Sometimes this may require an upgrade to your site and it may incur cost).

On the FIFTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Rather than just spew out content randomly, sit down and devise a proper marketing strategy of what you are going to include in future blog posts – and try and up date the blogs about minimum twice per week, preferably every couple of days or 3 times per week.”  Well, go on, get going!

On the SIXTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Now before you start promoting your website in earnest, just ensure that you have a reliable statistical analysis application embedded within your site (a plug-in or an extension) in order to monitor the traffic to your site. Track your progress regularly”

On the SEVENTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Now that you have a blog and you’ve started blogging, include some photos. Try and get the best possible photos you can from good quality sources (don’t steal them and be aware of copyright infringement), as great quality photos will always be a good draw for returning readers. There are sites where you can get some great quality images to enhance your blogs. Just make sure the images are not washed out – adjust them, if necessary, in a photo editor software. I have seen so many bad images on websites and it doesn’t do the sites justice”

On the EIGHTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Now you need to start promoting your site with vigour – start by adding a signature on the bottom of your emails which contains your wesite address – this will point every recipient of your emails to go to your site – try and add a short tagline too. You can also email your friends and tell them and get them to spread the word for you.”

On the NINTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Depending upon your business, you should now be researching how best to establish backlinks to your website. These will help you with your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) ranking – in other words, you want to get your blog on to the first page of Google or Yahoo search engines? Then you have to work really hard in promoting your site through a variety of routes.” (continued tomorrow!)

On the TENTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

Promoting your blog website continued: “Remember those keywords that you researched and entered into your website posts as tags? Well, you also need to find a way to entwine/include them within the content text itself and highlight in bold or italic or underline to draw the search engine’s attention to them…..don’t over do it or the search engines will start to ignore them! Just one highlight of each per blog. It’s also very worthwhile to start entering your blog to other third party sites like Digg etc….this will also enhance your search engine optimisation capabilities.”

On the ELEVENTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Are you remembering to put the effort into producing great content for your blog website every few days? The only way you’ll succeed with your website is activity, activity and activity! Now that you have got your feet firmly under the blogging table you should now be thinking about other avenues with which to promote your website and engage with prospects and clients alike, so why not open a Twitter account to compliment your blog? It’s easy…”

On the TWELFTH day of Christmas Social Media Spain gave to me (the following tip):

“Have you opened your Twitter account yet? If not do so. Start by following a few people whom you’d find interesting or are in the same business as you (perhaps a competitor or someone in the same business but in another location – use the search facility to search by ’keywords’ to find such people) and now start by observing what is going on and the types of messages that they are posting….once you can determine how they use it, work out a strategy for how you can best use it….then start participating. It’s not a promo thrust down their throats, just take it easy….oh, and don’t forget to return here to Social Media Spain after Christmas as we will be continuing to help businesses with their social media marketing, however experienced they are!”  

Have a GREAT Christmas!

It’s not a great secret that businesses in Spain are currently experiencing tough times, due to lack of tourists and weak €/£ with many struggling to stay afloat. It is very surprising therefore to discover that approximately 80% of Spanish based businesses do not possess a website with which to promote their products and services, relying much more on local newspaper and magazine advertising, which reaches the same limited audience week after week, month after month. 

From a brief review of businesses that DO have websites, it has been noted that many are just ‘not working effectively’ to the degree that they aren’t even paying for themselves, let alone producing a profit for the business.

At Social Media Spain, we are passionate about helping businesses of all sizes to manage the tough times, grow their businesses and attract new customers through greater use of the internet, and especially social media marketing.

For just €79.00 we, at Social Media Spain, will conduct a full and thorough review of your website and compile a documented Website Review Report with recommendation on what steps you need to take to improve your website and start to attract new customers.

To take advatnage of this offer please click here, and fill out the form entitling your message, ’Website Review Offer’

All I can say is “Wow!”  News broke in the last 24 hours that Twitter and Facebook have come to an agreement to have Google and Bing use Tweets within their search engine capabilities. Can you imagine what that can do for search engine optimisation and website rankings?

This means that any business, no matter how big or small, who are using Twitter or Facebook, can  benefit through SEO optimisation and rankings providing they have the right strategy in place to know how best to ‘Tweet’ or message and to whom. Those of you not familiar with social media marketing should really start to consider getting to grips with this new promotional route, it’s not going away!  Just when you think things can’t get much better, wham bang, it does!  

Also, I have read a couple of comments yesterday saying that ‘Twitter is dead’ – not from where I’m standing. Perhaps the authors had shades on? Todays articles are stating how the young generation are now starting to move towards the use of  Twitter after months of  ‘just not getting it’. Many colleges are promoting ’special offerings’ to the student Twitter users. Could you be doing something similar with your business?

To read more of these types of articles and stories surrounding Twitter, Facebook and all the social media for business merely follow Social Media Spain’s  Twitter account @SocialMediaSpn - http://twitter.com/socialmediaspn

I’ve truly lost count of the statistics when it comes to social media activity, i.e. registrations and visits per month but I’m led to believe that Facebook alone generates about 250 million visits per month and Twitter about 40 million (and those are figures from about 2 months or so ago). So imagine the outcry now whereby Facebook is having technical issues to the extent that even I am writing about it!

Yes, Facebook has server or software problems in one of their centres that has locked out many members from their own Facebook accounts. “Oh, shame” I hear you cry, “So what?”  Well, it’s not just the fact that people are becoming frantic because they can’t log in to their accounts, people are getting ‘cheesed off’ because Facebook, whom many millions have come to love and in some cases rely upon, have not communicated with their audience, their customers/members! Cardinal sin. The very people whose business it is to get people to ‘engage’ are not engaging with their own members.

The result so far, after a 5 or 6 day system delay, is a pathetic attempt at communication via a one liner that said ‘the  system is down for maintenance’ and then a posting on their own Facebook page.

This really goes to show. Communication with your customers is vital. Some members are so p****d off that they will walk (one is even talking about legal action!) – okay that won’t hurt Facebook, but what will hurt Facebook is the bad publicity that now abounds through other social media sites like Twitter, from where I first collected the news of this issue. Moral of the story, i) don’t have all your social media eggs in one basket, and ii) customer communication does matter! 

The Principals of Social Media Spain has, all too frequently, both observed and experienced bars and restaurants in Spain where owners/management don’t open their premises at regular times, (maybe with good reason) but they don’t inform the customer base in the process. The opening hours are then considered ‘unreliable’ so people in the end just won’t bother visiting, and the owners then wonder why their business income suffers! Please don’t let your business fall victim to poor customer communication.

Helping You To Grow Your Business Using Social Media

Hi and welcome to Social Media Spain.

This Consultancy has been formed to assist businesses, indigenous and expat, throughout Spain get to grips with how social media works and how it can help increase business and brand awareness.

If you then feel you’d like to take advantage of the biggest phenomenon to hit business since the industrial revolution, then we can advise on a number of ways that you could become involved in social media marketing.

We are sure you will find the site helpful and are always happy to receive your feedback.