Last night I was invited to Apero Entrepreneurs which is an Anglo-French networking group for aspiring entrepreneurs in London, affiliated with the French Chamber of Commerce. I held a series of short 1-2-1 coaching sessions on my favourite topic of social media.
Apero Entrepreneurs basically offer their members the chance to speak to an 'expert' in a chosen field at their monthly meetups and this time the turn had come to social networking and for the Swedish non-French speaker (that would be me) to help out as best possible.
I had five 'patients' at my surgery last night, the one I wanted to mention is Christelle who runs a small business making gluten-free cakes, the company is called Gluten Free Delices. She is operating on a tight budget and is already doing a few things on social media which was a great start. Her objectives are to get more customers (B2C and B2B), increase brand awareness and build up an online community of fans. And yes you guessed it, some of the cakes are featured at the top of this post.
Christelle has a website and a blog, on top of that she has a Facebook Page and a Twitter presence. Reviewing what she is doing currently, I came up with a few ideas.
First off, she is very fortunate in that she makes something that's visual. Unlike strategy consulting, cakes are perfect for pictures and videos – the stuff that people love to see on Facebook. Second, she works with varied customers around London and sees many offices and people. This is perfect for storytelling on her blog and Facebook page, along with pictures again. Third, she has a market stall at Kingston Market every last Sunday of the month. This market has a Twitter hashtag that she can use, as well as jumping onto other hashtags that are relevant for gluten-free foods around the world.
Somebody asked me what the most important part to a successful social media marketin strategy is. My answer was 'creativity'. If you look at the most succesful campaigns in any type of marketing they are typically very original and different to the competition. The good news is that a tiny company like Gluten Free Delices can be very effective on social networks as it only takes an investment in time, not money. So a bakery with 10,000 employees might have one community manager, not necessarily better than what one person can in their micro-business. By doing something differen and telling human stories I believe social media is just the ticket for small companies.
Recommendations for Gluten Free Delices
- Create content on the blog, tell stories of products (the cakes), who they are being delivered to, what type of customers buy them and anything else that seems like a story worth telling. By creating fresh content on the blog, Google will rank the site better and it gives visitors a reason to come back.
- When people are on the site and/or blog, ask them to opt-in to a newsletter offering an ethical bribe in the shape of a cake recipe or 'Top 10 tips'. This will build up a list of prospects interested in gluten-free cakes.
- Share the content from the blog to Facebook and Twitter, not just broadcasting but also asking additional questions that work on those platforms. The more engagement on these both platforms, the more likelihood that friends of followers will see the activity.
- Run promotions on the Facebook page, perhaps asking customers from Kingston market to take a photo of when they are munching away a their cakes and upload it to the page. Whoever does this gets a free cake next time, or they get 10% off their next order.
- Another good way of getting brand awareness and promotion is to contact food bloggers. Most bloggers are very happy to receive free products in return for writing up a review. Target the top 20 food bloggers (or even cake bloggers if they exist) in the London region and don't give up until everyone has been sent their cakes.
- Finally, LinkedIn can also be useful for targeting B2B (business-to-business) buyers. By using the advanced search function on LinkedIn, it's possible to find the people who are responsible for catering within large organisations.
More ideas welcome
Those were my ideas in our 15-minute session, if you can think of any others please let me and Christelle know. I will of course keep you updated on her progress here on the blog.
More on business blogging at 7 Reasons Your Company Should Write a Blog.
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