Thank you very much and here is some more to consider

I got this email in this recently and I have been wanting to reply all day. First of all I always bang on about the importance of testimonials "anyone who does not have a testimonial section to their website is missing a trick" I say. So here is me taking my own advice and using this email as a testimonial, but also to reiterate some social media basics.

Secondly I do get excited when people "get" social media marketing for its fundamental principles. It's not all about pushing a message on to people and expecting them to just except what you are saying hoping you get that instant sale, its about helping out our fellow man, with hints, tips, guides, open dialogue, whilst building trust by being open, honest and transparent with your information and help. The internet has changed how we make decisions, once we have decided on the right product and service for us and then decided that the price is there or there abouts what we are prepared to pay, the third decision we make is the person / brand I am buying right for me, do I trust them, is what the marketing material is saying true, what do their past customers say about them?

We can use a variety of tools now to research products / services and brands, reputation aggregates (Trip Advisor anyone?), ask your friends on facebook, Yahoo! and Linkedin answers, digg, blogs and the list goes on. The internet is giving the brands who genuinely care about their customers these types of tools that allow us to learn what our customers have got to say about us and use the good comments to build trust, more new clients and a better repeat buying customer average. These online  tools also allows you to learn what you are doing wrong so you can fix things in a timely fashion.

Below is an email from the Castle Man see his website  and see response below

Dear Chris,


I have just had a presentation at our monthly meeting from Chris Smith, who attended your training on social networking recently.


The feedback I and the team at Celtic Castles have just had on your training course has been brilliant and the enthusiasm from Chris has been quite infectious. You obviously know how to connect with your audience.


I am not sure if Chris mentioned this, if you think our twitter Celtic Castles postings and our strategy using “The Castle Man” brand and twitter combined are useful material to use as a case study or example, I would be very happy for you use these. I appreciate you may have lots of other examples to choose from.


Also if you are holding an event and would like a real live case study, I would be happy to talk about our experiences using twitter and other social networking facilities.


I suspect that a few other members of the team will be adding your course to their list of future courses.


Thanks again.


Kind regards


Roger





Roger Masterson

The Castle Man

Celtic Castles

Roger loving what you are doing and loving Castle Man you may want to have a look at some of our older posts they may help you develop your campaign further (I will be adding an additional post with links to them all so stand by).

Get your twitter headlines spot on see 102 headline tips

Try thinking of key search terms customer may use to find you services and add them to the content of your twitter post

Everything that Twitter will tell you about managing and account and how to use from a business perspective can be found here and here. If you get 10 minutes we’d recommend looking through these to get a grip with some of the definitions and abbreviations that are used within Twitter however we have picked up a few pointers in our experience:

• Find great stories from other people and share them with a link (and/or attribution). Do this 3 times or more a day!
• Participate in online events that use #hashtags, because others in the event will find you and appreciate you, too!
• Respond to OTHER PEOPLE using the @reply method. For example: “@glendawh – Is it true you were out all night last night singing karaoke?”
• Use Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com) to find people talking about the things YOU talk about, and follow them! Try downloading and using Tweetdeck to manage campaigns
• Add your Twitter URL to your signature line in your email!
• Don’t overtweet (more than 20 a day is a bit spooky to most people).
• Don’t tweet all about you: tweet all about them.
• It’s helpful to be transparent about your work/employer in your profile  
• Be yourself. It is ok and welcome to be different on twitter.
• It’s okay to follow people you don’t know on Twitter. They can choose whether or not to follow you back.
• It’s okay to un-follow people on Twitter. Un-following doesn’t automatically mean “I don’t like you.” There are many other reasons.
• It’s okay to @reply someone a question or comment vs direct message, especially if it’s an idea where others might weigh in or add a perspective.
• It’s better to direct message someone if you’re making 1:1 plans or having a very focused, personal conversation.
• Some people are not a fan of auto reply messages that are sent in direct messages when someone follows you on Twitter. They consider this robot behaviour.
• Promoting others and talking with others is a great way to show your participation to the community.
• Only blurting out your information and links doesn’t usually come off as friendly or community-minded.
• The more you can respond, the more people tend to stay with you and build relationships.
• When retweeting other people’s works, it’s okay to truncate a bit to be able to retweet. Please preserve the link and also the original person’s Twitter name. (ex: RT @mackcollier “Twitter lives and dies on retweeting.”)
• If you’re running a business Twitter account, it’s polite to follow back the people following you
• Don’t get hung up on the numbers, that’s not what matters. Its a case of who you know not how many you know.
• Check your links before you tweet them!

 After you have mastered twitter move on to having a blog and maybe a facebook business page  


At this stage you can really wow your social media followers with great content. Start adding videos, pictures, stories, events. Try to really engage with your audience. Remember you don't have to generate all of this yourself you can reuse information that is already out there just cite wherever possible. You could even ask your customers (the castles) for content this is beneficial to them as the castle that contributes more will have more coverage on the web, in your blog, facebook, twttter etc. 


That's it for now keep in touch.

eskimosoup