Regardless of our sector, discipline or team size we all have attended or have held a meeting at some point in our working lives. They are a core part of our working and organisational culture that open the doors to create new ideas, collaborate with each other and solve issues to real-world and working problems.

Unfortunately, this has been impacted heavily by the current global issues we are facing, which have forcibly created remote working environments for us all and detached ourselves from one another considerably [and it is also worth assuming that this is a situation we will find ourselves in for the foreseeable future].

So, taking all this in, how can we adapt ourselves and our way of working [in this case, the way we meet] to overcome current difficulties? What is the most productive form of meeting virtually? Is there even a ‘most productive’ form of meeting virtually that currently exists? A few thoughts to consider…but here are some ideas, collated from the CPG’s recent experiences and a wider look at the area.

1. Setup is Important

Unfortunately when we say ‘setup’, we are not talking about stance, ball position, grip or posture here…

To give a very brief explanation [because we highlighted this in our other recent blog for hosting webinars], we need to decide on the platform that we meet on – Zoom and Skype were good places to start.

Then, devising goals for the meeting are still an important part of meetings, albeit pretty different to a webinar. Once these are established, you can devise a reasonable structure to the meeting that considers:

• What are the key topics / proposals / ideas up for discussion?
• Who is best placed to lead each of the above?
• Who is best placed to coordinate the entire meeting, and the above two points?
• How long do you have?
• Do you provide much scope for open-ended discussion?

Just as an example for our own way of working – we have a weekly ‘Catch-Up meeting’, held on a Thursday for approximately an hour. This follows an approximate 50/50 structure where for the first half a set agenda is followed based on various things and points to tackle that we work through. This is then followed by the final half where each team member provides an update on their own work in a more open-ended discussion.

It has worked really well for the past six months, and has provided that much needed, regular information and connection with colleagues to function as a team, combined with the day-to-day frequent individual contact that takes place.

2. Create a Network of Meeting Bubbles

There needs to be an acceptance that it is going to be pretty difficult to get through as much as you would normally do in person and as a group. Practically, it is impossible – connectivity issues often persist and there are those amusingly-awkward time delays where we realise we have both spoken at the same time and then decide to wait for one another to speak. These are simply unavoidable elements of online meetings.

Therefore it is important to use a ‘whole-team’ meeting as one to catch up and provide overview to the current ongoings and developments, not necessarily as a time to solve every issue that the organisation is facing. By having smaller ‘bubbles’ [excuse the COVID-19 buzzword], we can collaborate more effectively with one, two or three members of our team outside the normal meeting space.

For example, there are regular Communication and Events catch-ups during the week with specific team members to solve issues and work through various documents and content together. We can then go away on our own and action these points, and then report this work to everybody at the team meeting later.

The key premise from this is that it is more important than ever to trust one another, and understand that colleagues will be working with one another without direct knowledge or awareness they have been used to in an office. This can pose challenges with tracking work, but there is a growing body of research that supports remote-working environments to be more productive than the office scenario.

3. Maintain Colleague Engagement

The premise of chatting to colleagues through a laptop screen can quite easily encourage technological fatigue, loss of concentration and enthusiasm across the board. Online meetings certainly fill a sociological void, but they do not offer a complete solution to satisfying our innate need to interact face-to-face with others.

Therefore, encouraging greater interaction with one another is an important part of online meetings. This can be achieved through simple tasks such as group breathing exercises [check out Dr. Brian Hemming’s Webinar – 14min 30 secs for a good example on this], allocating time for a quick fire quiz, or allowing everybody to introduce themselves and discuss various non-work related topics that would normally form a natural part of general work chit-chat.

The most important part of this is for the meeting leader and moderator to be aware of the situation – that it is a team meeting and not just a presentation. By ensuring every person has their time to speak and become involved in discussions, they will not only be more engaged but will contribute positively to a more productive online team meeting.

4. Share notes

Once you have conducted your online meeting, the key final stage is to ensure everyone has the information they need from it. Sharing notes is often a lot easier in person because you can physically hand them agendas, outcomes and minutes as you see fit. Doing this over the internet is slightly trickier.

A platform to share notes is the best port of call. Outlook’s Planner function is a really easy way to do this. You can create various sub-topics for each meeting, based on the agenda set. In the CPG’s case, these sub-topics include tournaments, education, members, golf development etc. Then list all the key actions and tasks for each.

It is really easy to use, provides a ‘live’ access point for all colleagues to see and add notes to and ultimately keeps everybody you need to in the know about what is going on, or has gone on from various meetings.

If this is too much, creating a word document from the meeting that can be shared with everyone via email afterwards is a perhaps more laborious way of doing things, but nonetheless equally as effective…

Whilst COVID-19 has forced an inevitable online environment for the way most of us work, function and hold such forms of educational sessions, it is tough to tell what the future holds for webinars and their uses.

Some argue that companies will choose to stick with this virtual way of working meaning webinars will hold a crucial role moving forwards. Others argue that the latter simply cannot replace the classic lecture theatre, classroom or boardroom, and all of the social benefits that these spaces bring.

What is for certain however, is that most of you will have created, taken part in, or listened to an online webinar over recent weeks, which raises numerous questions: Did you find them useful? How engaging were they? How easy was the registration and joining process? Is there another way to host one?

The Confederation of Professional Golf [CPG] have been functioning in a virtual, flexible environment for almost six months now, pre-empting what most people are doing. Here is the CPG’s take on answering these questions, using our own recent experiences.

1. Pick a Platform, Any Platform…

First you need an appropriate platform and there are lots to choose from. Skype has been around for years and something most people are familiar with in some form. Whether that has been speaking to family overseas or catching up with friends from afar, it is a good starting point.

SKYPE

Pros of Skype:

• Hold video chats and make local, domestic, and international calls.
• Conduct both screen and document sharing with large files.
• It has a variety of interactive functions such as white-board, post a poll, and Q&A sessions.
• Free version available, which works well for smaller teams.
• Integrates with Microsoft Teams, which is a useful platform used by a lot of companies already.

Cons of Skype:

• A number of technical issues during calls, such as freezing, connectivity issues etc.
• There is not a large amount of support or help options in such circumstances.
• What if you are using something other than Microsoft Teams?

Overall though Skype is a good option. But how about Zoom? This seems to be a buzzword at the moment, so does it live up to expectations? Or is it merely a shadow of Skype culture?

ZOOM

Pros of Zoom:

• Conduct live video chat.
• Access to various meeting analytics.
• Easily screen-share during a call.
• Use the recording feature to save and document your sessions.
• Hold brainstorming sessions with Zoom’s on-screen whiteboard feature.
• Access in-depth support such as live help, online chat, phone support, FAQs, help articles, and video tutorials.
• Free (up to 100 participants and 40 minute calls).
• A relatively easy registration-creation process.

Cons of Zoom:

• If you host more than 100 participants regularly, you will have to pay (Starts from $14.99 a month…)
• Picture quality is sometimes an issue.

Both are great platforms with some minor hiccups and glitches but overall they do what they say and will be great options for your next online webinar. Think about what you want, factor in your budget and how much support and guidance you want from each service and it should help you make your decision.

2. Identify Your Goals and Structure The Webinar…

This is a relatively straight-froward, self-policing matter. Ask yourself these questions: what is the main point of the webinar – Is it to inform? Create a discussion? Find answers? Provide answers? Will you require a presentation to achieve the answer to these questions? Who’s presenting? How long for?

Once you have done that, you can start to formulate a plan as to how you want the webinar to go. In the recent CPG Masterclass Series – a two-month programme of online webinars – we primarily focused on a presentation model. If we were to answer those questions it would have looked like this:

• Is it to inform? Yes
• Create a discussion? Not primarily, but we can if necessary.
• Find answers? No
• Provide answers? Yes
• Requires a presentation? Yes
• Who’s presenting? External speakers
• How long for? Short bursts of information

Now we have a basis to form our structure. Generally, we followed a presentation-style webinar, whereby the external speaker presented on a certain topic for 20-25 minutes, to provide expertise and knowledge about it and then the listeners could ask questions at the end, and spark a discussion if warranted.

By answering these goals, you can create an effective webinar template.

3. Communicate Clearly…

This is key to delivering an effective, highly-sought after webinar. If your participants do not even know about it, how can they join? Promoting your webinar is therefore important but must be done in the right way.

Think about the channels you use (social media, email, website, blog) and tailor the message to each. Coincidently, we held our own CPG Masterclass Series webinar on just that very premise here. Once you have drafted out some promotional posts (remembering to include the sign-up link in every single one!), get posting.

Then you need to think about the user-registration journey. How do you simplify the process of registering for a webinar? If it is complicated, people just will not join or be interested. Zoom’s registering system is very straightforward – it creates a registration link which takes you to a separate landing page, you fill in a few of your basic details and you receive an automated email to say you have registered along with the timings and access link (the host also receives an email to say they have received a registrant – important data!).

People’s time is precious. Pitch to them what your webinar is about, why it is of use to them and then once you have grabbed their attention ensure they don’t fall at the last registration hurdle.

4. Don’t be Camera Shy, do be Camera Conscious

Once you have completed all of the above and have created a webinar with registered participants, you need to think about how you deliver the actual webinar itself effectively. This is not as complicated as it needs to be, it just needs a little bit of confidence and preparation from you or the presenter beforehand.

Do you stay on camera? Do you turn it off? Personally, we like to stay on camera…the current circumstances have already limited our social contact considerably and whilst Zoom is a good substitute to meet, do you really want to alienate your registrants even further by not showing your face on camera? Its a tricky one but I think your attendees would appreciate seeing who they are listening to.

On a final note if you do choose to go onto camera, ensure you have considered yourself and your surroundings. As we have all seen, there have been some terrible (albeit amusing) examples in the past of meetings being interrupted by children, slightly inappropriate photos in the house or somebody not wearing appropriate office clothing! Whilst you might be at home, preparing the environment you are in appropriately has never been more important.

On a final note, make sure you have as much fun and confidence as possible whilst planning, organising and holding your webinar!

When we meet new clients, we usually go in with one opinion formed from what we know at that point, which is usually based on touchpoints such as their website or some marketing collateral we’ve seen. But once we meet the people behind that business, that opinion always changes – and usually for the better. This makes us want to work with them and we end up building up wonderful relationships with people. Through our Brand thinking™ process we get to know more of the people behind the organisation, from the top to the bottom. We learn about what they love about the company, what frustrates them and how they live the brand on a day-to-day basis.

The more we do this the more we see the real value in making sure the people in your company live, breathe and are the brand. From the moment your customers speak to one of your staff members on the phone they are forming an opinion of the brand and building an emotional feeling towards your business. Making sure your staff are on the same page as the brand will make this process a lot smoother.

However, it can be dangerous to impose a brand ethos on your team, especially if it’s not who they are or not what they believe in. The comments from them to your clients excusing the colour palette or strapline will soon creep in and undermine everything you’ve worked so hard to build.

That’s why it’s essential to build your brand around the kind of people who work for it and the kind of customers you want to attract. It’s easier for smaller businesses that have a small team, which is why we see so many of them winning when it comes to genuine brand and social content. But all businesses can follow some simple guidelines to ensure their brand works from within:

Listen

First you really need to listen to your team and find out what makes them tick. Finding out what they’re proud of in the company and what they’re not so proud of is really important to finding a brand that will work for them. Maybe there are some brands that they really admire or aspire to.

Build a story

Your brand needs a story. This doesn’t have to be like a kids’ book, it’s important to have a clear message and ethos that everyone can believe in and get behind. It needs to be genuine so that people will believe in it.

Champion heroes

Use the wealth of knowledge and personality from within the team to create brand heroes. All of your content doesn’t have to be authored by the CEO, it can be from other members of staff throughout the workplace hierarchy. Using your internal experts to show your expertise will not only empower your team, but it will make you look like a clever bunch. A website blog is a great place to do this.

The power of attraction

Showing what kind of people and company you are helps the business to grow in the right direction, with the right people. Communicating the kind of internal culture you have can show prospective employees and clients what it would be like to work with you. This may be a turn-off to some people, but they’re not your target market. You need be genuine though, otherwise people may be disappointed.

The big reveal

A big brand reveal is a great way to excite and enthuse your team. Communicating the outcomes of everyone’s efforts to the team you can give a big injection of inspiration. Showing how it will help them and how it represents them will win them over. Using fun visual aspects of the brand internally can keep the inspiration going.

Know the limits

You need to know when to push back. It’s great to get the whole team involved in the process, but you must not lose focus of what the business is and who its target market is. Some decisions need to be decisive and not by committee.

At present, there is a significant focus on the financial penalties that a business could incur should they have a data protection breach.

GDPR, what is it?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force on 25th May 2018. The legislation will impact on any golf and leisure business that is either based in, or do business in, the EU. Citizens will have great individual rights and controls, including rights to access, correction and deletion of personal data.

Do You Know What Personal Data your Golf Business collects?

One very early myth to bust is the belief that the GDPR does not apply to your golf club. If you collect, store and move personal information on members (including children), employees, patrons or suppliers in membership database(s), booking management systems, HR database(s) and paper; finance and accounting systems; health records (on employees and members), marketing systems (Customer Relationship Management system) and CCTV or other digital imagery, the regulation applies to you.

Who Should be Involved?

As you will have gathered already, implementing GDPR compliance cannot simply be the responsibility of IT or HR, it needs to be an organisational approach, one that has the full support of the management team, golf club committee and all levels of Directorship.

Where should I start?

A good first step is to complete the Information Commissioner’s Office online GDPR self-assessment (https://eur.pe/2r5wNXU). This will provide you a clear overview of what tasks you need to complete before 25th May 2018.

What other steps should I consider?

• Conduct a Data Protection audit to determine what personal data is held by your organisation and identify where it is located, justify your reason for holding it, how long you hold it for and how you would permanently delete the record.
• Raising awareness across the business and training your staff should be high up on your list of priorities. Consider engaging expert help and then start to develop processes and procedures which will ensure that your business is managing and protecting personal data according to the requirements of the regulation.

But should I quickly get my current customers to “opt-in” again so I’m compliant?

Stop!

There certainly is a lot of ‘hype’ surrounding GDPR and lots of advice coming from many different sources. What this appears to have created is almost a panic amongst some golf club’s – mostly surrounding their current database of customers and prospects. Group emails are flying out in an attempt to gain “consent” to communicate using this medium by asking customers to “opt-in”.

One club recently went through this very process and reduced their database by 99% – yes, only 1% of customers re-confirmed their consent to be sent emails from the club. However, it’s highly unlikely that 99% of customers were simply not interested in the club any more. It’s more likely that a high percentage just didn’t respond and that could be for any number of reasons, nothing to do with their desire to cease communications with the club via email.

Hopefully, seeking “Consent” in this way doesn’t amount to commercial suicide for some clubs – because in many cases it may not be necessary. The new legislation offers potential alternatives, including a legal basis for continuing to email customers called “Legitimate Interests”. The legislation goes further to even highlight some examples of what this may be, and Direct Marketing is listed.

If you would like to learn more about GDPR or want to train your staff on their responsibilities to the new legislation, Promote Training, in partnership with data-specialists Databasix, has launched two new courses that will help achieve this.

• GDPR in Golf
• GDPR for Staff

Promote Training are also offering ‘Confederation of Professional Golf’ readers a limited-time-only offer of 20% off these two GDPR courses. Use the coupon code “CPG1” during the online checkout. (Offer expires 31st May 2018)

Find out more www.promotetraining.co.uk/fundamental-principles-data-protection.

There’re often times beyond this, once a brand is established, where time is still scarce and efficiency is the name of the game.

The team at Smart Pension has felt both sides of this in the past couple years and has experienced the time crunch particularly on the social media side (sound familiar at all with your experience?). One of the UK’s leading pension companies, the Smart Pension team pulled through in an incredibly inspiring way.

Here’s their story of how they’ve come up with their social media strategy, saved time, and found the best tools to use.

Social media and an early-stage startup

Jack Saville, a marketing executive at Smart Pension, built his startup to be the go-to source for UK pension and auto enrolment. And one of the key marketing strategies he chose for traction was content.

One of the first jobs was to put as much great information and helpful content on the website as possible. However when we finished creating content, we also wanted to shout about it on social media.

We were churning out so much content in the beginning that logging and posting each article on each social media channel was becoming a real time consuming exercise. If we had had Buffer in the beginning we would have saved a great deal of time (and money) in the crucial start-up, make-or-break phase of our business.

Smart Pension made it through this early critical stage and is grateful to now be a more established entity. They’ve kept right on working.

The content team crushed it early on and put together the majority of the foundational, main topics needed to be a thought leader on pensions and enrolment. The next phase was tackling current news and changes, being more of a real-time resource for Smart Pension’s growing audience.

This shift to timely content also needed timely distribution, which is where social media marketing has really paid dividends for the team.

The news section is where we direct most of our efforts now. This is important, as investing a lot of time in your news section shows your customers that you are well aware of the changes in the industry, and that we know that the services we provide need to be altered and suited to the current market and the current pension laws. Social media is the channel in which we communicate our knowledge of industry changes to our customers.

Not a content creation problem … a content distribution one

In building out this news hub, Smart Pension ran into a slight problem:

We work so hard on making sure our news section addresses the current topics in the pension industry, that sometimes we finish a number of articles at the same time.

It’s a similar problem that might crop up for publishers, news organizations, online magazines, and others. It’s not that there’s any trouble coming up with content to share, it’s more a matter of knowing what to share and when to share it.

Jack and his team found the solution here with social media scheduling from Buffer.

Smart Pension spaces out new posts every few hours so that there’s room between each update.

The articles don’t all go up as a wall of similar-looking tweets and posts.

The buffered schedule makes it so that content hits the timeline at all times, helping to reach people who may be online at different times throughout the day.

And the beauty of it all: All this scheduling can be automated.

The scheduling function is also helpful to the work flow of the team. The team member who wrote the article can schedule the post for times of the day that we are posting less and then proceed to the next task. The team members do not have to try and remind themselves of when to post their articles.

Additionally, with the scheduling function we can then post articles at night and at weekends when team members would not necessarily be working. This means that we can have a round the clock presence on social media, without having one of our team members staying up all night!

Scheduling + Analytics

Lots of content to share and a set number of times to share it all: When do you get the most bang for your buck with social media sharing?

The Smart Pension team came up with a few experiments to test the best time to post for engagement.

Here’s an example:

To find out if it’s better to post extra content at night or over the weekends, set up a schedule for both and check the results.

After a few days, log into the Analytics section of Buffer and check to see which time slots have tended to perform the best. You can see this from the Analytics view with a quick glance and intuition…

… or you can export data from your past period of experiments, and filter the results for each different time.

Here’s a sample spreadsheet using data from my own sharing:

(Couple this with the takeaways from Buffer’s optimal timing tool to get even more confirmation for which way you’re leaning.)

Great content goes great with images

As we are a start-up, we cannot afford to have a graphic designer to create the imagery for our social media posts every time we need to post something. Pablo give us the ability to make our social media posts look interesting and exciting, whilst not having to pay for a graphic designer to design them and create them.

According to our most recent data here at Buffer, we’ve found that tweets with images get 150% more engagement than tweets without.

The takeaway: Test content with images!

We believe in this so strongly that we built our own tool for making this as easy as can be. The free image creator at Pablo makes it simple to create images for Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and more, all at the ideal image size, all looking beautiful—no matter your design skills.

Here are some that the Smart Pension team has used on their latest social media updates:

Click to read The Employer’s Guide To Auto Enrolment Contributions. https://t.co/9bUmJBNxA9 pic.twitter.com/El3z1lFPjU

— Smart Pension (@smartpensionuk) December 14, 2015

Click to read our guide on lost pensions. https://t.co/JwLXr8PQlg pic.twitter.com/BLJ0v3e7ar

— Smart Pension (@smartpensionuk) December 14, 2015

Click to read our guide on spotting the tell-tale signs of a pension scam. https://t.co/ZVRzn4DCwT pic.twitter.com/PAl8FdoV3s

— Smart Pension (@smartpensionuk) December 14, 2015

Working with a team on a social media calendar

And another key piece to the team’s workflow and system is keeping all this distribution organized. One of Buffer’s newest features works great in this case: the social media calendar.

Our content calendar is designed to make sure that we are regularly completing and posting content through buffer. We can all log into buffer and see what other people are planning, and then we can plan our content around the existing scheduled posts.

Image sources: Iconfinder, Pablo

Audiences have become more sophisticated over time and as a result it is important to have some sort of social media strategy. In order to start implementing that strategy, a schedule is a must for a lot of businesses.

A sharing schedule can help you double your traffic and provide your audience with consistent and valuable information that will make them more likely to follow and engage with you.

It can be a little daunting getting started, though. As you try to figure out

• Where to share?
• What to share?
• When to share?

In this post I’ll help you answer these essential questions and share some ways that you can develop and perfect your sharing schedule (with a sneak peek at how we do things here at Buffer too).

Let’s dig in!

Where to Share?

So you want to share, but where should you share? There are so many different platforms all with their own advantages, however it’s almost impossible to share on each network well unless you have a large team helping. If that isn’t the case, focusing on specific platforms might be the best solution here.

When thinking about which platforms you should prioritize in your schedule, a good question to ask yourself is:

Where is your audience?

Do they spend most of their time on Twitter? Facebook? Knowing this will allow you to focus your energy on the place where you have the potential to reap the most benefits.

Pew Research Center put together a list of the demographics of all the key social networking platforms. This might help you get a little more insight into each platform.

Once you have narrowed down the platform(s) you would like to focus on, you can now come up with you sharing plan.

Different plans for different platforms

I would definitely recommend coming up with different plans for each platform you select. Facebook is very different than Twitter for instance, so it makes sense to have a different approach when sharing to your audience on Facebook versus your audience on Twitter.

CoSchedule has a really neat graphic sharing some of the different topics to share for each platform. They also go into depth for each platform over at their articles if you would like more information.

What To Share?

Now that you have figured out where you want to share your awesome content. It’s time to figure out what to share.

Sharing More Than One Type of Content

A good way to share is to have a mix of content to provide your audience. I would recommend not solely focusing on your own content, but giving them variety to look forward to. Providing a service or entertainment to your audience is more likely to lead them to follow you and engage with all of your content, rather than bombarding them with only promotional updates.

Here is an example of the type of content you can share.

According to CoSchedule, a report from The New York Times Customer Insight Group found five major reasons why people share content with their networks:

1. 49% share for entertainment or to provide valuable content to others.
2. 68% share to define themselves.
3. 78% share to stay connected with those they know.
4. 69% share to feel involved in the world.
5. 84% share to support a cause.

So give them something they can share! 

Is Your Content Evergreen or Time Sensitive?

When it comes to your content, it can be good to think about whether what you are sharing is evergreen (can be shared multiple times at any point in time) or time sensitive.

A schedule for time sensitive material will most likely be different than one for evergreen content. For instance, time sensitive material will only be able to be shared within a specific timeframe before it is retired, while evergreen content could potentially be shared again a year from now.

If you have both types of content, coming up with separate sharing schedule for each type might be something to consider.

How Do You Want to Share?

You have your content ready to be shared, but how do you want to share it? How do you want to relay it to your audience? Do you have a specific tone you would like to use?

Here are a few things you can think about.

Voice

Creating a consistent voice is a really important component of your social media strategy. We have written an extensive guide on how you can find yours here.

Type

Links, images, videos, quotes, GIFs. There are so many different ways you can share your content. Finding what works best for you whether it’s only images or a mix of everything will be a great asset for creating your schedule.

Update

While I do recommend sharing the same content multiple times, I do not recommend you share the same update twice. Find different ways to share the content. Pick an image to share for the first time, then find a quote the second time and maybe a GIF the third, so that your audience doesn’t feel like they are always seeing the same thing in your feed.

As for the update itself, we have a handy guide and infographic to help you with sharing the optimal length every time.

When To Share?

You have now figured out where and what to share. The next step is figuring out when to share and importany when to re-share! Kissmetrics found that re-sharing content could double your traffic:

Frequency

Let’s first think about frequency. How often do you want to share?

• On publish
• Later that same day
• Next day, Daily
• A Week later
• A month later?
• Even later than that?

It really depends on your needs and your audience’s response to that frequency. Some of the best practices for each platform are highlighted in the infographic from SumAll below.  This is only a guideline, I would highly encourage you to test things for yourself as well.

Here is our sharing schedule at Buffer. You can see that we tend to share more often on Twitter and less on other platforms, leaving more time between each share.

When starting out, I would recommend looking at the content you have already shared and taking a look at what you feel might be the best times to share your content. If you haven’t shared anything yet, this is the perfect time to start experimenting and learning about your audience.

A key part to figuring out your frequency will be finding the point at which sharing more would yield diminishing returns. CoSchedule has a fantastic graphic illustrating diminishing returns.

And that’s when testing comes into play, which I discuss further below.

Create a calendar

In order to keep you on track, creating a calendar might be a huge help. It can also help you outline one time events. For example if you plan special coverage around the Holidays, a calendar could help you plan ahead and make sure you won’t forget to share.

Hootsuite has a great template available for a social media content calendar.

Here at Buffer, we have our own Social Media Calendar which you might find helpful in planning your sharing. The calendar is available for those on Awesome and Business plans (if you’re not yet part of our paid plans, I’m hoping you this might convince you to give it a try!) and allows you to take a look at your week of sharing at a glance.

It could be helpful in planning and putting into action your sharing plan, by letting you schedule updates in the future, shifting things around if needed by dragging and dropping and giving you a visual of what you are sharing when.

Here is an example of our current social media calendar on Buffer:

Testing

Now that you have a base to work with, I would also recommend implementing some testing into your sharing in order to come up with your perfect schedule.

Some of the things you can test include:

• Different times
• Different days
• Different topics
• Different types of updates (pictures versus no pictures, videos, quotes etc.)

I would recommend being quite intentional with the way you test things. Make sure you are able to measure the correct variable and that what you are seeing is due to the variable you are trying to measure.

For instance, if you would like to figure out the best time to share your blog posts, trying different days and times is a great way to start. However, it is important to continue the experiment for some time before drawing conclusions. An update performing really well on a Tuesday at 9am, might be due to it being an optimal time or it could be the result of the blog post itself being more popular amongst your audience. That is why I would recommend, testing that specific time multiples times in order to confirm that posts shared then do in fact always outperform posts shared at other times.

Analyze

Once you’ve spent some time testing, you can focus on analyzing your data. A few questions you can ask yourself when looking at the results include:

• When is your audience online?
• When do you get the most reach/engagement?
• What types of updates tend to get the most engagement?

Take a look at the performances for all your posts in the previous 30 (or 60) days and figure out what seemed to resonate with your audience.

Buffer provides great analytics for you to use if you are using the application to share your updates.

Adjust

You’ve tested, analyzed and now you can adjust. Taking into account everything you have learned, you might want to adjust your sharing schedule by implementing some of the discoveries from your data analysis.

For example, if you noticed an increase in engagement for blog posts updates on Tuesdays at 9am (after you have confirmed it through multiple testing), you can start sharing your blog posts at that time from now on.

I would also encourage you to continue to test, analyze and adjust, in order to make sure your schedule remains adapted to the changes in your audience’s wants and needs.

Bonus: How We Share at Buffer

At Buffer we’re constantly changing and testing new approaches when it comes to social media, especially after losing almost half our social referral traffic. I wanted to share our sharing schedule for both Twitter and Facebook and some of the things we’ve been trying lately.

How We Share on Twitter

Our current Twitter schedule involves sharing 11 times a day during weekdays and 8 times a day during weekends. Here are the current times we share (our timezone is set to Denver, CO).

I would say that 99% of our posts include some sort of media. We tend to use mostly images, since they tend to be they help boost our engagement, we have also enjoyed sharing GIFs and videos once in a while.

Here are some of our most engaging posts in the past 30 days taken from Buffer’s Analytics. A few standout findings:

• You will noticed that these all contain an image (we tend to create our images using Pablo)
• 3 out of 7 are about Twitter
• Two of the updates link to the same article, highlighting the importance of re-sharing your content
• One is a competition we ran to celebrate reaching 400k followers. (We’d love to experiment a little more with competitions)

In general, we tend to reshare posts that seemed to resonate. We sometimes change the update and sometimes reshare as is.

How We Share on Facebook

Our current Facebook schedule has us sharing 3 times a day on weekdays and once on weekends. Here are the current times we share (our timezone is set to Nashville, TN).

On Facebook, we focus on sharing posts from Buffer’s Social and Open blogs and use the status copy to provide context or a story around the post being shared.

We have also recently started sharing quotes that inspire us on a regular basis (those quotes are also being shared on Twitter and seem to be appreciated there as well).

Here are some of our most engaging posts in the past 30 days taken from Buffer’s Analytics. Some of the things that seem to resonate here are announcements, images, insider story about Buffer and life hacking type articles.

One of the things we’re also thinking of experimenting with is the timing of our shares. One of the tools that we will be using to find new optimal times to share is the Buffer Optimal Timing tool, which finds the best time for you to share on a specific social network and updates your Buffer schedule accordingly.

Over to You!

What are some of the steps you’ve taken to develop and perfect your social sharing schedule? Have I missed any steps? Do you have additional tips? I would love to hear them all in the comments section.

Myself, Jan and Chandra are returning home from a four day trip to the French capital to work with a long-standing global client who is based there. We are working with them to deliver a very complex rebrand with multiple stakeholders and teams across Europe, the US and Australasia.

Over the past few years we have delivered rebrands across Europe, the US and Africa. Being based in the UK, I wanted to share how we create brands that resonate with people in those countries, that grow and evolve with their culture, and ultimately achieve success for the companies we represent. Here are my top 5 guidelines for a successful outcome.

1. Immerse yourself in the culture.

It seems like an obvious thing to say, but we know it doesn’t always get done. Companies look to the UK for design skill and creative thinking, but to deliver a project successfully you (as a company) need to look wider than your personal experiences and that can be difficult. All good creative people are like sponges, soaking up information, ideas and bringing influences like trends, styles and messaging from the world around us into our work. But, what if those influences don’t mean anything to the people you are designing for? What if those ‘eureka’ moments don’t resonate with an audience of the outside the UK?

That’s where immersing yourself in the culture or cultures of the client is vital. As an example, when we are working in France, we go to France and visit the client, we ask them to show us what makes France French in their eyes. We visit locations of historical importance, we watch their films, listen to their music, try and learn some of the language, and most importantly we look – we look at what they design, how they design, what influences their design culture. Only by doing this can you start to consider what design and branding will work in that chosen culture.

2. Don’t trust cultural stereotypes.

We would all like to believe that we are ‘worldly’ and knowledgeable people – who look outwardly at global information, understanding cultures and people. But really we still view the world and the different cultures as stereotypes. We think of the French as chic, the Americans as loud, the Germans as serious and the British as stiff upper-lipped. Clearly that isn’t the case, but you would be amazed at how many brands are created with a stereotype at its heart, e.g. Delice De France!

By visiting, learning and living a culture you can start to see past stereotypes and begin to see similarities – parts of our cultures that merge and overlap. Once you are able to do this you can start to see where a brand resonates across multiple cultures, across languages and trends. When you reach this point you can create a brand thread which ties branding, emotion and design to cultures across entire continents or further afield.

3. Be in the room.

It’s as simple as that – be in the room. Be in the room for client meetings in their offices, be in the room when they discuss the answers to your brand questions, be in the room when they are chatting about their weekends, or plans for the evening, be in the room when that room is a pub, a bar, a restaurant – be a part of the team. By becoming a member of the client’s team, you become a part of their culture. You can learn what really makes them tick, what drives them forward, why they come to work everyday, what is in their heart that differentiates them from others, and what really should be in the heart of the brand.

4. Learn the subtleties.

Great brands are not created through billboards or advertising campaigns alone, they are delivered through subtly – beautiful touches of quality, finesse and intelligence; the beautifully produced bag, the expertly finished brochure or the refined smooth wording of a letter.
Subtleties differ from culture to culture and learning what different people see as the differentiator of quality can be vital to the overall success of a rebrand.

For example, in Africa, colour is a vital part of visual language. Colours represent different events in life, from celebration and weddings, through to morning and funerals. The colours symbolise emotion, and that emotion is imparted into the brand. Those emotional ties to colours will run deep into the subconscious of the viewer and therefore as brand thinkers we have to be mindful of this and utilise the power of colour to enhance a message or brand position – brandthinking in colour.

5. Ask the hard questions.

If you want to know if your brand works, ask the people who live it. We are specialists in creating brands that deliver growth, brands that have emotion and brands that resonate with target audiences, but when working in different cultures how do we know we have got it right, before we launch? Simply – we ask.

We spend time presenting the concept and brand developments to a wide range of the client’s team, from directors to admin staff. The directors will look at the brand from a strategic point of view and will trust our opinion and advice, but a receptionist will look at the brand with their heart – they will tell you what they feel and that is vital. When the strategic mind and emotive soul of the brand align, we know we have the right outcome for the organisation. It is easy to be afraid to show the brand and to ask “what do you think?”, as they are four words which can turn your project on it’s head. But they are the four most important words in any brand project.

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So there you have it, 5 top tips for branding in different countries and across cultures. As part of our Brandthinking™ process we deliver exciting, emotive brands through a wide range of countries and cultures. There are many more things which need to be considered when doing these complex projects, but I hope these 5 tips will give you an insight into they way we think, and help you in any future planning for projects.

If you have a brand that you wish to launch in the UK or further afield, and think our Brandthinking™ process and creativity can help, then we would love to hear from you.

Our bonus episodes offer a fun change of pace from our traditional “interview-style” episodes on The Science of Social Media. Get to know the hosts Hailley, Kevan, & Brian a bit better as they share thoughts on the future of social media – complete with actionable takeaways and useful insights.

This week we’re chatting all about our brand new State of Social Media 2016 Report! 3 major trends emerge from the study, including the peak of video marketing, Facebook remaining atop the pack, and the importance of customer service on social media.

A huge thank you to all of you for joining us every week for brand new episodes. We appreciate you taking the time to listen and for your amazing support over the last few weeks. We’d love to hear from you on iTunes or using the hashtag #bufferpodcast on Twitter.

“That’s what I see social media in 2017 being – Understanding why you’re there and then creating something awesome for the people that you’re hoping to reach on that channel.”

3 Themes That Stood Out to Us From the Survey

Theme #1

The first takeaway is that video is on the rise and about to hit the peak. If you ever wanted to get into video marketing, now is the time to do so! We found that there are some inherent challenges that people are experiencing that are keeping them from fully joining.

Theme #2

No one has really left Facebook like everyone was saying might happen once organic reach dipped. From our study, about 9 out of every 10 marketers use Facebook and 9 out of 10 use Facebook Ads. I think some of the response to the dip in organic reach is people moving to Facebook Ads. So, marketers finding a way to make the most of that giant network.

Theme #3

Only 1 in 5 survey respondents – so 1 in 5 brands, 1 in 5 marketers – use social media for customer support. And that was shockingly low for me. At Buffer customer support has been very key to us and it has been key for a lot of the brands that we admire. That feels like a really neat opportunity for brands to stand out.

For PGA Professionals involved in any area of the game, knowledge of marketing and some of the key concepts that come with it can be very useful to themselves as individuals but also as marketers, sales people, and value-adders for a business.

Here IGPN looks at just some of the main things in marketing that could help you be better prepared to market yourself and the business you are a key part of, whilst also giving you more knowledge of the marketing that takes place around you.

1. STRATEGY

You can’t move in any direction without a plan of where you want to go and how you’re going to get there.  Too many people are too concerned with just ‘doing some marketing’ and don’t look at things with enough depth and focus.  Marketing is an incredibly broad term and you need to ensure what you are doing is relevant, achievable, and has an end goal.

The first step is to think about what you want to achieve out of any marketing activity.  Why are you doing it, and what would be the ideal things to achieve?  Make them as realistic, relevant and specific as you can.

There are so many platforms, media, methods and ‘hot topics’ within marketing that you need to ensure that what you are planning to do is worthwhile and has the potential to make a difference.  Don’t take on something just because a lot of other people are doing it – if it’s not right then you could be wasting valuable resources that might work a lot better elsewhere.

Research is key here – what platforms/media fit your goals, your target audience, their usage/behaviour best?  What pushes them to take action and change their behaviour to what you want?  There are plenty of ways to do this through market research and statistics, but the easiest way is to just ask for yourself – if your market is accessible then get out there and ask the questions needed to work out what makes them tick.

A good way to think of engaging in marketing activity is to compare it to giving a lesson – a good coach will assess a player’s strengths and weaknesses, look at their goals and targets, and then work out a route to get them to that position, taking into account all of the internal and external factors that could come into play.

2. WEBSITES

Your website is truly your online hub – they can be so versatile and useful in a digital and connected world that optimising them should be a number 1 priority.

What do you want your website to do and say?  Working these things out enables you to direct your attention to the things that are most important for the end-user.  If you are a coach and you have a website to promote your services, then are what clubs someone uses the most important thing, or should things like your skills, experience, knowledge, and then booking/contact information be up the front?

If you use other platforms, for example, Social Media sites, or perhaps there are certain sponsors or facilities you are linked to, then you should be signposting these appropriately.

Once you know what your audience is after you can begin to tailor the site and its content to them.  Stats software such as Google Analytics can provide incredibly useful and actionable information that can help you look at who is viewing the site and where from.

Enterprising Professional coaches are even getting custom-designed websites built that allow their clients to login to an area that is just for them where they can see their lesson videos and key tips that are specific to them – the ultimate in specificity.

A website can also act as a great platform to host your content – you could write your blog in one section and then keep your photos in another gallery section, all whilst allowing you to share that information and have a living, breathing calling card for yourself or company.  Static websites no longer cut the mustard – the more you can keep the site fresh and new the more reasons people have to keep on returning.

3. SOCIAL MEDIA

Any platform on which a community or network of some kind is hosted can be considered Social Media.  There are a lot of platforms out there so it is important you know which ones [if any] are going to be useful for you and your audience.  There’s no point having an account on everything if no-one interacts with you there, plus it can be hard enough sometimes to stay on top of a few platforms, let alone lots of different ones!

Again you can use research to work out where your audience are and what platforms they use, and then you can begin to create and share content on there.  Share what you post on a blog or website and then look for like-minded brands/people/etc. and share what they come up with.  You can even look to share what your community/followers say and share – engaging in two-way conversation provides real value to someone using a platform.  It gives a brand or business an identity and personality that a person can build an affinity with.

As a brand your place on these platforms is often going to be met with caution.  Generally speaking, people are wary of mixing their communities with brands and marketing messages, however, it is something that is done.  Twitter for example is known for its users following their friends and their favourite brands, but the difference here is that brands have to work hard to gain the trust and interest of a user.  They are often speaking to consumers on the same level, using the same reference points and interests to communicate with them rather than blasting out automated marketing messages.

4. CONTENT

This is pretty much anything that you output that is consumable by an end user.  Nowadays this is mainly content that is produced online and shared in some way be it a blog post, and article, news item, video interview, or gallery of images (but it can also be more ‘traditional’ things like leaflets, newspaper articles, guides, etc.).

The creation and curation of content can be a very simple and very easy way of marketing something.  Creating your own content involves composing your own information, perhaps researching a subject, providing an opinion piece on something, or generating something brand new.  Curating is gathering content that already exists and then sharing it amongst others that could also find it interesting.

For example, you might want to generate some content for your website that details your opinion on a well-known player’s swing technique.  You could create a short blog post that explains your thoughts, which is then shared across your Social Media platforms.

But you might also want to show what research/articles you have read to inform your decision so you could bring together a series of links that would be useful for those wishing to find out more from elsewhere [like we have done with this article].  It shows your own content is well informed, it shows you want to help the reader even more, and it also alerts others to the fact that you are sharing their information (and they may even do the same thing for you!).

The key thing is to ensure you create and curate content that is relevant to those that are consuming it.

5. EMAIL

Marketing emails are something that is so commonplace in our digital lives that they are often overlooked as being achievable on a small scale, but that’s not really true especially considering how many different platforms there are [some of which are free!], and how easy they are to use with a variety of templates that can be matched to your tastes.

Successful email marketing comes from having a decent email database (remember it’s quality not quantity) and knowing what sort of information they want to receive.

The database is the easy bit – most Pros will have, or at least have access to, a database of their clients with email addresses and then some information about them.  Facilities with advanced systems may even have a database that includes much more about individuals, such as date of birth, brand preferences, sales records and more.  All of this information can be used to ‘tag’ and categorise contacts so you can create not just one overall database, but multiple sub-databases within it.  You can then leverage this information to your advantage.

For example, you might have a sale on in your facility’s shop – you could send one email showcasing male-orientated products to the males in the database, and female-orientated products to the females.  Or you could even go by brand preference and send everyone who likes ‘Brand X’ one email with the latest Brand X offers and those who prefer ‘Brand Y’ with the latest Brand Y offers.

This is something that seems time-consuming but really doesn’t have to be – again with the ease with which you can create emails in these modern systems you can create one email, copy it, and then just update the wording and imagery for another target audience.

Once you have the database down then the next step is to ensure what you put out there is useful for them – if they don’t like a certain brand (or at least haven’t said they have an affinity to it) then it’s probably not worth sending them offers when something else might work a lot better.

Or perhaps you want to send them a newsletter with a digest of information – tap into their interests and what they like to read about – and if you don’t know, then send the database an email asking for their preferences so what they receive is relevant to them!

Again the thing to get right here is relevancy – if something is not relevant, interesting or of use to the end user they will not give it any time.  Your email will either be deleted or added to the junk mail folder, and that’s assuming they don’t just go and unsubscribe in general.

Whether it is promoting a tournament, curating content from contributors, adding posts to our social media presences, or creating content around our education and golf development work, it is undoubtedly marketing.

We see, hear and touch (and often taste smell) marketing all the time, and the world of golf is no exception to this.  Ever walked into a pro shop and been hit with offers on the latest gear?  Ever been playing and at the halfway house you wonder why there is a fan directing the smell of bacon out across the ninth green?  How about winning a prize in a tournament that’s been donated by an equipment manufacturer?

What I really like about marketing (to talk about it in very general terms) is that it can really be simple, clean and effective.

PR stunts and activities are often some of the simplest (and most fun) ways of generating interest in something and getting people talking – and that’s what PR is really all about.  Here are some examples:

The ALS ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’

Simple concept – you film yourself being doused in ice cold water, you donate to the cause, and you nominate three others to do the same and so on.   [You can view our Chief Executive, Ian’s challenge below:]

Here the marketing focus was on generating funds and encouraging people to share that message through social media.  The ALS Association went from a previous year of $1.7 million in donations to $13.3 million.

Tiger Woods Hits a Ball From Europe to Asia

To promote the Turkish Airlines World Golf Final in 2013, Tiger took to Istanbul’s Bosphorus Bridge and after closing one side from traffic he launched a ball across the bridge.

It might have caused chaos at rush hour in Istanbul but the stunt went all over the world generating a huge amount of PR for the event and for Turkish Airlines who are renowned for working with the biggest stars.

Bubba Watson and Oakley Make a Hovercraft…

Bubba has form in this area – barely a week goes by where his sponsors have made use of his personality and liveliness to promote products and services.  Two years ago Bubba teamed up with Oakley to create Bubba’s very own fully operational hovercraft golf cart.

In the video he wears Oakley product but, as with many things like this, it’s not about the product.  It’s about creating something that is fun, shareable and gets people talking.

It was released ahead of the 2013 Masters where Bubba would hope to defend his 2012 title and to date has had almost 9 million views.

Creating your own hovercraft might be a step too far but it is always worth looking out for examples and see how you could apply the principles to your business, club or brand.

You might not reach millions but it can be a cost effective way of showing a fun and innovative side to a business and activating PR (stunts or otherwise) could well generate excellent quality interest in what you do.

Seen any good examples of golf PR?  Feel free to send then to aw@CPG.com.

My Reading List

• ‘How Topgolf Flipped The Traditional Driving Range Model And Created A New Category Of Entertainment’ [Forbes.com] – http://eur.pe/1wUdQI6
• ‘Donald Trump: I’m Huge!’ [GolfDigest.com] – http://eur.pe/1MlTxoy
• ‘Public Relations Tips and Tricks for Your Business’ [Inc.com] – http://eur.pe/184KH13
• ‘My top tip for a great speech – Richard Branson’ [Virgin.com] – http://eur.pe/1x8Y2f7
• ‘The psychology of Web design: How colours, typefaces and spacing affect your mood’ [TheNextWeb.com] – http://eur.pe/1ELQs06
• ‘7 Goal-Setting Tips and Strategies for Social Media Marketers’ [Blog.Bufferapp.com] – http://eur.pe/1GyBrkH

This article originally featured in International Golf Pro News. Visit the IGPN Page to find out more and subscribe for free.

According to J.D. Power, 67% of consumers have used a company’s social media channel for customer service.

And when they do, they expect a fast response. Research cited by Jay Baer tells us that 42% of consumers expect a response with 60 minutes.

So, how’s your social media customer service?

For this post I was excited to research a set of 14 amazing examples of customer service using social media.

Let’s get started!

1. Samsung: A Unicycling Kangaroo and a Dragon Phone

As a loyal Samsung customer, Canadian Shane Bennett asked for a free unit of their latest, soon-to-launch phone. To sweeten his offer, he included a drawing of a roaring dragon.

Not surprisingly, Samsung said “no”. But to say thanks, they sent him their drawing of a unicycle-riding kangaroo.

Shane then shared both messages (and drawings) to Reddit where it went viral. In response, Samsung Canada sent him the phone he asked for – and customized it with his fire-breathing dragon artwork.

Takeaway: Have fun with customer interactions. Don’t take yourself too seriously.

2. Morton’s Steakhouse: Airport Delivery

While waiting for takeoff in Tampa, Florida, Peter Shankman jokingly asked Morton’s Steakhouse to deliver a porterhouse steak when he landed at Newark airport.

While departing the Newark airport to meet his driver, he was greeted by a Morton’s server with a 24 oz. Porterhouse steak, shrimp, potatoes, bread – the works. A full meal and no bill.

When you think of the logistics of pulling this off, it becomes even more impressive. The Community Manager needed to get approval and place the order. It needed to be prepared and then driven by the server to the airport, to the correct location and at the right time. All in less than three hours.

Some of the comments on Peter’s post suggest that this isn’t an anomaly. Another reader shares his experience of ordering a baked potato and getting a full steak meal – delivered and for free.

Takeaway: Do something unexpected for a loyal customer – when they want it most.

3. Gaylord Opryland: Sleep-Inducing Clock Radio

After numerous stays at Nashville’s Opryland Resort, Christina McMenemy wanted her own spa-sound clock radio that comes standard in each room. The sound helped her sleep better than ever, and she couldn’t find that model anywhere. So she asked the hotel for help finding it.

Turns out, that model was exclusive to the Gaylord hotels. She thought that was the end of it, and went to her conference.

Upon returning to her room that evening, she found a gift waiting: the spa clock and a handwritten card. The staff had given her the product she was unable to find. Not only did they make a long term customer very happy, they also received significant media coverage for their act of kindness.

Takeaway: Make customers happy one at a time.

A quick note on these first three examples

While it’s great to give away phones, steak dinners, and clock radios, this might not be sustainable customer service.

Why not? When other, loyal customers hear what these companies did, they might expect the same treatment. Can Morton’s deliver a free steak dinner to the airport for every customer who asks? Can Gaylord hotels give every loyal guest a free clock radio?

A more sustainable approach is to provide outstanding customer service on a daily basis. These next examples have lessons that can be implemented right away and on a consistent basis.

4. JetBlue: Feeling the Customer’s Pain

During a four-hour flight, Esaí Vélez’s seatback TV gave him nothing but static – while the rest of the passengers had normally functioning screens. How did he respond? He tweeted a complaint to JetBlue. Nothing inflammatory, but he was clearly disappointed.

How did JetBlue respond? While they could have made an excuse or even ignored his tweet, they didn’t. They took his side and empathized with him.

“Oh no! That’s not what we like to hear! Are all the TVs out on the plane or is it just yours?”

After he confirms that it was just his TV that was out, they respond:

“We always hate it when that happens. Send us a DM with your confirmation code to get you a credit for the non-working TV.”

Not only do they imagine his frustration, but they also offer him a credit for his trouble.

What was the result? Just 23 minutes after his complaint, he tweets: “One of the fastest and better Customer Service: @JetBlue! Thanks and Happy Thanksgiving”

Takeaway: Put yourself in your customer’s shoes when responding to complaints.

5. Delta Hotels: Room With an Ugly View

While attending the #PSEWEB conference in Vancouver, Mike McCready tweeted that, while he liked his room at the Delta, the view wasn’t so nice. He didn’t tag the hotel, and he wasn’t asking for anything.

Within an hour, Delta responded – offering a room with a better view. And when Mike returned to his room after the conference, he found a dish of sweets and a handwritten card from the staff at his hotel. It made such an impact that he wrote a post about it – the very same day.

Takeaway: Set up a social listening strategy to listen to all customer conversations.

6. Waterstones: Man Locked in London Bookstore

While every customer comment is important, some are going to be a little more urgent than others. Like locking a customer in your store.

This happened to David Willis last year at Waterstones Trafalgar Square store. He tweeted:

Not surprisingly, this tweet went viral, with 16,000+ retweets and 12,000+ likes. Because someone was monitoring Waterstones Twitter account, they were able to tweet 80 minutes later that they had freed their previously captive customer. Imagine how this could have turned out, if Waterstones customer service had stopped listening for the day.

Takeaway: Always listen to customer conversations.

7. Contextly: Customer Onboarding

Before I do business with a new company, I like to see if anyone is listening. It gives me confidence that they’ll be there if I have a problem or question.

When I was looking for a premium related-content service, I signed up for a free trial account with Contextly. The process was smooth, and I was excited about the app, so I tweeted about it. They responded with a positive, helpful tweet.

As a result, I’m confident that they are interested in me and will help me if I have a question with the app.

Takeaway: Use social media to streamline customer onboarding.

8. Xbox Support: Elite Tweet Fleet

Back in 2010, Xbox added a dedicated Twitter account. Since then, their Elite Tweet Fleet has posted more than two million support tweets. In fact, when I visited their account page, they were averaging two tweets per minute! And they have a team of 27 support experts.

Any company that assigns a dedicated Twitter account (and 27 people to manage it) is amazing to me. Check out some of their interactions:

• The support team addressed an issue with a user and then initiated a follow-up message nine days later. This is outstanding, given the volume of users they interact with on an hourly basis.
• This user tweeted a thank-you message about a replacement Xbox.
• One follower tweeted a custom greeting card, entitled: “To my good friends: Xbox.”

Takeaway: Be committed to your social media customer service.

9. Nike: Respond Kindly to Confused Customers

Nike Support is one of the strongest customer service accounts on Twitter. They feature a dedicated Twitter account, support seven days a week and in seven languages (English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, German & Japanese.)

An example of their approach is here in this customer interaction: A customer contacts them to ask for help finding an order number. Although the question was unclear Nike’s customer support made the customer feel cared for. And when the customer realized they had the information all along, their response is super supportive.

Takeaway: Be kind, even when it’s not your fault.

10. Seamless: Pay Attention to Every Comment

Seamless is an online service for ordering food from local restaurants. Food orders are full of variables and when you add in time frame and delivery – it has the potential to be a nightmare. To manage customer service, they have an active Twitter account where customers can share their love and voice their complaints.

In a recent comment, a customer tells Seamless that on his recent order he received white rice, instead of brown. He wasn’t upset – he said: “Don’t mind terribly, just FYI.”

In response, Seamless asks for the order number so they can check into it. In response, the customer tweets:

Takeaway: Pay attention to all customer service issues. Passive complaints that are left unaddressed can easily cause a rift between the vendor and customer.

11. My Starbucks Idea: Listen and Harvest Ideas

As a way to listen to customers – and get tons of great new ideas – Starbucks created My Starbucks Idea. To date, customers have submitted more than 210,000 unique ideas. To support this program, they have a dedicated Twitter account. It is a great place for users to share their observations and coffee wishes.

A couple of the recent ideas include solar cell equipped umbrellas for device charging and morning coffee delivery (looks like it’s going to happen).

Takeaway: Make it easy for customers to tell you what they want. Listen to everyone and implement the winning ideas.

12. Sainsburys: Fishy Exchange

Sainsbury’s is one of the largest supermarkets in the UK. They’ve got a pretty active Twitter feed with lots of customer questions about products and sale prices. The tone of the account is helpful and positive.

There are lots of good examples of interactions. But none better than Fishy Sainsburys. This fishy exchange took place over a three hour period, between David (Sainsbury’s Twitter manager) and Marty (a customer). The puns will make you groan – many made me laugh out loud. Remember, this interaction was not a marketing play but a real conversation between the company and a customer.

Takeaway: Let your customer service team have fun.

13. Hubspot: Every Day of the Year

Holidays can be challenging times for customer service. When customer service closes for the observance of a holiday in one country, users from other countries will still have questions.

This recently happened with a HubSpot customer in London. She had workflow issues and couldn’t contact anyone at the US-based call center because it was closed for American Thanksgiving. When she took her concern to Twitter, she found a customer service representative in Ireland.

Like many companies in this list, HubSpot has a dedicated customer service Twitter account. To manage international schedules and time zones, they have two Dublin-based representatives and another three in Cambridge, MA.

Takeaway: Be available for your customers.

14. Buffer: Personal and Kind

If you take a quick look at Buffer’s Tweets & replies feed you’ll see how engaging their customer service is. Responses are personal and friendly. And they are usually signed by the team member you’re chatting with.

For example, my wife has been impressed that when she mentions them in a tweet, they acknowledge it, even using her name in their response.

Takeaway: Treat each person with respect. Use your name (and theirs) when interacting with customers online.

What we can learn from these customer service examples

Here are some key takeaways:

1. Choose a primary channel for customer service (many use Twitter) and assign staff to manage it.
2. Decide on your schedule of availability (set hours and days) and post it on your profile.
3. Have each tweet/post signed by the person who sent it. This is done well by Xbox Support, Sainsbury’s, and Buffer.
4. Remember that customers might contact you any number of ways – not necessarily on the channel you chose. Make sure you monitor other social channels for questions and conversations about your brand.
5. Establish a tone for your social media conversations. Generally speaking, you’ll want first to empathize with your customers problem. Stephen Covey said it best: “Seek first to understand…”

I recommend following a few of these companies on Twitter. Watch how they handle customer complaints and comments. I’ve learned so much doing this.

What to do next: Review these points with your customer service team. Decide which apply to your business right now and assign a team member to implement them.

Over to you

Have you had an amazing customer service experience via social media? How are you using social media to provide customer service? I would love to hear both in the comments!

What’s amazing, though, is that only 9% of small businesses in the U.S. are actively using YouTube, and my hunch is that figure would be pretty accurate worldwide, too.

So why aren’t businesses investing in YouTube?

In short, because video is harder to produce than a blog post or an image.

Or at least that’s the perception many of us have.

In reality, though, video is becoming much easier and cheaper to create. This means there’s a huge opportunity for your business on YouTube.

If you’ve been debating getting started on YouTube or have maybe experimented a little and not yet found your feet, this post is for you. Throughout this post we’ll dive into:

• The basics of getting your account set up
• How to create a YouTube channel
• How to create the perfect channel art
• Top tips for optimizing your channel.

Ready to start? Let’s go.

How to create a YouTube channel

Creating a YouTube channel using your Google account

If you have a Google account, you can watch, share and comment on YouTube content. However, Google accounts don’t automatically create YouTube channels. Getting a new channel set up is a simple and quick process, though.

1. Go to YouTube and sign in

Head over to YouTube.com and click ‘sign in’ in the top right corner of the page:

Then log in using the Google Account you’d like your channel to be associated with:

2. Head over to your YouTube settings

In the top right corner of the screen, click on your profile icon and then the ‘Settings’ cog icon.

3. Create your channel

Under your settings, you’ll see the option to “Create a channel,” click on this link:

Next, you’ll have the option to create a personal channel or a create a channel using a business or other name. For this example, we’ll choose the business option:

Now, it’s time to name your channel and select a category. The channel options available include:

• Product or Brand
• Company Institution or Organization
• Arts, Entertainment or Sports
• Other

Note: a new Google+ page will also be created for your brand. 

Congratulations! You’ve just created a new YouTube channel 🙌

Next, let’s fill out all the information and create some channel art to get your page looking awesome (click here to jump to the next section).

How to create a YouTube channel if you don’t already have a Google account

If you don’t already have a Google account set up, you’ll need to create one before you get started on YouTube. To do this, simply follow the below steps:

1. Head to YouTube.com
2. Click ‘Sign In’
3. Now, choose the option to create a Google account
4. Follow the steps to create your Google account

Now, you’re all set up with a Google account and can follow the above steps to create a YouTube channel.

How to create YouTube channel art

YouTube channel art is essentially YouTube’s version of the Facebook cover photo. Channel art features in a prominent place on your YouTube channel, which means it’s absolutely vital for any YouTube channel to use customized art to share your personality or more about your brand with your audience.

Here’s an example of Gary Vaynerchuk’s YouTube channel art:

Gary is well-known for his public speaking at conferences and for sharing all he knows about marketing and building businesses with his audience. This is reflected in his cover photo, which displays Gary in mid-flow giving a presentation at what seems to be a large event. The inclusion of his handle @garyvee helps users to identify him on other social chanels and his signature branding makes the art feel personal.

Here’s what you need to know to create striking YouTube channel art…

The perfect sizes for YouTube channel art

The best place to start with your channel art is with the optimal image size that works across multiple devices. For the best results, YouTube recommends uploading a single 2560 x 1440 pixel image.

• Minimum width: 2048 X 1152 px. This is the “safe area”, where text and logos are guaranteed not to be cut off when displayed on different devices.
• Maximum width: 2560 X 423 px. This means that the “safe area” is always visible; the areas to each side of the channel art are visible depending on the viewer’s browser size.
• File size: 4MB or smaller recommended.

YouTube also supplies a Channel Art Template in both PNG and PSD formats to help your figure out the perfect layout for your channel are and how it’ll look across platforms:

Here’s an example of how I used this template to create some channel art for the Buffer YouTube account:

And here’s how it looks across various platforms:

2 top tips for YouTube channel art

1. Ensure any text and logos are within the safe area

The text and logo safe area is the 1546 x 423 pixel space at the center of the YouTube channel art template. This is the area that will be displayed on YouTube when your channel is viewed on desktop screens.

Be careful to ensure any important information such as branding, text, taglines, and key images are within this space so that it’s always displayed as part of your channel art across every device.

2. Consider your channel links

YouTube enables you to add links to your channel and these are displayed in the bottom right corner of your channel art. For example, check the bottom right of the channel art below:

When creating your channel art, it’s important to think about the space these links take up and ensure you don’t have anything important (such as logos) occupying that space within your design.

How to add art to your YouTube channel

If you’re just setting up your YouTube channel, you’ll notice the channel art space is blank with a clear call to action to add your art:

Once you’ve clicked this link, you’ll see a popup window that gives you the option to upload your own custom channel art. If you’d like to, you can also choose to use one of YouTube’s templates from the “Gallery” or choose to upload one of your photos from Google+.

Adjusting the crop

Once you’ve uploaded your channel art, YouTube allows you to adjust the cropping of your image so that you can ensure it’s all lined up correctly.

This crop screen is very handy for checking how your design will look on various platforms. The clear section in the middle of the grid shows you the content that will be displayed on mobile and desktop and the rest of the image shows the image that will be displayed on TVs.

Once you’re happy with the way your cover art looks, click “Select” and your channel art will be added to your channel and saved.

Changing your current channel art

If you already have some channel art in place and would like to update it, head over to your channel homepage. From here, move your mouse over your cover art and you’ll notice a little edit button appear in the top right-hand corner:

Once you’ve clicked on this icon, you can update your channel art.

This video from YouTube also explains how to add and edit your channel art:

How to add your channel icon

Each channel also has space for a profile icon.Your channel icon shows over your channel art banner. It’s the icon that shows next to your videos and channel on YouTube watch pages. The key here is to select something that will look good at very small resolutions –  many brands opt to use their logo here.

Your channel icon should be 800 x 800 pixels and one of the following formats: JPG, GIF, BMP or PNG file (no animated GIFs).

To update your channel icon, head to your channel homepage and hover over your current channel icon until you see the edit icon appear. Click on that icon and you’ll be able to upload a new icon:

5 ways to enhance your channel

1. Optimize your description

YouTube gives you a space on your channel to write a little about your brand and the content you share on YouTube. The description is limited to 1,000 characters, so you have a little room to be creative here.

The copy in your channel description won’t just appear on your channel page. It’s indexed by search engines and can also be featured across YouTube in suggested channel categories. A good tactic is to include some relevant keywords and CTAs within the opening lines of your description.

2. Add links to your channel

We briefly mentioned channel links earlier in this post and I’d love to share with you how to add these links in 4 super-quick steps:

1. The first step is to head to your channel homepage and click on the ‘cog’ icon next to your subscriber count:

2. Next, you’ll see a Channel Settings lightbox appear. Here you need to toggle on the option labeled “Customize the layout of your channel”:

3. Now that you’ve enabled customizations on your channel, pop back to your channel homepage and you’ll now see the option to “Edit Links” under the settings menu on your cover art:

4. Click the “Edit Links” option and you’ll then be taken to the “About” section of your channel. Here you’ll have the option to add links and choose how many are displayed over your cover art:

3. Add a channel trailer

As soon as visitors land on your channel, you want to give them a picture of the type of content your channel covers and why they’ll want to subscribe and check out your videos. A channel trailer is the perfect way to do this.

A short, to-the-point channel trailer can be a great way to introduce people to your content. A channel trailer should grab attention as soon as it starts and also represent the type of content you create on YouTube.

It’s also important to think about the description you add to this video as it features prominently on your channel homepage.

(These trailers only appear for people who are not yet subscribed to your channel.)

Here are a couple of great examples:

Gary Vaynerchuk

SoulPancake

4. Add your contact details (email address)

If you’re using YouTube as a business or a creator, it can be great to have your contact details on hand for anyone who is interested in your work. YouTube has a section on each channel profile for you to list your contact details for business inquiries.

This can be found under the “About” section of your channel. To find it, go to your channel homepage, click “About” from the navigation and then scroll down to “Details.” Here you’ll see the option to share your email address:

Over to you

Thanks for reading. It’s been great fun to dive into how to create a YouTube channel and I hope you picked up one or two tips from this post. If you create a YouTube channel of your own or already have one up and running, I’d love to hear from you and learn from your experience in the comments below.

In the 21st century the job-seeking process is complex and quick.  A career path can present itself to you in the blink of an eye, and can disappear just as quickly.

The development of platforms such as LinkedIn have shown that it is not just a paper CV that shows off who you are and what you can do.  It’s now possible to find out every bit of detail needed about a potential employee to make an educated decision as to whether they should get a job or not.

It is widely accepted that employers will likely Google an applicant as soon as they get their name.  What comes up in the search can be a window into their lives – whether you like it or not.  To ensure your results are ones that play in your favour, here are some tips to promote yourself better online and ensure a search of your name makes it more likely that you will be hired…

1. Google Yourself

The best place to start – do what an employer might do (ideally on a different computer than your own to see what someone else might see).

This will show you what they might see and could give you a good place to start when identifying where you are visible and what you should do about it.

2. Optimise Your LinkedIn Profile (Or Create One First!)

Firstly, if you are not on LinkedIn then you’re doing it wrong. Join LinkedIn.  It is a fantastic [FREE] resource where you can lay down as much or as little information about yourself, connect with people you know and people you want to know, and ultimately use as a live, digital and interactive CV.

Second, make sure your profile is complete using LinkedIn’s built-in step-by-step guide, add a great photo and take your time on your bio.  Then get connecting – sync your account with your phone or contacts and start by adding people you know.  Then once you have a network the platform will automatically start suggesting jobs and new connections for you – then you can start to action these connections and see where leads might come from.

3. Write a Blog

What better way to express yourself and show-off your expertise and knowledge in your area than writing about it.  You can write anything you want and tailor it to your intended are of work to show a) that you care about what you do/want to do, b) are knowledgeable and have an opinion on it, and c) you are computer/digitally savvy enough to get out there and set it up [but don’t worry it’s actually pretty easy to do with services such as WordPress and Tumblr].

4. Check Your Settings

Go through all of your social accounts and check your privacy settings – you may be happy for someone to discover your Facebook profile through a Google search, but are you happy that they can look at your 10-year old photos from University parties? Probably not.

Settings can often be tucked away or a little tough to root out, but platforms nowadays have great flexibility and control for their users when it comes to privacy – take time to work out what the different on and off switches mean.

5. Make the Most of Your Biography

Your Twitter bio, LinkedIn short biography and any other place where you can add a public biography are what people will see first.  Take time to make this as good as possible – you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, but people often do anyway so make sure yours looks great.

6. Reverse Engineer The Search

Work out what an employer might look at that is connected to you – go through the process yourself and make sure everything is as you wish at each stage of a search.  Think about what they want to see and tailor your profiles to that.

Plus, turn the tables on a potential employer and look at their company profiles, connect with people from that company, or even explore their LinkedIn profiles.  They will no doubt do it to you, so you can do it to them.  Going into an interview with knowledge and info on the bosses, co-workers or interviewees will almost certainly be useful in your search.

This article originally featured in International Golf Pro News. Visit the IGPN Page to find out more and subscribe for free.

These stakeholders include your very own army of students that you coach and members/visitors to your facilities, and leveraging this band of merry golfers can help golf’s cause, as well as your own.

As you will read in this issue of IGPN, there are many health and well-being benefits that come from taking part in the sport, so we’ll use these as a basis for getting your army on-board and spreading the gospel of golf…

Get All Your Staff Involved

You and your facility’s staff all need to be aligned with your plans and also embody exactly what you are after from your ambassadors. They need knowledge and information in order to reflect what you want to portray.

Every staff member that could have an interaction with a client or customer (and even those who might not) can be educated with top-line information about the benefits of golf to different demographics’ health and wellbeing.

Short, sharp bits of info that they can be armed with when speaking to people about the sport and why they should get involved.

Promote the Benefits in Your Facility and to your Clients

A key thing with getting people on the same page as you is ensuring they are aware of information and engaged with it.

Create some resources [the Confederation of Professional Golf will have some soon for you to use as well] that you can use on noticeboards around your facility, or in your Pro Shop for example, that show the benefits of the sport. Materials like posters, infographics, leaflets, etc. are great items to get in front of people.

Having on-site information is the first step – then you need to get people engaged with the materials so including a section in regular email blasts to your databases can help support your actions and activities and can also allow you to share great examples of how golf is benefitting people in various different forms such as news items, feature articles or videos.

Create a Programme or Team

A great way of getting the message out there would be to build a team of ambassadors from your facility with people from key demographics represented.

A good place to start could be with you in the middle as the group leader and include a couple of members of staff from around the business along with a couple of males and females from differing ends of the age spectrum. Ideally these people will be the opinion leaders from the facility – when these people speak or act, others pay attention.

The individuals you pick should be willing to join in with the activity and embody the message you are trying to get across. They can act as on the ground troops for your armies to infiltrate their demographics and get the messaging out there to educate others and spread the word.

Activate Your Ambassadors

Once you have a team of ambassadors who are exemplifying your message then you need to activate them and leverage their knowledge, peer groups and influence within them.

For example you could have your more ‘youthful’ ambassadors promote a fun day or charity fair at the facility to their social groups and make sure that the event is on their level and of interest.

Or you could record some interviews or write a short blog post using your ambassadors as case studies to show how their social, mental and physical health might have benefitted from playing. This could go on your website, blog and shared on social media and you could even contact your local media to see if they would like to use the information in a piece about golf’s health benefits.

Once you have some ambassadors on your side then they can be a really useful asset to you to help promote the benefits of the sport as well as your own facility and services.

This article originally featured in International Golf Pro News. Visit the IGPN Page to find out more and subscribe for free.

That also means more than 359 million potential competitors also vying for their attention, so you need to play smart by giving off all the right signals. Here are some useful steps for snaring your top target:

1) It’s All In the Headline

Route one to any potential employer’s heart is through your headline. Many recruiters use key words to search for potential hires, so including the right keywords in your title will often determine whether or not you show up in their rankings.

2) More Is Always More

The more skills and endorsements, the more examples of your work and the more information you include about yourself, the more ways you’ll stand to crop up in someone’s search. The ‘Profile Strength’ circle to the right of your profile is a good gauge of how much work is left to do.

3) Pick Your Friends

Recommendations are hard to come by and they are one of the things people immediately look for on any profile. A sudden spate of new endorsements looks like you’ve drafted in a few friends for a favour; what you really want are recommendations from high-ranking professionals, ideally spread out over a longer period.

4) Put Yourself About

While your aim is not to dominate everybody’s social media feeds, there’s no harm in raising your visibility. Commenting on posts and contributing plenty of your own will keep you in the mind’s eye of employers you’ve already connected with. Many recruiters also scope out industry groups and discussions for hidden gems.

5) Stalk Your Prey

With most companies now established on LinkedIn, it’s just a question of slowly infiltrating their ranks. Start by following your dream employer: you’ll begin receiving their updates, which you can set about peppering with informed, insightful comments. Then expand your network with the right people by connecting with employees past and present.

While there are more conventional ways of bagging your dream job, LinkedIn can be a surprisingly effective enhancement to your job search. Whether or not social media is your thing, a little tweaking here and there could prove a sound investment.

This content appears courtesy of Abintegro, experts in career management, transition technology & e-learning for today’s modern, mobile and technology-savvy workforce – Find out more at www.abintegro.com

Credit: Business Life; LinkedIn; Business Insider

1. Continued Use of Mobile

Global usage of mobile Internet devices crossed over desktop usage in 2014 and continues to grow at a higher rate and there are now more devices on Earth than humans. By the end of 2016 Tablets will exceed 10% of global mobile data traffic, and by 2019 smartphones will reach the 75% of mobile data traffic milestone.

What does it mean?

• Optimise your website for mobile/different screen sizes and orientations and think about how people will interact with it.
• Any message you communicate, be it via email, website, social media, forum, intranet, etc. should also be easily read/consumed on any device.
• Test, test, and test. Have due diligence in checking web pages, email communications, and social media updates across devices.

2. Marketing Automation

A trend expected to grow this year is automation (and to some extent personalisation) – the 2016 consumer is more attuned to messages that are personalised and relevant to them; they want to be engaged with, not sold to.

What does it mean?

• You need to be collecting the right information, not necessarily more. When users sign-up/register/join you need to ensure you gather accurate data and also the information most relevant to you? Take a step back and ensure you gather only the relevant information you need and will actually use.
• Look at the small things within your communications – for example can you add users’ names to mass mailouts (e.g. merge tags in Mailchimp) to personalise a message?
• The importance of targeting has never been more important – is the message you’re sending relevant to all the people in your audience? If not then how can you break it down?

3. Content Continues to Dominate

The content marketing area of communications has really grown significantly showing people want to develop a relationship based on trust and relevancy with a brand or organisation. A survey in 2015 showed that 86% of B2B organizations have a strategic content marketing strategy, whilst another showed only 23% percent of consumers trust content from companies who they are not involved with, but if the source is a company they have a relationship with, that number nearly doubles to 43%.

What does it mean?

• Develop a strategy to give direction to what you do. A strategy will let you work out why you might need to develop content, who it is targeted towards, and what it should do and be in order to meet those requirements.
• Make sure you appeal to your users’ needs and wants (and do the research to find out what they might be).
• Have patience – it takes time to build trust with an audience even if they are heavily invested in your brand or organisations already. Keep it consistent in terms of subject matter, frequency and distribution.

This article originally featured in International Golf Pro News. Visit the IGPN Page to find out more and subscribe for free.

We have many people working on various elements of developing golf across the continent and further afield including coaching, development of programmes, monitoring of standards etc.  But something I can assist with in my capacity as Communications Manager is two-fold:

1 – Communicating Best Practice Examples and Initiatives

Golf development activities are taking place all the time all over the world but it is safe to say that very few of them will be exactly the same.  Of course general concepts and ideas are followed but locally they will be heavily tailored to the market.

Where communications can help is in developing a library of good practice examples that can then be applied to other places – the best bits of one programme and the best of another could mix and be adapted to create a very effective activity somewhere else.

These resources can be collected and shared effectively with organisations that are interested in creating an initiative or programme with, for example, the assistance of the Confederation of Professional Golf’s Golf Development Professionals and Education Committee.

2 – Raising Awareness of Development Activity

Communications then plays a part in sharing information and updates about development activities.  Using case studies and sharing success stories helps to bolster the resources mentioned earlier but it also gives coverage to specific initiatives that can help them.

A project or programme may also want to gain coverage to promote their work and its outcomes, promote the host facilities, the key supporters, etc.  Often programmes will be supported by commercial entities so promotion will give them coverage and hopefully spur on continued investment and support.

There are some excellent examples of golf development activities out there and plenty put a strong emphasis on promoting what they do.

A good example of strong promotion and coverage from an initiative is this week’s Drive, Chip & Putt Championship – The PGA of America, USGA and Masters Tournament’s nationwide youth golf development program final.

Of course three major organisations in the game have a lot of resources behind them but their methods of communication can still be learnt from and replicated.

Daily articles from the finals, blog posts, interviews with competitors, videos of the event, and fantastic imagery all make for a well formulated comms plan – take a look at www.drivechipandputt.com for examples of how to build content and communicate it around an initiative.

This article originally featured in International Golf Pro News. Visit the IGPN Page to find out more and subscribe for free.

@BizzWriter

Marketing and public relations are vital to growing a business and to sustaining its profitability over the long term. Without either, your firm can quickly disappear from the public consciousness, and your sales and profits can plummet.

Not everyone can afford to hire a PR firm, but that doesn’t mean you can’t develop relationships with important influencers, generate more awareness about your company, and stand out from the crowd. The truth is that you can–and in very cost-effective fashion.

I recently asked Amanda Van Nuys–vice president at the Bateman Group, an agency that integrates PR, social media, content marketing, and analytics–for her advice on how anyone can do PR like a pro. Here’s what she told me.

1. Identify what makes your story remarkable

Interesting stories will always be the currency of effective public relations programs. The trick is figuring out what about your company will most likely appeal to journalistic instincts: Do you have an unusual founding story? Do you have a truly innovative, externally validated product? How do you fit into the larger market landscape, and what makes you different from everyone else?

2. Define a brand voice

Before you start your PR and social media engines, consider the tone and voice of your brand. Think of your brand as if it’s a person. Is it irreverent? Thoughtful? Funny? Friendly? Formal? Decide on a voice and stick to it so your customers and fans know what to expect when they engage with you. By clearly articulating a brand voice, people get a sense of what your company stands for–beyond your products or services–and can develop an authentic connection with you.

3. Ask your customers to the party

It’s one thing to say that your company has created value for customers, but it’s quite another thing when your customer says it. Make sure to mention the possibility of future PR opportunities early on in the relationship (even bake it into your contract), and then do everything you can to make and keep a customer happy. Once a customer is willing to talk to the media and value has been realized–especially when the return on investment can be quantified–then you have a great story hook that reporters love.

4. Make data your best friend

Reporters and influencers love data, particularly if it makes a counterintuitive or surprising point. If you have the opportunity to do a survey or glean data in other ways, then use it to your advantage, as Bateman Group recently did for client Animoto. You can use stats to validate a market shift, emerging trend, or changing buyer sentiment. Once you have data, repackage it into an infographic or other visual content, which generally gets high social shares.

5. Focus on reporters that matter

It’s often said that if you can influence the top 10 voices in a given market, they’ll influence everyone else. Identify the reporters or bloggers who will make a difference for your business. Follow them on Twitter, read the articles they write and share, and understand what they consider newsworthy. Reach out in a targeted, personalized way to start a meaningful conversation.

6. Be social for an hour each day

If you’re going to engage with customers, prospects, and reporters on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and other social media, then dedicate at least an hour in your day for social time. Post timely and thoughtful content, acknowledge comments, and be responsive to questions. Start conversations with your content and social posts rather than just broadcasting your opinions.

7. Follow and DM reporters on Twitter

We’re all bombarded with emails, and who has the time to check voice mail anymore? Sometimes the most effective way to reach a reporter is to direct message (DM) him or her on Twitter. Many reporters have their eyes on Twitter all day long looking for breaking news. If they’re active on Twitter, engage them there.

8. Make LinkedIn your new publishing platform

LinkedIn is becoming the place for executives and thought leaders to post their professional content. If you post something on your blog or write a contributed article, then repost the same content on your personal profile and your company’s LinkedIn profile. Write a catchy headline and use a friendly tone, focusing on helpful, relevant content–practical tips and tricks work particularly well. This is a great way to build credibility with customers, prospects, and reporters.

9. Ask employees to help spread the word

Consider every employee at your company an ambassador for your brand. Set some basic professional ground rules, and then encourage your team to spread the word about an article featuring your company, or a LinkedIn post that you’ve published. Beyond creating internal enthusiasm, it’s an easy way to amplify your PR success and help reel in new business or top talent.

This article originally appeared on Inc.com – to view the original article visit http://eur.pe/1B1XNq6.

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This is something Tribal Media‘s Mel Kirk faces on a daily basis as her business goes through rapid expansion, and being a self-confessed geek, Mel understands how technology can help people in any business, so we asked her to share some of her favourite digital tools that she uses on a daily basis to ensure she stays ahead of the game…

Google Drive

This allows me to collaborate on documents with my team, which is great as it’s updated in real-time and because it’s saved on the cloud can be accessed on any device in any location, which really speeds up the process when multiple people are working on one document.

Google.com/Drive

Feedly

A great tool for consuming content from your favorite news sites and blogs, particularly with the recent death of Google Reader. With the ability to read articles offline, this is really handy for catching up on news during the morning commute.

Feedly.com/Drive

Tweetdeck

Handy for managing multiple social media presences from one location, scheduling future updates, but also keeping on top of mentions of brands/organisations that you manage.

Tweetdeck.com

Pocket

A beautifully designed bookmarking service that allows you to save articles offline to go back to read at a later date.

GetPocket.com

Salesforce

We use this to manage all of our contacts, as it can be accessed by any member of the team, is automatically updated and allows us to save every piece of correspondence that we have with our contacts. In turn this means that any one of the team can pick up a conversation with a contact should someone be out of the office sick, for example. What’s great is that it’s also stored in the cloud and therefore accessible from any location.

Salesforce.com

Storify

The best tool out there for collating tweets, blog posts, Instagram pictures, YouTube videos etc. into one simple story. We use this to showcase our work and the coverage that we’ve gained for our clients/campaigns all in one place, and then we can access and share it to anyone at any time.

Storify.com

Pinterest

We use this less conventionally than most. We use this as a way of visualising campaign ideas, especially creating mood boards for events. This makes it much easier for our clients to imagine what could be produced and takes less time and effort than a traditional mood board.

Pinterest.com

Evernote

This has a few uses – you can save articles or links for viewing on any device at any time a bit like Pocket, but it also lets you save notes, images, and almost anything else to different notebooks based on personal or business use, or for different projects or subject matter. I know the Confederation of Professional Golf team use this one a lot in their day-to-day work.

Evernote.com

EasilyDo

Great little iPhone app for putting all of your “handy stuff” together. It will proactively check traffic before you drive somewhere, warn you of bad weather, organise contacts, merge duplicates, file receipts, remind you of conference calls with all of the details – It’s like my digital PA!

EasilyDo.com