On Thursday, January 26, three Best4u employees, including myself, attended a workshop on social media. This workshop was led by Amy van Son. Amy is a career and entrepreneurship coach; she also gives workshops on Prezi presentations and social media, among other things.
The evening began with introductions. Everyone briefly introduced themselves, stated their position within the company, and shared their motto. Why a motto? A motto makes it personal. For example, you see more and more mottos on business cards. The motto should be about yourself. This way, people reading it get an immediate impression of you.
Next, the workshop started with LinkedIn. Many people find LinkedIn too difficult, even though this is not the case at all! You may already know that LinkedIn is very different from Facebook and Twitter. LinkedIn is used for networking. You can build a large network there, which you may well be able to make extensive use of in the future!
Benefits of LinkedIn
- Easily build a network
- Easily get in touch with someone else (or, for example, a company) via someone else's network
- Online CV!
- You can see who has viewed your profile
- You are always being advertised.
- Industry peers, information, new clients, competitors, etc. can all be found on LinkedIn!
But now what!? You have your own profile. That is already the first step. But what about next? How do you proceed? What do I need to do? Before you start 'connecting' with other people, you need to make sure your profile is in order. Make sure you have a profile picture. If people see that you don't have a profile picture, you aren't interesting enough for them to look any further. But perhaps most importantly… Make sure your profile is visible! As Amy also clearly pointed out during the workshop, many people don't know that their profile (and profile picture) is not visible to everyone. You can easily turn this on or off via the settings (top right).
Tips for your profile:
- Motto in your profile
- Post blogs, upcoming events, new products, etc.
- Use LinkedIn to promote your business!
As Amy put it so beautifully during the workshop: “If you dream something, you will take the steps towards it. You can’t do it wrong, you just have to do it!”
After the explanation, tips, and fun facts about LinkedIn, it was Twitter's turn! Amy immediately gave a number of tips. Such as:
- Ensure a matching background
- Post a clear photo of yourself
- Use your own name (for example @amyvanson)
- In your 'bio', include words you want to be found for, and place your motto here as well!
- Place a URL link on your website (for example, from LinkedIn)
- Follow your competitor's followers
- Add the city where your company operates under location
Finally, Facebook was discussed. As an entrepreneur, you might think you already know everything about Facebook and Twitter, but there are always small things you can still do as a company. The first tip Amy immediately gave is that if you have a question about Facebook, you should never look it up on Facebook itself. Instead, do this on Google. If you do this on Facebook, 9 out of 10 times you will never get an answer to your question.
I also have a Facebook page for my business, so what now?
If you have created a page for your company, you cannot communicate with 'likes' (to put it that way). As a company, however, you can communicate with other companies. You might already be familiar with Facebook pages like 'I love …….. (for example, city name)'. If you like this as a company, you can post messages on this page. In short: this is simply free advertising. So, this is a smart tip to remember! 😉 Another tip from Amy: use YouTube! YouTube is the second largest search engine (after Google), so you can definitely use this! Make short videos of your products/company and post them on your Facebook page. Finally, I have two words that really came up during the workshop: positivity and activity. Be positive, towards the customer, but also in the messages you post. Be active on your social media accounts. The customer will notice that you, as a person or as a company, are active on your social media account. Consequently, you will stand out more!
In brief…
- 'Like' pages for free 'advertising'
- Use YouTube!
- Be active