How to kick-start your Twitter profile

Twitter, with an estimated 310,000,000 unique monthly visitors, is the second largest social media platform and its potential should not be underestimated. But getting any of these 310,000,000 visitors to actually show an interest in your business page can be nigh on impossible.

Why?

Well to begin with, when you start your twitter page, nobody knows you exist. To change this you will need to begin customizing your page and filling in all of your contact information. Be sure to have a profile picture, cover photo, and a short business description. Also make sure you do include a location, as this is extremely important if you want people to find you.

Hootsuite – A mouthful of cheer!

I hope you watched all of that, as let’s be honest, could there have been a better start to a blog about Hootsuite? I think not!

Social Media really is a Pantomime Horse!

Rainbow pantomimes, based in Wolverhampton, has been running for over 20 years and puts on a Pantomime performance in the last week of January every year. I have been involved with Rainbow since 2011 where I started to help backstage during show week. This involved being a stagehand, or as I like to call it, a backstage ninja. Basically I was the person who you wouldn’t see taking on and off all of the scenery.

For the past 3 years, I have been extremely busy with University and A Levels amongst other things, but this year I finally got round to helping Rainbow with their marketing. They have never had a dedicated marketing member before and I was offered this opportunity as I was constantly moaning about its lack of digital presence.

6 Fundamentals of great social media management

The 6th conference I attended at MWL14 was led by Julia Monro, head of social media and PR at Pret a Manger. Julia has had a seemingly fortunate business career however it is one that is extremely aspirational. As a graduate at M&S, Julia wanted to takeover/get involved with Social media and thus became an online marketer. This position, which involved video, social media and creating content elevated Julia to the position of Community manager, closely followed by a further promotion to the position of social media manager. This elevation took place over a 6 year period (2008-2014) and Julia has now sought pastures new in her role at Pret.  So whilst this experience could be a one-off, it does show that progression in large corporate business is possible, even if you may need to be in the right place at the right time.

We’ve got a ‘FACEBOOK’ down!

Between 8am and 10am this morning, Facebook, the all seeing all hearing Facebook, CRASHED! Can you believe it!?

From reports it seemed that a large number of users could not access the site as they encountered this screen:

Others however could simply not log in! This seemingly apocalyptic occurrence led users turning to other forms of social media, to vent both their anger and humour regards this happening. At 09:27am, Over 11.4 thousand tweets contained the #facebookdown. This figure rose to 44.2 thousand at 09:55am, and again jumped to 66 thousand at 12:38am.

Surprisingly however, the majority of tweets and content that has been published thus far, has more focus on making light out of this situation, with users understanding that their reliance of Facebook as a communication tool may have gone a bit too far.

So much so, there is now a separate second hashtag (#Whenfacebookwasdown) which is receiving thousands of posts per second. Twitter can’t be too happy about this! Their arch-enemy, trending globally on their own social media platform, what could be worse! So whilst Facebook may have lost revenue during the outage, the thousands of tweets and publicity that this has caused, will no doubt be of great benefit and also interest to Facebook’s Marketing representatives.

Heres a few of my favourite #whenfacebookwasdown tweets:

Whether you like it or not, Facebook is now back up and running, and whilst many believe that twitter is the real winner here, just think about the free publicity Facebook has received from a rival platform. I can’t think of a time when Twitter has ever gained so much awareness on Facebook?

You never know, this scenario could form the basis of a new Channing Tatum and Jamie Fox movie!

James