Social Media: What is All the Fuss About? Stage 2

Stage Two: Research Social Media Platforms

Firstly, it’s worth setting the scene – according to OFCOM (August 2011), it took social media just four years to achieve 50% penetration of the UK population (in comparison, mobile phones took fifteen years to achieve this level of penetration).

It is easy to make assumptions, when it comes to social media usage. However, if you have a bit of time to do some research, it’s amazing how easy it is to access information that can be used for marketing planning. To speed up your decision making process, here are some key statistics:

Facebook

Econsultancy research has found that Facebook accounts for 47.86% of all social networking traffic in the UK. There are more than 30m Facebook users in this country, reaching nearly half of the population (49.9%).

From a business perspective, in the last year Facebook has increased its downstream to online retail sites by 12%. On top of this, 33% of social network users agree that they trust what they read on sites such as Facebook.

Most people are surprised to learn that there is a fairly even split between the age and gender of users (source: Facebook Insights):

Men                                      48.66%

Women                                51.34%

Age Demographics:

13 – 17 years old               13%

18 – 24 years old               24.5%

25 – 34 years old               25.5%

35 – 44 years old               17.5%

45+ years old                     19.5%

According to ComScore (Feb 2013), the median age of a UK Facebook user is 37.5 years.

Interestingly, to continue our ‘Laura Ashley’ theme, they have a Facebook Fan Page which has over 61,000 ‘Likes’ (https://www.facebook.com/lauraashleyofficial).

YouTube

The second largest UK social media site is the Google-owned video sharing platform, YouTube. This website accounts for 24.84% of traffic to social network sites (source: Experian Hitwise, March 2013).

According to Google’s official blog, YouTube users upload more than 48 hours of video every minute and they have 3 billion views a day (50% more than last year). Although watching videos is mainly seen as an entertainment activity, don’t underestimate the business benefits this platform can bring. Video can help improve your search rankings (SEO) and increase ecommerce conversion rates. Two examples of this can be found on Econsultancy’s website - equestrian sports supplier Ariat said that visits where a product video had been viewed showed a conversation rate 160% higher than visits without video views and U.S. shoe e-tailer Zappos found that sales increased by between 6% and 30% for items that included video product demonstrations.

Although these are both B2C companies, the biggest B2B success story from the use of video is Blendtec (the ‘will it blend?’ campaign). The company uploaded home-made product demonstration videos in 2006 and increased blender sales by 700% between 2006 – 2008.

YouTube’s user demographics can be found on ‘YouTube Insights for Audience’ and the majority of UK users are male (72.7%), aged 18-24 years old (40%).

Twitter

Although Twitter has 10m UK users, it only accounts for 1.63% of traffic to a social networking site (source: Econsultancy and Experian Hitwise). Like Facebook, the demographic spilt tends to be fairly even – 49% are Male and 51% are Female. Twitter users tend to be more well off than the rest of the population and use smartphone and tablet devices regularly (source: Ipsos Mori, July 2012). Age demographics are as follows:

15 – 24 years old               16%

25 – 34 years old               16%

35 – 44 years old               17%

45 – 54 years old               17%

55+ years old                     34%

There are mixed reviews regarding sales conversion rates linked to Twitter activity. It seems to be a very good brand raising tool (and useful for positioning individuals as experts) but not everyone is convinced of its direct sales benefits. A number of small fashion consumer brands have seen a direct increase in sales when product photos and discounts have been promoted via the micro-blogging network and in the B2B arena Dell claimed that $6.5m of its sales were generated via Twitter.

According to a U.S. survey of small business owners, conducted by the Wall Street Journal and Vistage International, the social media networking site with the most potential is LinkedIn – gaining 41% of all votes. One user - Ken Lopez who runs a legal consulting firm - has used LinkedIn to increase traffic to his website more than ten-fold in a year. He's using Twitter, but he explained to the Wall Street Journal that there's a big difference between the ROI he receives from Twitter and LinkedIn. "We will tweet 10-plus times a day, and we will put roughly the same number of posts on LinkedIn per day, yet we get dramatically different results."

Other Networks

Although we do not have the space to cover every social media platform available, the other key sites to note are: LinkedIn, Google+ and Pinterest. They all have very different audience demographics, which can easily be found via online research. It’s also worth finding business case studies for each of these channels.

Social Media: What is all the Fuss About? Stages 3 & 4

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester) @WSofManagement.

Social Media: What is All the Fuss About? Stage 1

The business world is changing fast and at the forefront of the change is technology. One of today’s marketing buzz words is ‘engagement’, which directly links to social media. However, a lot of business owners are wondering what all of the fuss is about and whether it actually delivers solid organisational benefits – particularly sales.

The world of social media is a potential minefield for the uninitiated and most business people have heard mixed reviews about the various channels available. It’s sometimes easy to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ when a marketing tool is free but this isn’t always the best route to take.  In this business article (the first in a series of expert comment pieces) we delve into the social media phenomenon and give a basic overview of where to start and what to think about.

Stage One: Who’s Your Target Audience?

The first stage of any marketing campaign is to consider your target audience. The majority of businesses skip this stage to jump straight into tactics, i.e. “Let’s set up a Facebook Page because all of our competitors have one”. This is a major downfall for most social media campaigns.

A successful way to think about your target audience is by creating a customer persona (or several, depending on your business). This is essentially a summary of the main characteristics of a customer/ client. For example, a Laura Ashley ‘soft furnishing’ customer is:

Likely to be called Dorothy, she lives in the Home Counties and is a housewife.  Her husband has a disposable income of about £60,000 a year.  She is very house proud and socialises mostly through coffee mornings and dinner parties with her neighbours and other mothers from school.  She listens to Radio 2 and watches costume dramas and murder mysteries on the television.

What social media do you think ‘Dorothy’ is likely to use, if any? You might be surprised to learn about the demographics of certain channels…

Social Media: What is all the Fuss About? Stage 2
 

This article has been written by Tanya Hemphill, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Public Relations, based at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester).

 

What Disney World can Teach us about Customer Service

 

Martin Metcalfe, Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader in Events Management at the Warrington School of Management (University of Chester) explains what businesses can learn from Disney World to improve their customer service…

 Forty three square miles; that’s about the size of the city of Manchester…it’s also the area taken up by the Walt Disney World complex in Orlando, Florida. Consisting of four major theme parks (Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Animal Kingdom and Disney’s Hollywood Studios), two water/swimming theme parks, over thirty resort hotels (with over 30,000 guest rooms to clean each day), two entertainment, shopping and eating areas, five golf courses, a sports complex, scores of restaurants, hundreds of shops, eight conference facilities and a transport system similar to that of a large city, it is no surprise that it takes a lot of employees for it to run smoothly (63,000 of them, in fact). The logistics alone are impressive: WDW sells over ten million burgers, six million hot dogs and 75 million soft drinks per year. It also sells three and a half million ‘Mouse Ear’ hats, holds over 10,000 firework displays and hosts over 1,500 weddings annually. Disney even has its own language, based on cinematic references:  employees are cast members who do not do a job, but undertake a role, wearing a costume, not a uniform. Customers/tourists are guests who stay in resorts, not hotels.



It is the largest single-site employer in the USA, but what many may not realise is that at up to 7,000 of these employees are university students from all over the world, with a sizeable number from the UK. Many of these are registered through the Disney International Programs, providing around ten weeks of summer work in Orlando.  All cast members undergo an intensive period of training which is specifically designed to introduce them to the ‘Disney way’ – orientation: regarding how to look and act in (and out of) character, and traditions: the embedding the core organisational culture into the hearts and minds of cast members to enable them to deliver ‘Magical’ customer service experiences to Guests from all over the world.




Roles undertaken include: Fast Food and Beverage, Full Service Food and Beverage, Merchandise, 

Operations and Life Guard, amongst others. Some are lucky enough to be Disney Characters or Character Attendants. Regardless of role, the cornerstone to Disney’s training programme is ‘the Four Keys’ – an organisational approach to providing guests with the best possible experience. Training takes place at the purpose-built ‘Disney University’ and is delivered by a number of Disney experts. During the training process,  cast members must go through a period of in-role training when they wear an ‘Earning My Ears’ attachment to their normal name badge. This attachment is removed once ears have been earned (i.e. training is complete).

 

 

Safety represents one core value; dealing with millions of visitors each year (many of whom are young children) this covers everything from ride maintenance to tending to lost youngsters. All cast members are expected to be courteous (and smiling!) at all times, to stay ‘in character’ and to make sure the ‘Magic’ is always evident. Disney enables cast members to enact ‘Magical Moments’ to heighten perceptions of service quality and allow Guests to get the most out of their visit. It is not unusual to see cast members replacing a dropped ice cream or spilt drink, usually to the delight of the recipient.


Though clearly focussed towards providing excellent customer service delivery to visitors/tourists (in Disney’s parlance, Guests – and always with the capital G), this approach offers a useful template for any business to follow, particularly those in the service sector. The Four Keys has  links to the  SERVQAL concept of perceived customer service quality (suggested by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry as long ago as the early 1990’s) which identified five quality audit dimensions of Reliability, Assurance, Tangibles, Empathy and Responsiveness as indicators for organisation’s to understand customer expectations and perceptions in order to improve levels of service quality.

Disney is recognised as one of the world leaders in customer service and training. Embedding such fundamental concepts as engagement, diligence and empowerment into training programmes and when cast members are ‘on stage’ (at work) enables the organisation to realise key outcomes (satisfied Guests) and allows cast members to add vital aspects on to their CV. Those lucky enough to undertake the Disney International Programme bring home with them a range of transferrable skills, knowledge and proficiencies that may be to the benefit of themselves, and the organisations that employ them.

And the name badge? All cast members wear one (along with a smile!), which states their name and where they are from. It provides a very useful introduction to those who work for Disney. If you visit WDW, when you come into contact with a cast member check out their badge – they might just be from your home town.

 To find out more about Warrington School of Management, visit our website and follow us on Twitter

Warrington is the location of choice for new start-ups

THE Chartered Accountants UHY Hacker Young recently reported that the WA1 postcode was one of only three places outside of London in the UK top 20, to start a business.

This is a remarkable achievement for the town which consistently punches above its weight in the commercial world.
 

WSM Business Centre, Warrington

There is a range of advice available to assist in business start-up from public bodies, professional services firms, chambers of commerce and financial institutions.



In addition there are many initiatives which can support new companies with business advice, training and development of their ideas, mostly free. 



Financial support may also be forthcoming too, directly in the form of supported loans or through resources such as business incubation.

If you are considering a start-up some basic knowledge is useful; finance, business planning, marketing and increasingly social media use, this can all be developed through education and training.

 

To succeed you need to have a good idea and the capability and determination to deliver it. If this sounds daunting then talk to the people that provide support, they will help you through this process.

Timing-wise now’s promising, a growing economy and strong sector recovery in the region. Warrington’s business environment is a growing success.

Professor Lawrence Bellamy is Associate Dean at the Warrington School of Management, University of Chester Warrington (Padgate) Campus.

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@WSofManagement @ProfLawrenceB

Helping your staff cope with stress

The CIPD (2011) has identified stress as the number one cause of long-term sickness absence with poor management style being the top of work-related anxiety. Work related stress is also linked to lost productivity, low morale, high staff turnover and can result in a higher risk of accidents in the workplace. Here, Stephenie Hodge looks at some of the key drivers of stress in the workplace and how to manage them.

30% of SME decision makers admit workforce stress is hitting their business with stress related absence levels increasing by 27% over the last two years.Businesses could be losing in excess of £1 billion in direct costs as a result of staff taking time off due to work-related stress. One in five employees has taken time off work due to stress, with Monday accounting as the most stressful day of the week.

In a tough economic climate and ever increasing and demanding workloads, it’s hard not to feel the extra pressure at times.

Manage teams well and the individuals feel more able to cope and will rise to the challenge. However, managed incorrectly could have the opposite effect with the individual becoming unable to cope with the stress. The ability to cope with stress and balance workload has a direct correlation with a manager’s performance (ILM, 2013). Teams and managers could be at the heart of both the cause and solution or stress-related problems. Organisations need to foster the right conditions and provide the necessary training.

Addressing workforce challenges and risks is becoming an essential part of achieving better performance and greater growth for UK SMEs. If these issues are not addressed, then they could have serious long-term consequences for business stability and performance.

Most of us admit that we work better under pressure against deadlines and a degree of stress can aid performance. However, people have different ways of dealing with stress, a situation that could be motivating and challenging for one person could feel stressful to someone else. Stress can affect how we feel, think and behave. Work related stress develops because a person is unable to cope with the demands being placed on them, coupled with not being correctly supported.

Stephenie Hodge is Senior Lecturer in Marketing and HR at the Warrington School of Management.

 

It all starts with the Culture of the Organisation

Culture is driven from the top down so managers have the responsibility to nurture the well-being of the team, supporting positive beliefs and attitudes which will in turn help to set the tone for a workplace environment that champions open lines of communication. Organisations can slip into a culture where employees are expected to work all hours at any cost.

Occasionally it may be required to take work home; however, if this is on a regular long-term basis then it is usually a sign that something is wrong, another stress trigger. We need to get away from work at the end of the day, both for our mental and physical well-being. 21% of employees take work home at least twice a week. Addressing workforce challenges is an essential part of achieving better performance and greater growth for businesses.

Providing Support

The more managers know what makes their team tick, the greater the chance of noticing the signs and taking the appropriate action to support and elevate the cause. They need to understand how their management style and behaviour impacts on the people they manage.

Managers can either cause or exacerbate stress or help prevent and manage it. It is in employers’ interests to ensure managers have the necessary people management skills to manage and prevent stress.

Relieving stress in the workplace makes work a more positive place and delivers mutual benefits. Stress will not disappear, within organisations we just need to learn how to manage our teams.

Prevention is the best cure, create and nurture the appropriate sets of conditions. De-stress the working environment by:

 

Talking – small adjustments such as altering hours, even on a temporary basis may help to supress the issue
Training if applicable
Listening
Supporting
Motivation
Empowerment
Mentoring system
Effective and timely communication
Clear vision and understanding of value
Fare and consistent
Flexible approach
Knowing teams’ strengths and weaknesses

People are the lifeblood of any business and looking after them by ensuring that stress levels are balanced is vital if a company wants to attract the most skilled employees and retain existing talent. Companies that do this will be best positioned to take advantage for the future.

Stephenie Hodge is a Senior Lecturer at Warrington School of Management, University of Chester, Warrington (Padgate) Campus.

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