Being an Edinburgh based social media marketing agency, it’s important to show up at events like The Edinburgh Social Media Marketing. Not only to learn lots of great insights from the industry, but also to show face and network. I went to the #SMMS yesterday and here’s what I thought about it.
Content Marketing Academy meetup
If anyone can think of a new boyband name for Chris and me, let me know: @MrGavinBell
The day kicked off in style with the Content Marketing Academy meetup. I’ve been part of the CMA community now for a good few months and it’s really helped me along my startup journey. Chris Marr is the man behind it all and I strongly advise anyone that’s interested in content marketing and digital marketing to get involved.
Chris kindly asked me to talk about my journey at the meetup which was good fun. I spoke about moving from the Shetland Islands to Manchester for the Peter Jones Enterprise Academy and about the 7 day startup journey that I recently embarked on.
It was great to meet everyone from the online community. Putting names to faces and taking those relationships one step further.
One of the best parts of the day was the awesome speakers. The two standouts for me were:
Steven Sefton
Steven of Think Zap delivered an awesome seminar on the true importance of your website. Steven argued that your website is worth £27,000 and more (average wage of an employee) and gave some really juicy bits of knowledge.
Some interesting points he made:
- Do you really want your business to go viral? It can kill a business.
- Keep your homepage simple
- Facebook ads are the best form of advertising you can pay for these days
I think everyone will agree with me in saying it was a very beneficial seminar. I also loved the unique West-Scotland personality he has. Everything is said with a bit of a laugh!
You can follow Steven on Twitter at: @steven_sefton
Liz Melville
Unfortunately I didn’t catch all of Liz’s seminar as I was helping out at the 4Networking stand, but from what I did see, the information she was giving out was spot on. I hadn’t come across Liz before if I’m totally honest but she’s definitely someone I’ll be following from now on.
Some of Liz’s key points:
- Use the 80/20 rule. 80% of the things you post should be for your audience; 20% should be about your business. Don’t get it the wrong way round like so many businesses do!
- Facebook is pay to play now
- Put your customers pain points in your ads for higher engagement
Some really great tips by Liz. Check out Liz’s work here.
Also, catch her on Twitter at: @lizmelv
There was lots of other great points made by most Steven and Liz, but those are the ones that I’ve scraped from my Twitter feed!
And Finally…
Interestingly, the @BlueCliffMedia Twitter account gained about 100 followers yesterday, purely from all the tweeting I was doing at the show. Made some awesome connections and it’s great to carry the conversation on from the actual event.
All in all, a great day. It was good to have a social media event like this in Edinburgh. I also got some awesome bits of actionable knowledge, met some awesome people, got to meet the CMA gang for the first time and made some very interesting contacts for the business.
If I had to take one thing from the whole show: add value to your audience
Gavin
