We’re Hiring – Marketing Executive – The Social Media Academy – London


Organisational Background:

The Social Media Academy is the UK’s leading social media training company offering professionals with an unrivalled understanding of how to maximise the use of social media for their organisation.

Role Overview:

As Marketing Executive, you will be responsible for supporting the Marketing Manager in the planning, execution and management of marketing activity across a number of channels. With marketing activity acting as the precursor for the majority of revenue created by The Social Media Academy, you will play an integral role in ensuring that all marketing activity is completed to the deadlines set within the marketing plan.

The key responsibilities of the role are:

  • Dealing with customers via phone and email to confirm bookings on a daily basis, providing recommendations based on customer needs and upselling other opportunities where present
  • To ensure that the business performance dashboards are accurately updated based on a daily basis and circulated internally to senior management to ensure targets are being met
  • To assist in the successful execution of the marketing plan for events and promotions across multiple marketing channels
  • To prepare marketing materials, for use within marketing campaigns & promotions; this will include the creation of design briefs, marketing copy and completing the required proofing processes
  • Supporting the Marketing Manager to ensure that all third party suppliers are working to the assigned deadlines stipulated within the marketing plan
  • Assisting with the execution of events, greeting customers and trainers, working with caterers and venues to ensure all event needs are met
  • Manage the Social Media Academy website – continually updating the site with new content and editing information and promotions when necessary to run in line with the marketing schedule
  • Supporting the Marketing Manager to ensure that content published on the eCommerce platforms adheres to the brand guidelines, are correctly proofed and meet the deadlines set within the marketing plan
  • Supporting the Marketing Manager to ensure all event administration and customer communications are completed to the deadlines set within the business to ensure customer satisfaction and to maintain professionalism
  • Supporting the Marketing Manager in sourcing key speakers and thought leaders surrounding social media & digital marketing
  • Conducting bespoke research tasks to further assist in the development of training content being delivered
  • Responsibility for implementing the social media strategy, generating content, developing awareness through engagement and generating inbound traffic to the eCommerce platform
  • To write press releases, seek opportunities for press coverage, track press activity/presence
  • Provide general and ad hoc support to the marketing, sales and finance teams as required
  • To ensure that all internal processes are maintained across all areas of the business

Desired Attributes:

  • Graduate in Marketing, Communication or other related field – however, this is not essential
  • Driven, self-motivated individual with excellent communication and interpersonal skills
  • Excellent grammatical, and written communication skills
  • With an eye for detail, must be adaptable and capable of meeting multiple deadlines in a pressurised environment.
  • Highly organised and a natural multi-tasker
  • High level of initiative and desire to progress up the career ladder
  • Excellent proficiency with the Microsoft Office packages
  • Eligibility to work within the UK

It would be an advantage if you have:

  • Having worked within a Marketing environment, either Agency or In House, would be desirable but it not essential
  • Have a basic understanding of Adobe Design Suite (specifically InDesign and Photoshop)
  • Have a basic understanding of working with CMS platforms

Type: Full-time
Functions: Marketing
Industries: Professional Training & Coaching, Marketing and Advertising, Online Media
Compensation: £22k – £24k (Negotiable)

Think you’re our man/woman – send your CV/Covering Letter to hello@thesocialmediaacademy.co.uk




#Fail


We’ve had some excellent social media fails in the last few weeks, Katie Price’s Snickers induced economic awareness was my personal favourite. The idea was Snickers could get the message across that peanut filled chocolate can somehow reinvigorate the mind. Needless to say on a twitter page which is usually filled with fluffy celeb ‘news’ the following tweet was a bit of a damp squib “@MissKatiePrice Large scale quantitative easing in 2012 could distort liquidity of govt. bond market. #justsayin”.

We also had Bayern Munich teasing their facebook fans by claiming that an exciting new name was joining the club – that exciting new name turned out to be a facebook application. Fans of the German football club soon got irate and the club have since issued an apology; “”Based on the many comments we received, there are many Facebook fans of Bayern Munich who were not happy with our action, we are sorry. It was not our intention to disappoint with the new FC Bayern app.”

The biggest social media fail so far has come from McDonalds who have completely forgotten Qantas’ #qantasluxury bashtag of 2011 by launching their own bashtag for 2012. In their undying wisdom they chose to use ‘#McDStories’ in the hope that they would invoke some Happy Meal nostalgia from their followers.

There were plenty of responses, I have handpicked a few of my favourites below:

“@SkipSullivan One time I walked into McDonalds and I could smell Type 2 diabetes floating in the air and I threw up. #McDStories”

“@markzohar McDonald’s customers don’t want to tell #McDStories. They just want their fries, mechanically separated chicken parts & wallow in shame.”

“ @heatmiZa101 I found yummy cartilage in my McNuggets.. #McDstories”

“@Roni_RK #McDstories #FAIL”

Brilliant.
Carwyn Llewellyn




A Reaction to SOPA


As you may have noticed there have been plenty of vehement words in the SOPA debate, today the encyclopaedic pioneer Wikipedia is imposing a temporary blackout in protest to the US government’s proposed “Stop Online Piracy Act”. For those that don’t know, SOPA is a piece of US legislation that will attempt to control piracy online, intended to stop the leakage of profit the film industry who suffer when illegal websites post copyrighted material. That seems fair enough you may think, but people opposed to the bill fear it could also turn the online community into a governed state, some even believe that the proposed regulations will not affect criminal overseas websites and that SOPA falls short of its main objective.

The thoughts from the Silicon Valley are unanimous; Facebook, Twitter, Google and eBay have all spoken against it. A Google spokesperson stated:

“Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the Internet. We will be joining many other tech companies to highlight this issue on our US home page.”

Do we want access to the internet to be governed by an Orwellian machine of bureaucrats and Hollywood Executives? Wikipedia is coaxing everybody to get online to join the protest, so if you’re a member of a Social Network, to which I am sure you are, go get involved! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.

Let the politicians know what you think, let them know that you don’t want them to hold your hand, that freedom of expression and right to information is important and should be cherished and SOPA is not the solution to Hollywood’s problem.

Carwyn




The Zombie Killer’s Guide To Creating A Successful Blog


Lawyers, PRs, journalists, foodies, fashion designers, writers and mummies. They all have something in common. They all blog and they all benefit hugely from it. While the rewards vary in regards to the type of blog and objectives laid out, we all more or less know the key performance indicators of a successful blog; a large and targeted readership, healthy engagement, good optimisation, among others.

While making a blog is fairly easy, achieving the above performance criterion is more difficult. There are a lot of great articles that list handy and effective tips in a comprehensive manner, as well as devoted blogs that can help you all the way. I would like to contribute myself by giving you a few basics, but with a twist.

If you’re like me, you’d love Shaun Of The Dead. It is my favourite Zombie movie, most of all because it makes me laugh out loud and because it teaches you a lot of lessons through an easy-to-identify with flawed human. Can we replicate these lessons in blogging? Of course.

Shaun Of The Dead

Shaun Of The Dead


1. Hang Around Somewhere You Feel Comfortable

Possibly the best joke of the film derives from the obsession for going to and being in the pub. Liz, Shaun’s girlfriend, dumps him for it. However, as it turns out the pub was the safest place to be when the zombies attacked.

In blogging, you have a lot of options, from a simple and straightforward Posterous blog to the more elaborate self-hosted WordPress. If you don’t know coding or hosting or if you think PHP is the Sub Of The Day on Tuesdays, then it’s best that you stick to a less ambitious solution. The bottom line is that you don’t want to spend a lot of time pimping your blog with features your audience don’t care about, because that time will be taken from more key activities like social networking, backlinking and creating compelling content. As an example, two of the most successful bloggers of all time are very Zen to their approaches and have stayed purposely in the pub for ages : Seth Godin and Steve Rubel.

2. Be Persistent

Shaun and Liz

Shaun and Liz

When Liz dumped Shaun he didn’t give up loving her. He fought for her life even when everything seemed over and, in the end (surprise surprise) he wins her back.

Likewise in blogging you will experience a lot of ebbs and flows. And predictably, a very slow beginning when nobody seems to know you exist. Be persistent, expect an average of three months with low activity and expect setbacks. Never give up unless you have conducted analysis that tells you that your marketing time would be better spent somewhere else. Blogs tip at some point in their life if you stick to basic rules and don’t forget to oversee the whole process.

So, as someone who has to continuously multitask to make her partner happy, a blogger has to be persistent. Don’t drop the guard and take care of all aspects of the blog (content, promotion and SEO mainly).

3. Aim For The Head

Shaun could shoot, stab or burn the zombies but he wasn’t successful until he learnt that the living dead could only perish after having their heads removed brains destroyed. From then on, he made sure to aim for the head and managed to kill quite a few.

In blogging, you first have to discover what the head of the Zombie is. What keywords should you be competing for? What content makes your audience tick? What bits of your blog get the best and most interaction? What pace of publishing, length and tone of article works best? There are many tools and processes to get this vital question right and I hope we can generate some discussion. In the meantime, and if you don’t want to get overwhelmed with chunks of code and SEO tools…why don’t you ask your audience? Think yourself lucky because Shaun couldn’t ask the zombies personally.

4. Relationships Matter

Stick Together

Stick Together

In the film, Shaun didn’t only look after himself. He stuck by his best friend, even though he was extremely annoying, and risked his life to fetch his mother and girlfriend. Along the way, he even found out that alleged “enemies”, like his stepfather, loved him for what he was. Working as a team, some of them survived, and the rest experience quite honourable deaths (except perhaps for David, the flatmate of Liz, but he deserved to be gutted anyway).

In blogging relationships matter online and offline. You need to devote as much time to creating content as nurturing relationships. You have to take care of your audience, making sure you give them what they wish for (a youtube channel, timed tweets, a newsletter, a translator widget etc.) You also have to join the burgeoning community that your blogging subject has formed over time and credit them with links in a Blog Roll (maybe then they will pay you back). Keep a close eye for offline events, not only because they’re fun but because the relationships that form in a tweet-up, cook-out or knitting-carnival will create huge opportunities for blog promotion and SERP climbing. You will hardly have competitors in blogging. Your fellow bloggers are not fighting for a “share of the attention”, they are helping you to grow your market.

5. Devise And Stick To A Plan

Shaun didn’t grab a cricket stick and go crazy to kill as many zombies as he could (well, only partially). Instead, he devised a strategy (gather his loved ones and save them) and a plan of action ( Take car. Go to Mum’s. Kill Phil – “Sorry.” – grab Liz, go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over). Sticking to the plan has its setbacks, but overall, it saved their lives.

Likewise, blogging requires planning. It is too easy get carried away with writing articles as they pop into your head but you need to devise a strategy first (e.g. educate chefs in the marvels of Thai cuisine) and a critical path (research branding opportunities, test, research keywords, implement SEO tools, list guidelines for content creation, create a Facebook page, etc.) Whatever your strategy stick to it and decide your course of action in advance. It is easier said than done, but hey, you think killing zombies was Shaun’s cup of tea?

About The Author

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavi Izaguirre

Xavier Izaguirre joined Social Media Library in November 2009 working as part of the Research Team. Prior to joining Social Media Library, Xavier completed a Masters Degree in Marketing and Communications at Westminster University, London. An active user of Social Media platforms, Xavier is very passionate about new trends in communication and Social Media Marketing contributing towards a number of online campaigns within the Educational Sector.

Follow Xavier on Twitter at @Xavi_izaguirre




The Internet’s Weirdest Communities


If you wanted proof that social media provides for all, no matter how niche your interest, check out our list of strangest communities we’ve found on the Internet.

David Icke’s Official Forum

Former sports presenter and Green Party spokesman turned, um, ‘moral and political spokesperson’ with the belief that a secret race of reptilian humanoids created and now controls humanity. His forum is an extremely busy one(2500 online when I checked), attracting eye-popping right-wing views on news stories, mind-bending (and often laughable) conspiracy theories and discussion on whether the reptilians really are in control.

David Icke

David Icke

Reptile Forums UK

If the reptilians are in control, here’s where they’re hanging out.

Hot For Tea

Who doesn’t love a nice cuppa? Maybe not this much though. At Hot For Tea you can share information on teas, how to make it and meet other cuppa-lovers.

Nice Cup Of Tea

Nice Cup Of Tea

The Watch Forum

Is that the time? I really must be going. And you will be from here unless you’re obsessed by time-pieces.

UK Hippy

Hey man, I’m like totally at one with humankind in this forum. Group hug! Worryingly, one of the zones is called The Lizard Lounge. Coincidence?

MyDogspace

If humans can have a social network, then why can’t dogs? Well, they can. Your dog can make friends, erm, chat and even find a Valentine here at MyDogspace.

A Dog

A Dog

AME Voice

Fancy checking out the manuals to various aircraft or chatting about the specs of planes? No. You’d best avoid AME Voice then.

British Blades

Sometimes you don’t even realise that an interest area could possibly an area of interest. It seems that some people really are  into knives of all kinds. Well, well.

Gone Too Soon

And finally. Gone Too Soon is THE website for your dead friend or relative. An online heaven, if you will. Chat function is permanently disabled here.

About the Author

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett

Paul Barnett is a Social Media Analyst for Social Media Library, responsible for developing the content within Social Media Library. Paul lives in a world of blogs, blogs and more blogs, scouring the web and plucking out the juiciest information he finds. Previous to this, he worked as a Music Press Officer. He is also a freelance writer, writing for TV and editing a music title, SWN Magazine.

Paul blogs extremely infrequently about stuff that he does and once blogged about cheese, maybe he will do again some day. Follow him on Twitter @paulbarnett1.




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