This morning, we gave a presentation alongside Yorkshire-based website design and online marketing agency Squashed Pixel on social media for business at the Skipton Chamber members’ meeting. The event was held in the beautiful setting of the Broughton Hall Estate just outside Skipton, North Yorkshire, and attendees ranged from professional services firms to entrepreneurs from the local area.

Rather than just give a generic talk about how to use Twitter – which we knew they’d all heard before – we decided to share insights with the group about what they were really interested in: maximising the impact of a more effective online presence on business growth and success.

After years of being considered a ‘fad’ that needed to be ‘experimented with’, social media can no longer be looked at in isolation as a business tool. Businesses of all shapes and sizes are waking up to the fact that it is just one of the many ways in which their audiences communicate now and that if they want to reach the people they’re targeting, social media is a low cost, innovative way of doing so as part of a wider mix of activities – but only if it is done properly.

We were particularly pleased to be presenting alongside a web design specialist, not only because Squashed Pixel is a fantastic case study itself of how to utilise social media for significant business growth at very little cost, but also because we’re increasingly having to push the message that your social media activity must be considered as part of your wider online footprint. That’s why we call ourselves digital communications specialists rather than social media consultants – because it is no good having lots of great conversations via Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn if you have a static website with no fresh content and are rubbish at other forms of online communication such as email marketing.

Likewise, social media has changed the way people want and expect businesses/brands to communicate with them offline as well as on. A tailored, personal approach that goes the extra mile to offer useful, friendly advice also has to be translated into marketing literature, tenders and all other communications channels.

We hope attendees found the session useful and would like to share the slides with other members and other Yorkshire businesses who may be interested. Click the link below to download the slides and don’t hesitate to get in touch with us if you would like to talk about how we could help you go social by embracing more than just social media.

Skipton Chamber members meeting – Engage Comms digital comms workshop June 2014