Social Media

A cheaper marketing approach that gets results

By now we are all familiar with social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blogs and LinkedIn.  Although many people have personal accounts on these networks, a lot of people are at a loss when it comes to utilizing the power of social media for marketing for their business.  There are many reasons to use social media marketing including:

• very low cost;
• access to the huge audience that use it on a daily basis;
• the ability to easily integrate your marketing efforts;
• the value of optimizing your business online so that search engines rank it highly; and
• building strong customer relationships by being able to interact with them on a variety of issues.

So where do you start when organizing your social media marketing?  The first step is pretty straight forward; sign up for the social media platforms you want to use.  Have a search for key interests and subjects that relate to your industry in the search bars of various social media networks and determine which have the most valued target audience for you.
After signing up it is important that you work at growing your network. Join in on conversations, start your own conversations, offer some promotional material (a discount perhaps), import your current database into the social network, create a fan page on Facebook and add all employees and link your social media pages with your current marketing (put a link on your website, business cards, signage).
 
Help retain your current followers by adopting the 10, 10, 80 rule in your social media marketing.

• 10% of your posts and interactions should be entertaining material, like clever Youtube video forwards or interesting quotes etc.
• 10% can be outright business like a special discount for Facebook members or a reminder of the new products you have in stock; and
• 80% is personality content like commenting on the charities you support or uploading a picture of your footy tipping competition winner.

Personal content is anything that allows people to see your brand personality or culture.  This 10, 10, 80 Rule allows you to create a relationship with your client and stay in front of them without annoying them and, if implemented correctly, will help in making your customers love your brand (We wish the same could be said for telemarketers!). 

Frequency of updates really depends on the social media marketing you choose and the content of the updates, but most experts say a well rounded, interesting update once a week is enough to keep you in the consumer's mind.

Interest Rates, Banks, Bad Debts, Greece

How will these matters affect your planning?

• Prime bank interest rate now 4.5% and expected to be around 5.5% by the end of 2010.
• Debtors' payment days now 54.1 days (Dun & Bradstreet).
• Are you monitoring debtors so that you are not incurring bad debts?
• Banks are more active in closely monitoring SMEs for loan payments and operating within bank overdraft limits.  Have you checked your reporting obligations to your bank/lender?
• Affect of the government's announced "super profit tax" on the resources industry and its effects on the large number of SMEs who provide products and services to the resources industry. 
• Problems in Greece over enforced lender conditions on emergency loans.  Could these problems extend to other European countries and affect bank lending policies worldwide, thus causing uncertainty to SMEs?
• The expected large number of businesses that will be listed for sale in the next 5 years as the baby boomers exit their businesses.  Will there be buyers for these businesses who agree to pay the seller's asking price? 

Each of these items could significantly affect your planning for 2010/11.

We can assist you in developing strategies to assist the long term performance of your business.

What's It Mean?

Exit Event

Most investors predicate their investment in a technology start up on being able to "exit" the investment (i.e. sell their stake) at the time of an "exit event".  An exit event would normally occur at the time of an IPO (Initial Public Offer) trade sale (acquisition by a larger corporation in a similar business) or further investment by an external organisation, such as a venture capital fund.   

Investors' perceptions of the attractiveness and risk profile of an investment in a technology start up are conditioned on their faith in their ability to make a timely exit from their investment (which is required to crystallise capital gains).  Importantly the longer the time arising for exiting an investment, the higher the risk discount that must be applied to compensate for "opportunity costs" and other risks inherent in a long term holding in a technology start up entity.

For more information contact us for a copy of the paper “Accounting Terminology”.