Social Media conference packed

Social media secrets, tips and tricks were on offer at the ‘Making Social Media Work for Your Business’ summit.

A packed room at the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce heard how four Bermudian companies are “winning” at social media.

The summit, hosted by the Bermuda Chamber of Commerce and the Bermuda Sun was held this afternoon and will continue all day Friday.

The first forum was about what works and doesn’t work within social media. The panel included Karolina De Costa of Rowe Spurling Paint, Emma Horton of AS Cooper and Sons, Karriem Sharieff of Bermemes and Clifton Webb of Go Social. Glenn Jones, MediaHouse general manager moderated the discussion.  

Moderator Glenn Jones, general manager of MediaHouse started off the discussion and said: “Hopefully you will learn some things that you don’t know before about social media that you can use in your businesses.”

All the panelists were asked what is the first thing they did when they woke up. They all said checked their phones and their social media accounts.

Asked about other companies that do social media well, Ms Horton said Brown and Co had more followers than AS Cooper and wanted to know why.  

Mr Webb named Bermemes and said: “Bermemes are rockstars in the social media community.”

Speaking on his approach to social media, Mr Sharieff said: “The most effective approach is to be down here.

“Social media, we want to be able to speak to people and have conversations — being on their level and not above them. You have to talk to people like they’re right here in the room.”

Ms De Costa said it was important for businesses to check their insights on Facebook to determine who exactly their fans are and when they will be online.

“Don’t post at 3am when your fans aren’t online. Post when they are”, she added.

Speaking on “likes”, Mr Webb said: “The quality of likes versus the quantity is a real thing.

“Page likes are one thing. The posts likes are the ones that we want, that are more engaging.

“When you come to the amount of followers, 500 is great but 100 engaged followers is what we want.”

Ms De Costa added: “We want to the people who are generally interested in what we have to say.

“They comment on the posts, they like the posts and they share the posts. Those are the people we want.”

As far as content goes, Mr Sharieff said, “Social media draws people in to wherever we want them to go.

“If you have a website, you can direct them there. That’s sort of what I tell brands to do with their social media.

“You really want to use it to keep your customers informed but also bring them to your arena.”

Ms Horton added: “The goal is to get the sales. You want to say ‘at the end of the day, we will get the sale’.

“Again, making sure the customers are coming in.”

The summit continues at 9am on Friday at HSBC Harbourview with Jackie Gizman of Tilson PR.