Have you figured out your social media voice?

How sharp are your social media skills?

Schereene Outerbridge, marketing manager for CellOne Bermuda, helped local firms and bloggers get up to speed at the Social Media Summit this past Friday telling them they “have to fish, where the fish are.”

Her workshop on ‘Sharpen your Social Media Skills’ was well-attended at the HSBC Harbourview Room.

Ms Outerbridge told the audience prior to rebranding two years ago CellOne’s “social media presence wasn’t so great. We existed, but it was minimal — at a Facebook level and no other particular platform. When we rebranded, one of our biggest challenges was to up our presence online. 

“We needed to make sure people knew we had a fresh face and that we were innovative.”

The marketing manager added businesses needed to make connections to their customers through social media. 

Ms Outerbridge said the first thing that has to be sorted out, is what type of ‘voice’ do you want to represent online. 

“Once we figured out what we wanted our business to represent — innovation, a new fresh face — we needed to figure out what our voice was going to sound like.

“Traditional media like print, radio and television, it’s easy to talk at people, but when you’re in a social media space, you’re having a conversation with people — so what does that voice sound like?”

She asked ‘how do you want to come across?’. 

Ms Outerbridge said that voice will represent your brand.

As an example, she said Miley Cyrus is moving her brand away from Hannah Montana to something that is more controversial as a way to move from the Disney sanctified image she used to have.

“As controversial as she is, everyone was tweeting about her online. Everyone was having this massive conversation about her brand and about her personality.”

Ms Outerbridge said Rihanna’s brand is one as a diva and that works well for her whereas Charlie Sheen is ‘just out there. A brilliant marketing ploy from his end.”

She said local companies have to find their voice they want to convey to the public.

“How do you want to present yourself in the online space? Social media becomes an automatic extension of what your website is. You want to direct traffic there (to your website) and you want to have a conversation.”

Ms Outerbridge said once a company figures out its voice, it needs to go where the people are and draw them in.

“Who are you connecting with already. As a cellphone company, we know we’re connecting with people through our stores, through our ads, through our windows. But who else do we want to connect with?”

She said it was key to know who you are already connecting with and use the best social media medium to reach out to a different demographic.

“Who is the new blood? Who do we want to connect with? In this day and age, those people are online. They are not necessarily physically reading newspapers, they’re reading online newspapers. They may go into coffee shops. At Rock Island we have coffee sleeves that has our Twitter icon and our Facebook icon because we know that coffee drinkers are sitting there with laptops taking a look at what’s in his hand and say ‘Oh, CellOne Bermuda. That’s wonderful they have a Facebook page. I’m going to check it out.”

She said in all of CellOne’s advertising, they include the Facebook and Twitter icons to help reach out to a larger audience.