THE FIRST STEPS IN OUR SOCIAL MEDIA STORY

A little over 6 months ago the newly formed marketing team at The City Bin Co. was given the task to build a social media platform and propel the award winning company into the engaging world of online videos, posting pictures, tweeting, liking, following and blogging. Not an easy task, as we pondered about who would want to engage with a waste collection company. What does a waste company make videos about? What do we post on line? Why would anyone or our customers want to connect with us?

The first step taken was to follow Verne Harnish’s advice and read David Meerman Scott’s book, “The new rules of Marketing and PR’. The book was like a godsend signpost mapping out exactly what needed to be done.

First we started this blog ‘The Flying bin’ using the blogger platform. The second thing we done was to take David Meerman Scott’s advice and buy a flip camera, well, a Samsung w200 to be precise! It was a fantastic investment. On March the 6^th we opened our YouTube channel and 7 months later we have over 8000 organic views and growing. Not bad for a waste company! We have embedded videos on the company’s homepage and have even recently found one of our video’s embedded on the Firstpost news site and Alliance Française of Galway’s website. We have all the regular information; The FAQ’s about our service, community, social and charity events, interviews with our CEO, business learning, WOW!'s from our customers, and the Volvo Ocean Race videos. We even learned the value of having a chicken in your video and having the head of the country, Taoiseach Enda Kenny talk to it! Yes people loved to laugh. It was our most viewed video so far!

Real Time Marketing is one of David’s messages and we experienced this first hand during the Volvo Ocean Race when we managed to clock up 4000 Organic views by riding the high wave  (with permission!) of  the Volvo Ocean Race Galway Facebook page with over 20 short videos on the daily activities during the July event. Each video finished with our branding. When we send over the first video to their social media team they posted it straight away. By the end of the week they were calling us and asking for videos and giving us VIP access to get great footage. We would film and edit on location and send the guys at the Volvo Ocean Race Galway  facebook page the link to the videos that were posted on our YouTube channel. The videos were happening in real time. In some cases the events were not finished and we’d have a snapshot summary of the atmosphere posted online.

Another great aspect of the social media experience is that it’s a two way street. As well as creating your own online space you get to find and follow interesting people and companies. We have become fans of businesses on the other side of the world, who otherwise, we would not be able to experience and learn from, such as 1-800-GOT-JUNK?, Bluewire Media, and  a host of other amazing onliners.

We are starting to integrate and embed our social media channels, Facebook, Linkedin, twitter, YouTube and The Flying Bin blog on our main website. We have created a solid foundation to build on, but then again, social media is always a work in process. We are only taken the first steps in our social media story and the best thing is that it’s never to late to start. It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in, there are always people that want to connect with you.

Will the real David Meerman Scott please stand up! Thank you for the signposts and taking us this far so far! The story continues…