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Social Media Marketing of our businesses - what do you think?


Stan Zaslavsky
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People attitudes towards social media is changing as it becomes more mainstream. Just look at how many TV and radio stations are embracing it, not to mention polititions.

 

Its also very popular way of getting your name out there with your peers. Look at how many Blogs there are for arch viz, and its growing every day.

 

As a way to connect with clients, its still too young to be taken seriously. This will change as the Gen Y'ers become older and move higher in the career ladder.

 

jhv

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Thanks Justin - it is definitely becoming more and more prevalent to expect this in the mainstream - not to mention the fact that youtube,FB, Linkedin are ranked so highly in Google that whenever anybody searches for a persons' name - those websites typically are in the top 5 searches.

 

So wouldn't it then make sense to have your business listed in those mediums for your potential clients to see it?

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I'd be interested to know if anyone has been approached by having a portfolio on CGTalk or here?
FWIW I have been contacted a couple of times about projects from people that said they found me via my CGTalk portfolio. That being said, only one of those contacts turned into a paying project...but one is better than zero (especially these days).
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Which kind of surprises me, Jeff. Considering the following you have I would have thought allot more than two.

 

I myself have only had one inquiry from cgtalk asking if I had a website. Which I dont and something that I need to address. IN fact my CGTalk portfolio is way out of date too.

 

jhv

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  • 1 year later...

It's still too early to tell if Facebook and Twitter are going to be effective marketing tools in arch viz IMO. Younger generations ( Y & X) will and are using it but the baby boomers aren't as a whole and they are still the ones making most of the decisions in the corporate world. I think the real question is does having a FB or TW account for your company bring anything to the table that having a website alone woulden't? If it increases traffic on your site but doesen't translate into more business then what's the point?

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I like where this thread is going - does social media convert to sales?

 

For our production company, we did see direct sales coming from YouTube. Since we created a channel, the prospective client saw our animations and gave us a call. We always route our YouTube channel back to our site, so it makes it easy on the client to find us.

 

For our training & books, it has been more branding and/or indirect sales. Our Twitter feeds keep the flow of jobs, news & tutorials. This keeps our readers interested. We get responses, answer in a timely manner & those lead to fans. From there, I find those fans either purchase and/or let others know about the information. At the end of the day, if the info is useful, people will sign up.

 

One thing I didn't see mentioned about social media is the conversation between client & "fan". For us, this has been very helpful in planning future events and staying current with the trends. For example, we recently asked on FB if people were going to Siggraph this year. Most of our network of people said "no". That information, combined with our internal marketing / analysis, concluded we should not go this year. While it didn't make a profit, we didn't potentially lose a lot of time / money.

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Must say, since going freelance, I've had a couple of enquiries come through twitter, some referrals from complete strangers that have put me in touch with other people, and some in response to me getting in touch with others, and also managed to secure some work through twitter by responding to a call for freelancers on it, the other bits of work, came through this very forum (which I still class as a form social media)

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Would it be worth maybe having this thread as a sticky, or a new thread which people can list things such as.. what twitter feeds they follow, what facebook pages they like or groups they have joined and what LinkedIn groups they are members of, then everyone can see what ones are good to follow and participate in etc..

Obviously keep it industry based, but yeh thats my idea, what you guys think?

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Hi Cameron,

Great idea. So far something useful in Linkedin has been Property Developers in Australia Group. There are a lot of developers there and you could easily introduce yourself and get something going through there.

Haven't seen many good Facebook pages - it seems that for our industry we are better off being in Linkedin as it is a more professional based networking group.

Not sure about Twitter either

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"Would it be worth maybe having this thread as a sticky..."

 

Agreed. Having a concentrated area for social marketing would only help our businesses at this point. If it becomes a sticky, I'll be glad to add in some groups we follow.

Edited by brianzajac
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congrats adam - did you do anything specific on twitter to catch the attention of the prospective client?

 

Thanks Stan!

 

I actually happened upon them, I use Cinema4d and jobs are a little more scarce then people looking for 3DS artists(or at least I've found it to be that way). I just typed in Cinema4d in the search bar and the job came up and it had just been tweeted 30 or so minutes before.

 

They messaged me back with thanks for the quick response and it was off from there!

 

Looking forward to getting more into twitter though!

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I had some good contacts and jobs from YouTube. Can't judge on the others. But I see traffic coming in from theese and the follwoers are increasing. I bet it would increase even more if I run special offers or other stuff via the social channels.

 

Since I work international but also Germany focused the big question is in which language do I run the channels best?

And how do I get in contact with decision makers and not just other artists. I doupt many architects or possible good paying clients are looking on facebook or twitter for companies.

 

Most jobs are coming from previous clients or the contact spread through the word of mouth.

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Since I work international but also Germany focused the big question is in which language do I run the channels best?

And how do I get in contact with decision makers and not just other artists. I doupt many architects or possible good paying clients are looking on facebook or twitter for companies.

 

Most jobs are coming from previous clients or the contact spread through the word of mouth.

 

 

From a language perspective, let's assume you know German and English. IMO, you should segment two separate channels - one in English for the main U.S.-based portals (YouTube, FB, etc.) and German for local / regional marketing efforts.

 

The decision makers do mostly come from referrals / COI (Centers of Influence). However, their marketing staff, office assistants, and off-time from the owners do check out these channels (depending heavily on what they're looking for). And just because someone referred them, doesn't mean they will go with that firm. Having social channels, a good looking / functional web site, YouTube channel, etc. proves that you are an authoritative resource.

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