Social Media – where do I start?

The explosive growth in Social Media has left many organisations wondering how best they can incorporate it into their marketing (and customer service) mix.

At best a well-integrated Social Media strategy can benefit an organisation at a number of levels – from dealing with individual customer feedback, through to informing product and service development and ultimately to supporting brand level communications.

All too often though we see examples of businesses spending large amounts of money and ending up with Social Media activities that range from the ‘me too’ to the downright inappropriate – and with no way of measuring if they are having a positive effect.

The fundamentals of marketing communications have not changed just because new technologies are enabling new and rapidly evolving ‘touch points’. In fact, as advocates of ‘evidence based marketing’ we believe the arrival of these new channels make it even more imperative that businesses revisit the fundamental marketing questions:

• Who are our customers?
• What do we want to do with them?
• What do they want to do with us – and why?

The insights derived from asking these simple questions have long been used to inform ‘traditional’ marketing activities – so why should Social Media be any different? In fact, if your insights are correct your Social Media strategy should effectively take care of itself.

At Underwired we don’t start with any assumptions about what tools and techniques our clients should use. We simply start (and finish) with customer insights and follow where they lead.

Therefore, if your organisation is looking to deploy a Social Media strategy we would strongly recommend you first pause to consider what customer insights lie behind it. And if you would like our help, get in touch with Tim on 020 70 600 400 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Online PR, search engine optimisation and social media

When Ruth started Underwired back in 1996, it was to publicise the online community we’d developed for Snickers. In fact, at the time Underwired was the first online PR agency, and (we think) the first SEO agency.

Since then we’ve launched successful campaigns for NSPCC, VSO and Greenpeace, built reciprocal link strategies for Unilever, Bass Beers and OpenDemocracy, and achieved outstanding results getting clients right to the top of Google. Our long-standing expertise in online PR is based on constant monitoring, engaging and learning, and today we build social media campaigns (using channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and blogger outreach) into our eCRM and customer engagement strategies as a matter of course.

Ethical, organic SEO practices have put our own site at the top of the pile when it comes to choosing an eCRM agency, and it’s done the same for clients like AAR and LA Fitness too, and we’d love to talk to you about making certain you’re as visible, in all the right ways, as you possibly can be. Please do get in touch.