Gordon Beattie

Today marks the launch of our Only Social website which highlights the social media marketing services Beattie Communications and Only Marketing are supplying to a myriad of clients.

Social media monitoring and marketing is one of the fastest growing areas of our business.

Why?

Because social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are revolutionising the way we communicate with people we know and with people we have never met.

They are also transforming the way we win business and the way we get our news.

When it comes to breaking news, Twitter breaks it faster than any other communications platform.

It outpaces daily and Sunday papers as well as radio and TV news programmes. In fact, they monitor Twitter to pick up news from celebrities, companies and ordinary people who are on the spot when newsworthy incidents actually happen.

When the earthquake and tsunami wreaked havoc in Japan, it was Twitter that carried the first news and YouTube that brought us the first pictures. The BBC and CNN caught up later.

It was the same when the earthquake rocked Haiti and when the rebels took up their guns against Colonel Gaddafi. When the Libyan uprising started there were few news teams on the ground - the world was forced to rely on citizen journalists.

If you think about it, Twitter actually has the biggest team of news reporters in the world. In a flash, it has given the power to influence back to the people.

What people on Twitter are chatting about right now, will make the headlines in tomorrow's newspapers.

So remember - your words, your pictures and your videos are important!!

We can all put our foot in it from time to time - I do more than most.

This week I have been writing text for the next website in the Only series - Only Public Relations.   

To date I have produced eight Only websites:

• Only Marketing
• Only Web
• Only Words
• Only Retail
• Only Travel
• Only Food
• Only Health
• Only Marcom

So, needing some inspiration, I turned to David Ogilvy - the greatest ad man who ever lived and his words of wisdom still ring true 12 years after his death.

Here are some of the clever things he said:

• Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product.
• I don't know the rules of grammar... If you're trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular.
• I notice increasing reluctance on the part of marketing executives to use judgment; they are coming to rely too much on research, and they use it as a drunkard uses a lamp post for support, rather than for illumination.

One of my favourites has nothing to do with advertising or marketing:

• Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

I may like Lady Gaga - but I never want to be thought of as going gaga!

They say elephants never forget and as marketing people - neither should we.

It's all too easy to forget about customers who have stopped buying from us, but they can be a rich source of new business.

Customers stop buying for a myriad of reasons - some negative and others out with our control:

• They find a less expensive supplier
• They move on because they are dissatisfied with the service
• They run into financial difficulties
• Their priorities change
• The people change

I firmly believe that former customers should never be written off. Once a client, always a client is my philosophy.

So take a leaf out of my book and stay in touch.

Time moves on and circumstances change. By maintaining a contact, you will at least be in the frame when opportunities arise.