I found it rather surreal in the City last week, people were blindly walking along in the snow, trying to film their 'perfect' snow scene.
Paul Hunt is a marketing consultant
What would we do without social media when it snows and I will confess to being a culprit for posting a video of my two dogs playing in the snow.
I found it rather surreal in the City last week, people were blindly walking along in the snow, trying to film their 'perfect' snow scene.
You'd think it would be more advisable to watch your footing. I can only imagine the social media vs snow injuries caused.
This brings me onto this week's marketing topic, as social media is something that can be extremely valuable in engaging with an audience in ways that were unthinkable only a few years ago, but it also has its risks.
Since becoming a freelance marketing consultant six months ago, I have purposely planned my social media presence, assessed which medium I use for different audiences and organically built my followers.
For Twitter, I have sought to use this for the mortgage broker community and so follow over 2,000 accounts, many of whom are brokers.
Last week, I saw the following tweet from a broker (I have anonymised their twitter handle) which I thought I should share, as it was undoubtedly issued with good intentions, but.....
This post is definitely a financial promotion and so these rules should be applied to social media as much as they should be with more traditional mediums.
In case you don't know the financial promotion definition, it is as follows:
A financial promotion is where a person, in the course of business, communicates an invitation or inducement to engage in investment activity (section 21 Financial Services and Markets Act 2000).
A communication that merely informs or educates will not normally be a financial promotion.
Therefore, please ensure you include the use of Twitter within your marketing sign-off processes, although the actual process will differ to standard print communications.
Be very clear to all who you allow to use, what they can and can't post and what needs sign off and what doesn't - I'm not saying don't, I'm just saying be careful not to slip up, just because a tweet appears to be a good idea initially - look before you tweet.
