Members of Nordic Chambers of Commerce in Thailand gathered at the Sheraton Grande Hotel, Bangkok for a breakfast seminar on Social Media Marketing last Tuesday, October 16th, 2012.
The topic of this seminar was originally Online Marketing and E-commerce but was slightly changed to Social Media Marketing to better cover the intended content.
Mr. Peter Bjork, Executive Director of the Thai-Swedish Chamber of Commerce, on behalf of all Nordic Chambers, warmly welcomed all guests and the speaker of the day, Mr. Carl Heaton. Mr. Heaton is the founder of Web CoursesBangkok and a User Experience (UX) consultant for the United Nations. He started the seminar by asking the attendees about their knowledge of online marketing, and the seminar continued with good energy and a vibrant communication between the speaker and the attendees till the end.
Mr. Heaton began the presentation by demonstrating the fast growing trend of the usage of social media compared to website media for marketing purposes. The fact that consumers tend to be influenced by gregarious instinct was also pointed out. Social media marketing in fact is a never ending conversation between networks of individuals. In relation to this, Mr. Heaton pointed out that “context is King”, rather than “content”, which is an important point for social media marketing.
Furthermore, Mr. Heaton underlined the importance of being “open” and “friendly” when doing marketing business by using social media. There are so many tools available today which you can optimize your customer’s knowledge about your company and products. It is very important to establish “what people already know and do” and “what you want them to know/do after having seen your marketing materials”. To set up your online marketing and social media strategy, you have to know the specific goals and objectives of what you aim to do.
One of Mr. Heaton’s advices is to use the information that already exists and use it to bring up your profile – from this follows that “consistency” was also another key word of the day. The critical point was made that in this line of business you need to be constantly in touch with your target groups and engage them to share and recommend your products as much as possible.
