Sunday 27 March 2011

Newham 10k - March 2011

A "Great Run" this weekend around Newham, taking in the Olympic Park developments.  It was great to get up close to the Olympic stadium, Velodrome and Aquatic Centre, as well as the new Westfield in East London.


It was a super well organised event, with nearly 4,000 runners taking to the streets around Stratford.  The mens winner ran an incredible 31.22, and Sonia O'Sullivan came second in the ladies race.  I was happy with a 50:21, coming in 618th overall, 82nd in my age/gender group.


Tuesday 8 March 2011

Social Media for Member Retention – Strategy tip #2, Engaging

Once you’ve done some listening (and not before), it’s time to engage with others across the social networks that you have identified as being right for you.

While listening, you have hopefully seen some interesting content that means you want to keep in touch with those people or companies, or you might want to share their thoughts or generate your own content for your own followers.

So set-up the relevant accounts (perhaps taking it one or two at a time), and connect with the people/companies that interest you. Depending on the network you are looking at, you might need to request a connection, or sometimes you can just follow others without their approval. Some will follow you back as a courtesy (or automatically), and this will start your fan base.

Next you need to tell all your members/clients/friends/contacts to find you on your chosen networks, and ask them to connect to you too. Do this by any means possible; verbally, e-mail, noticeboards, flyers, etc. Tell them why they should; they are becoming a member of the club within the club, and will get exclusive offers, inside news, connect with other members. If you have the resources, give something out to the 100th, 500th, 1,000th fan to get everyone to talk about it and sign-up.

Now you are set-up and are following and being followed, start sharing. Engage with your fans by posting and talking about events, set-up those exclusive promotions, publish ‘internal’ news articles, and mention your members, staff, affiliates and partners.

One final word on this part, before we get onto influencers... Don’t go from just listening to just talking. Communicating over social media is still communicating, and if you’re all output and no input, people will soon lose interest in you. Keep listening, you will find out even more interesting stuff, and it will make creating your output easier and more inviting to others!

Please feel free to follow GGFit or guygriff on twitter, or join the GGFit facebook fanpage, or follow or connect to me on LinkedIn

Read part one of our Strategy tips - listening