• Swindon & Wiltshire Events
• Thursday April 25 2024
• Author Name: Peter Davison

High-flying businesses gather at flight museum for bootcamp

High-flying businesses gathered at The Army Flying Centre on the Wiltshire / Hampshire border yesterday (Wednesday) for a ‘bootcamp’ organised by the Federation of Small Businesses.

The action-packed morning equipped small business owners with practical tips they could use to give their marketing a lift.

Emily and Alan Braithwaite of social media firm Yellow Tuxedo (main image) dispensed practical advice on companies’ online presence.

They urged people who liked face-to-face networking to continue their conversations online, by connecting with people they had spoken to on LinkedIn, and to get involved in conversations about the event they had been at.

Business owners should have an ‘omnichannel presence’ and build their ecosystem across the platforms where their ideal customers would be, the pair advised.

But it is important not to get so overwhelmed by social media that nothing gets done. “Content on a platform is better than no content,” said Alan.

Nicky Rudd from Padua Communications

Nicky Rudd from Padua Communications shared tips on written communication, creating a mix of short-form and long-form content.

Writing content that could be repurposed for future use was a good idea, said Nicky, and using quiet periods to create content you can use during busy times was recommended.

“Make your content inspirational and helpful and it will resonate with your potential customer,” was a key takeaway.

Tom Vaughton of specialist SEO agency Varn was on hand to give business owners advice about improving their visibility online.

He said that while Google was constantly adjusting its algorithms, the basics remained the same – help people to quickly find the information they are looking for.

He urged business owners not to try to ‘trick’ Google into getting better search results. “There’s no silver bullet, and content is king,” he said.

Looking to the near future, Tom highlighted AI and machine learning, voice search, and local SEO as some of the features business owners would need to get to grips with.

Alex Coles of Botlib AI kept audience minds in the near future, explaining how artificial intelligence would be integrated into common systems regularly used by small businesses – with chatbots managing everything from product search to customer service.

AI will become multimodal, handling vocal enquiries as well as text prompts, he said. Programs would even be able to understand regional and global accents.

For businesses struggling to communicate with AI, Alex unveiled a cheat sheet which helps users to avoid the pitfall of ‘bad input in equals bad input out’.

Video coach Jeremy Mason had some great tips on producing video content.

He urged the audience not to “chase vanity metrics. Don’t aim to go viral,” he said. Instead, create content that educates, entertains, and promotes. Keep it short and friendly.

Creating video, he said, need not be costly. By simply using a smartphone as a camera – although an external microphone is really helpful – business owners could create short videos for their social media channels. He urged delegates to make a video about the event they were at – and many did.

Kelly and James West from ONLE Networking

And Kelly and James West from ONLE Networking – an online networking business – had some tips to help business owners up their networking game.

“Don’t pitch – ask questions” was James’ takeaway. “Learn to listen. Ask people questions about their business and they will tell you what they need and how you can help them.”

They also urged delegates to take the conversation from the networking event – either real-world or virtual – to social media channels like LinkedIn.

“The internet killed the age of one-way communication,” said Kelly.

One takeaway was to make content ‘commentable’. If you are creating content that inspires an answer like ‘well done’ it’s hard to keep the conversation going. Encourage your audience to leave meaningful comments or questions, then continue to engage with them was the advice.

The event was the first Hampshire and Wiltshire bootcamp run by the FSB, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.