Who are you and what does your company do?
My name is Aman Madpuri, I have been with Sociallatte since 2010. We are a social media marketing company in Canada. Our specialties are in the hospitality industry, including hotels, golf courses, restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, lounges and even some food trucks that are current clients. My role here at Sociallatte is Director of Social Media and Marketing, we have a team of 30 people on board as we speak.
How and why did you get started in social media?
Social media has taken the world by storm. I have been on Facebook since 2007 and seen social media evolve rapidly with many new platforms emerging. I have always been intrigued and made a career out of it. It's the wave of the future, social media is here to stay, it’s not going anywhere. I’m fascinated with the power it holds.
What do you believe the benefits of using social media for business?
If you take a look at what businesses have achieved historically with traditional marketing- whether it was newspapers, radio and TV- it has been very limiting in terms of the audience it captured. It’s a fact with social media you can reach thousands if not millions of prospective users, buyers, followers and people you can engage with.
The bottom line is our five pillars of success: the number one is quality content and having maximum engagement with our prospective clients. Managing online reputation, brand awareness is always on top of mine and of course return on their investment. We want to make sure we are recouping their monthly investment with our company, month in month out.
What do you think are common mistakes business owners make when building brand awareness on social media?
That's a great question, I follow a lot of my competitors and companies on social media. One common mistake would probably be that content is not relevant. There are fake likes and followers, luckily Google can spot fake accounts and generally, it is the spamming of prospective clients that damages the brand. We have been fortunate with opportunities to take on many clients who were not happy with how other social media companies were handling their channels.
What qualities do you think social media managers should have?
Our five social media managers strive to know their customer inside out, like the back of their hand. Whether it's a golf course, a hotel of a corporate chain, a series of burger joints, our managers' priority is to know the client well on a daily operational level. It's also important to be articulate when posting content and engage properly with the client's followers and fans. These are the qualities we seek in a social media manager here at Sociallatte.
How do Business owners know if their social media campaign is working?
We send our clients a monthly dashboard showing them growth in followers, fans, reviews, views, likes and comments. Demonstrating where they generate new leads confirms they benefit from our service. We make sure we turn on their investment through the monthly contact that clearly outlines where their business is coming from and the dollar value of each client entering their establishment.
How do you see social media evolving over the next 5 years …what do you hope to see?
We have seen the transition in the last 10 years move from Desktop to PC to Tablets and now I think the Mobile platform will dominate the next 5 years. I believe it is evident that mobile communication will be dominating the market.
If you could share one best practice about using social media to grow a business, what would it be?
Engagement is probably the best practice when using social media to grow a business, it breeds results. We have seen clients who arrive with 15,000 Facebook likes and 3,000 Twitter followers but they don't engage with them correctly.
What are you favourite platforms for social media marketing?
It depends on who I'm targeting. If I’m targeting the younger generation it’s definitely Instagram, the business savvy would be LinkedIn. I would say Facebook is for everybody and anybody under the sun but my favorite now for social media marketing is Instagram.
