Online PR and Social Media Agency, Simply Zesty, Lauren Fisher an interview

Tell me about your Simply Zesty?
Simply Zesty is an online PR and social media agency based in Dublin. We help our clients to engage with their customers online, through innovative online PR campaigns. We don’t just take a tick-box approach to social media and don’t believe in having a Facebook page or Twitter account ‘just because’. We look at the online opportuniteis that are best suited to the client and devise campaigns that allow us to add something to the conversation. We always go in with the approach that people need a reason to be a friend or follower of a company.

What was your most successful social media campaign and why?
One of our most successful social media campaigns was blogger outreach activity for Vodafone. We were bought in to organise a blogger event for a new service launch, as well as a feedback session for bloggers to talk to Vodafone and find out more about their online presence. Both aspects of this campaign were really successful and we generated good coverage online, but more importantly, opened up new avenues of conversation which Vodafone are already benefitting from.

How has Buzzstream helped you with a social media campaign for one of your clients?
For one of our travel clients, we were distributing guides that we had produced. On the day that I heard about the Buzzstream launch we had signed up for accounts and were tracking contacts we made. It was such an easy tool to use that solved a lot of problems we’d been having. When we had further contact with sites/publications, we were able to refer back to our notes and log any successes easily, which has come in incredibly handy for further campaigns.

What is the biggest myth in social media?
That it is all about the numbers. If one of my clients Facebook pages has a fairly small amount of fans that are continually engaging, I consider this a bigger success than a page with hundreds of fans but no conversation. Numbers in social media mean very little, we are still trying to interpret what defines a social media ‘success’, but for me, if I can get people talking about, or to, a brand I’m representing then this a success. Starting conversations is the key, it’s not always about how many you’re talking to.

What top tip you would give to a newbie in social media?
You have to learn by doing. There are hundreds of ‘how to’ resources out there and it’s easy to fall into the danger of reading too much and not actually doing. You have to be prepared to make mistakes when it comes to social media, but don’t be afraid to admit (publicly) where you went wrong and learn from it.

What do advertisers do that you wish they wouldn’t?
Spamming on Twitter is quite a big problem at the moment and it overshadows those comapnies that actually just want to talk to their customers and listen to feedback. It gives businesses a bad name and adds unnecessary noise to what is an otherwise valuable medium. Whether this is a genuine misunderstanding of how online conversations work, or a lack of effort – I’m not sure. My guess is that this won’t go on for too much longer as I can’t really see any benefit these companies are getting.

Where do you see growth in the social media field?
Social media is still a relatively new form of communication. I see one of the big areas of growth being small businesses. There is still a lot of scepticism around social media and a belief that it only really works for big corporations. I believe that social media is ideally suited to small businesses and I think we’re going to see a lot more examples of low-budget, local online activity as the medium matures.

What do you do that is green?
I’ve just started cycling instead of getting taxis everywhere.

What is one thing about you that not many people know?
I broke the (old) world record for eating cream crackers!

What are your contact details (email, company, blog, Facebook, MySpace, forums, etc)?
you can email me at lauren@(nospam>simplyzesty.com on Twitter @LaurenFisher or through my business page facebook.com/simplyzesty

Online PR and Social Media Agency, Simply Zesty, Lauren Fisher an interview