Iceni talks social media to… Jill Watkinson

Business Development Manager at The Space (Norwich).

What does your role within The Space as a Business Development Manager involve? My role within The Space involves telling people about our facilities and services for room/conference space hire – it might be by attending networking events, exhibitions, organising marketing projects, open days, social media campaigns, giving talks at local colleges and schools – lots of different ways to talk and engage with people – to tell them about us and when they are looking to book meeting/conference space – they come to The Space.

Can you give us a brief run down on how you use social media to interact with potential clients and the general public? I use social media a lot to engage with general public and with potential clients – trying always to be helpful and sociable on all our social media platforms.

How do you use social media as a tool for your existing clients? I use social media to keep in touch with our existing clients, if they are happy and want their event advertised – I welcome them to The Space, engage with them during their event, and always thank them for using us (we are very discreet so some events are not publicised and are kept private) I sent out special offers to existing clients and invitations to our events. I use Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus and for only business updates LinkedIn.

There are quite a few networking hours on Twitter, which is your favourite and why? Norfolk Hour is my favourite networking hour – I try to engage 3 nights per week (Monday/Wednesday and Friday 8.30pm to 9.30pm) its a fabulous way to make new connections and engage with other Norfolk businesses. As well as making some great business connections and friends through Norfolk Hour – we also now run Norfolk Tweet Ups – a monthly Tweet Up – free to attend networking event – for people who tweet to come and meet each other face to face.

What is your favourite social media campaign you have managed? I became involved in Break’s GoGoDragons project last year with 17 other Norfolk business people – we sponsored GoGo KingTut – which was my favourite marketing project to manage – as I along with Colin Jeffery ‘tweeted’ as our Dragon (The Marketing Project post Dragons mentioned our Dragon for being so engaging with the public).

What kind of skills/qualities do you think you need to possess to be a Business Development Manager? I think being sociable, helpful and friendly are good skills and qualities to have for a Business Development Manager – Our ethos at The Space is that everyone who comes is our ‘guest’ and are treated as such – customer service is very important to every member of our team – many of our clients use as on a regular basis – using us weekly, monthly, quarterly and annually for their events.

What are your competitors doing on social media? All of our competition are on social media – and I like and retweet their events – as Norwich is a great business community and we help
each other.

And finally, what one piece of advice can you give to someone starting out into the world of social media? One piece of advice would be – be sociable on social media – engage and chat to people – be interested in them and their businesses/community and help when you can.