Birmingham Social Media Cafe #BRUMSMC May/June

 For May's Birmingham Social Media Cafe with CliveReevesPR, Brum Hour aka David W Massey and Phil Choi aka The Blog Trainer took us to the quirky cool Tilt coffee bar in City Arcade.

Tilt Twitter

Craft beers, first class coffee and delicious treats such as BAKE's Snickers and lemon cheesecake bundt are all on offer at Tilt.

Tilt Twitter

By the Tilt window was the delegation of 4 from digital marketing agency Connecting Element led by Client Service Manager Matt Bowell. Matt talked about their clients from the restaurant industry and their work with bloggers and influencers to promote brands such as Miller & Carter and Harvester.

Near left in the photo is brilliant copywriter Anna Gunning who turns company jargon into beautiful content. To Anna's left was the Mac Birmingham team who are fighting back against huge funding cuts with exciting promotional content and events. To Anna's right is charismatic vlogger Sinead Latham who was a wiz at DigiCities week. Next to Sinead is the legend that goes by the name of Brummie Gourmand aka Ryan Parish. Ryan's blog is full of brilliant foodie finds.

BrummieGourmand.com

To Dave's left is accounting maestro Practical Edd who gives Ryan a run for his money with kwl restaurant tips. It was an eclectic group at Tilt working on some exciting upcoming projects.

Brum Night Cafe in the Gunmakers Arms

Brum Hour twitter

Wood you believe how good the Gunmakers Arms looks since it's recent refurbishment? The Two Towers Brewery real ale pub had just been completed before our visit mid June and hosts everything from gigs to board games nights and soon the Brum Vegan Beer Fest

Gunmakers Brum twitter

Attendees included PR specialist Karen from Cup & String Communications, visual communications designer Rachel Khor and Kelly and Becca from the JC Social Media team

 Dave introduced first speaker of the night Marketing Manager Adam Snelleksz from CMA Video who work with clients such as the Sealife Centre, Sport Birmingham, Legoland and Coventry Gin Festival. I was really impressed with what Adam said about a video communicating so much more personality than just a few lines of text. You can show off your knowledge, skills, enthusiasm and expertise to impress a customer with why they should hire your services. Adam mentioned the power of filming customer testimonials and user-generated content.

 Adam's Top 4 Video Tips

 1) Plan what you are going to say in the video by only having one or two main takeaway messages for viewers rather than a rambling conversation about everything you do.

2) Choose a short video length of 30 to 90 seconds to get your message across as many people may be watching whilst travelling so have less time to browse

3) Have a call to action message in your video e.g. call us now, for more information, to sign up.

4) Tell customers what they want to hear rather than generic phrases such as we have the best staff, reputation etc. They want to hear that you will save them money, time, make them look more attractive etc.

 Next speaker expert copywriter Anna Gunning told us that for you to resonate with your audience you will need to imagine that you were talking to one individual person rather than a generic crowd. So you personalise your content as if you were speaking to a customer named Joe and you imagine Joe's background, job and personality.

 Next rather than describing your product you talk about what problem it solves for Joe. You start broad then empathise then specialise. Work out where they are in the decision-making process and give them the information they need to guide them towards a purchase. Great advice!

June: BrumSMC Alpha Works

Everyone who visits Alpha Works gets excited by the surroundings, vibrant offices, amazing views and creative energy there.

 It was a great turnout with some new visitors. You may notice that a certain multimedia journalist and podcasting enthusiast Adela Earlington likes to be centre of attention in group photos. 😃

 Community Manager,  Theresa White told us about the diverse community of freelancers, entrepreneurs and small businesses in the offices. The hot-desking options are brilliant as you can pop in for a day, a week or a whole month depending on your needs.

 "Meeting you with a view to a kill".

Love these views from the 21st floor!

 Don't daydream too much as you need to make your own business dreams come true.

 On the ground floor the Alpha Cafe is run by the team behind the highly regarded Faculty Coffee shop in Piccadilly Arcade.

Mouthwatering treats! I had the raspberry and white chocolate brownie and it's fantastic!

Finally 

Theresa White and Phil Choi

The Blog Trainer Phil Choi is doing a free workshop as part of NatWest's Set For Success series.

If you need any help with the following this event is perfect for you.

Introduction to WordPress
Creating blogs for better SEO
How to craft a great blog post
Tools and apps to help you create better content
Driving social followers to your blog
Q&A

Tickets for NatWest Set For Success with Phil Choi

Words by Paul Clarke.

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April Highlights: Small Talk, Enterprise Nation Meetup and Social Media Cafe

Badego's Small Talk

Amrit Singh Twitter

Badego are on a real roll of organising fantastic creative events having put on a wonderful talk by Territory Studios at last month's Flatpack Festival. That talk gave an insider's look at working on movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy and The Martian and they followed up last week with an event at 1000 Trades brimming with talented and inspiring creative speakers called Small Talk. Let's start with the amazing Amrit.

Amrit Singh The Periscope King

instagram.com/mrasingh

Creative Designer and artist Amrit is one of the top 10 most popular live streaming artists in the UK. His engaging, warm and interactive live art projects attract thousands of viewers with one video receiving over 100,000 views. He is so popular and his style so entertaining that Periscope invited him over to their San Francisco headquarters. Amrit decided to stream his projects to explore his more artistic side over a year and a half ago. Way before video exploded in importance in social media.

Amrit has learnt a lot and his success continues to grow. It a joy that he has used his large following and influence to help those in need such as refugees and street artists who he videos with all their contact details so people can donate to them.

Amrit's Top Tips

1) Be yourself, your genuine self not your Instagram filtered self. Amrit has had to deal with some challenging people online and has handled them gracefully. He takes risks even if it means it puts him on the spot.
2) Focus on content not number of followers. People can buy fake followers so be more impressed by engagement levels and impressions across media rather than high follower numbers.
3) Give, give, give some more then ask for something back
4) When you teach you learn twice. I love the thought of that!
5) Smile. People respond to smiles and humour, it's infectious.

Cynthia Miller Poetry Queen

Cynthia Miller, Brand Strategist at Orb talked about how she took her love for poetry and feelings of frustration with exclusive and stilted poetry festivals and turned it into a vibrant, diverse, welcoming poetry party for all! The inaugural Verve Poetry Festival was a deserved smash hit. 

VervePoetryFest

Cynthia described how she wanted to attract 'people who hate poetry', experts, newbies, kids and the curious. 

Cynthia opened our eyes to the potential power of poetry through movements such as poetry of resistance and poets such as Maggie Smith whose sad words moved many. Cynthia has just been published in Nine Arches Press's Primers Volume 2. Check it out!

Nine Arches Press

Birmingham Social Media Cafe

Jord Muckley centre. Dave Massey right.

For a minute it looked like Aston University's Social Media Consultant Jord Muckley was going to challenge Brum Hour's David Massey to a follower count over at Conference Aston during the Birmingham Social Media Cafe. It would have been unnecessary as they are both social media geniuses!

Since Jord Muckley (he doesen't Muckley about) has come in to Aston University he has updated and revolutionised their social media content away from serious corporate vibes to engaging storytelling, student Snapchat takeovers and communication by emojis.

The key theme is storytelling and as over 80% of Aston University students do placement years there are lots of exciting stories to be told. Over the summer 6 students will be employed as digital ambassadors with an emphasis on getting out and about and creating great photography.

Watch out for the #yoursforthetaking campaign which will showcase the whole student experience of life as Aston and justify those high tuition fees!

Enterprise Nation Meetup by Debbie Assinder

Enterprise Nation members were treated to a fab meetup in the newly launched Alpha Works ultra modern offices in Alpha Tower. Community Manager Theresa White (above far right) gave us an impressive tour of what for many will be an inspiring place to work and dream.

The Table of Talent!

A high-rise building needs high-flyers and these talented individuals fit the bill. Blenheim London's Dennis Chen announced plans for an exciting new watch whilst Alex is working with branding maestro Naeem Alvi on his modern office furniture leasing company.

Dennis Chen, Alex, Anna Assinder, Naeem Alvi and Rachel Khor

 Anna Assinder made Birmingam Chamber's Future Faces sound an irresistible group to join and mentioned that they are partnering with Independent Birmingham for the forthcoming festival on 13th May. Creative Designer Rachel Khor highlighted some of her wonderful designs for theatre companies across the UK.

Vicci Lewis, Selina Hewlett and Debbie Assinder

 Debbie Assinder can sniff out potential Enterprise Nation members faster than a speeding bullet! Vicci and Selina have just launched virtual business support company Tuki.

It was brilliant to catch up with hot PR company Story Comms's Sophie Drake whose team came up with the amazing Alpha Sunrise photo shoot campaign to promote Alpha Works launch.

Amanda Lowe Twitter

Story Comms invited the regions top photographers such as Tim Cornbill in conjunction with Birmingham's Hidden Spaces for a series of shoots that provided some stunning, refreshingly original shots of  Brum's ever-changing skyline.

Tim Cornbill Twitter

Everyone loved the images. Amazing PR!

Alpha Works Twitter

Finally

Seasonal Market at The Bond Company

I had to pop along to this when I heard that Baked in Brick's mini would be on the scene. The chicken tikka wraps were tasty.

Baked in Brick

 I practically emptied this BAKE Birmingham display.

BAKE Birmingham

With gems such as a Snickers cake, BAKE are everyone's favourite go-to-guys for a treat that's sweet.

BAKE Birmingham

  My daysaver came in handy with all these buses.

I'm now super excited for Independent Bham's Festival in May. 

Words by Paul Clarke

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