Bright lights big city! A friend of mine is currently putting together a fabulous one-man show to tour around the UK. The script has been written, the first venue booked for two weeks time and a plan for secret off-broadway domination is set. It’s exciting times and the preparation is immense, a show simply does not produce itself darling. There have been the all hours rehearsals, the lighting and sound team, supportive friends and family and not least, the dedicated time and money invested into what could be a risky proposition. The budget is of course non-existent, the expectations are massive and the resources are limited, but the show must go on!
So far so good, a creative enterprise with limited financial resources is after all, a fairly common practice and there is no doubt in my mind that it will be a fantastic performance, everything is in place to ensure that. However there is one small to medium to potentially enormous problem. Bums on seats.
Marketing, ticket sales, box office income and sales performances. No matter how good your show, your product, your business or your idea, if you don’t market it out, there is little point in ploughing all your energy into producing something that isn’t going to reach beyond your own circle of friends. Fair point I hear you say, marketing is obviously key to any SME. Employing an agency to deliver your marketing agenda is a costly endeavor that many businesses choose to do. You have to speculate to accumulate right? Correct. However thanks to The Cloud and Social Media Marketing, perhaps the only thing you have to speculate on now is your time and energy and perhaps your perfectly chosen online avatar…
Social Media Marketing or SMM is free. Free to deliver, free to strategise, free to receive. The only thing that costs you is your time. This is invaluable to a small business, start-up or soon to be west-end, theatre production. It is a truly simple way to engage people beyond your community, all the tools are already in place to ensure that it is not only easy but also incredibly effective.
Now while your Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and Linked In networks are all good to go, events have been set-up, timely tweets queued and invitations to join your network sent out, there is one further tool that will really boost your SMM to perform beyond your expectations. The Cloud. And if the ‘event’ is the connections you make socially, collaboration tools such as Hosted Exchange and hosted SharePoint will help you take the ‘action’ in response; the Cloud will ensure all your SMM devices are synced but using exchange hosting will provide high-end email security and performance, keep you notified of all the latest changes and ‘tweets’ and of course allow you to make formal contact with all your new connections. Last but definitely not least, by including Cloud based tools like hosted SharePoint into the mix, you can work easily with others; editing notes, calling actions, reviewing those actions, scheduling meetings – the list goes on.
Whatever your business, SMM and the benefits of the Cloud enable you to access your online life, networks and latest ‘likes’ no matter where you are in the world – whether that be the stage of the Royal Albert Hall or in your off-Broadway rehearsal room.
Tags: Business Email, Cloud computing, Cloud IT, collaboration, Email Hosting, Hosted Exchange, hosted Exchange 2010. Exchange hosting, the Cloud
