Power up your social media marketing in 2025

We’re excited to announce that we’re hosting three Social Media Marketing workshops on a regular basis (every 4–6 weeks) to help businesses and non-profits elevate their social media content creation, improve their planning, and achieve better results.

Workshop 1: Mastering Facebook, Instagram, Meta Business Suite, Ads & LinkedIn with Mina

Our first workshop is perfect for those looking to build a strong foundation in social media marketing.

This workshop covers:

• Facebook & Instagram basics: Learn how to optimise your presence and improve reach and engagement
• Meta Business Suite: Discover how to streamline your content management and measure performance effectively.
• Facebook & Instagram Ads: Gain insights into creating effective ad campaigns that drive results.
• LinkedIn success: Tips for building professional connections and creating a standout profile and business page
• Content creation tips: Learn practical techniques to create engaging and shareable posts.

This workshop provides actionable insights to help you maximise your social media impact across platforms.

Workshop 2: Practical Video Marketing – Reels, TikToks & more! with Laura

In our second workshop, we explore the ever-growing world of video marketing.

With the rise of Reels and TikTok, creating compelling video content is now essential for businesses and non-profits.

This wrokshop covers:

• Reels & TikTok Creation: Learn how to make videos that captivate your audience.
• App Recommendations: Explore tools and apps to simplify video creation and add impact to your content.
• Practical Tips for Engagement: Understand how to increase your reach and boost engagement with dynamic video content.

This hands-on workshop is ideal for anyone looking to improve their video marketing skills and make a bigger impact online.

Canva Graphics Workshop with Sarah – Design Made Simple

Last but certainly not least, we’re thrilled to offer our Canva Graphics Workshop led by the talented Sarah.

This workshop explores Canva Pro and is perfect for anyone looking to create professional and eye-catching visuals for their business or non-profit with ease.

Whether you’re a complete beginner or want to refine your design skills, this workshop has you covered.

This workshops covers:

• Canva Pro basics: Learn how to navigate the platform and utilise its powerful tools.
• Branding your business: Create consistent, on-brand graphics that reflect your identity.
• Designing Social Media content: Discover how to craft engaging posts, banners, and stories for platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
• Tips and tricks for professional results: Explore insider tips to elevate your designs and save time.

Why join our Workshops?

• Practical guidance
• Tailored for businesses and Non-Profits
• Great testimonials from previous attendees

Don’t miss this chance to enhance your social media marketing and take your online presence to the next level!

To book please visit:  https://ditzymedia.onlineticketseller.com

The post Boost your skills with our regular Social Media Training Workshops appeared first on Ditzy Media.

9 years since I decided that I would work for myself, helping local small businesses and non-profits harness the benefits of social media.

Social Media then was still a relatively new thing for businesses, and I remember there being quite a bit of scepticism about whether social media would be a contender to enhance or replace more conventional forms of marketing and advertising.

Social Media is now front and centre for most businesses and non-profits.  New careers have formed from the need to be online – and social media is just part of an ever-evolving landscape of technology.

I feel privileged to have created a business which has enabled me to work closely with our community. Whether it is through supporting clients through our outsourced service, troubleshooting tech issues, consultancy, and of course, delivering training to many start-ups, SMEs and non-profits.

I have had the good fortune to be an employer, having some fabulous people working with me now and over the years.

Over the past 9 years, I do believe Ditzy Media has helped and added value to our local community through the work that we do.

This has always been at the heart of what I wanted for Ditzy Media – and the passion that I have for our community only grows over time.

The post Celebrating 9 years in business! appeared first on Ditzy Media.

Seven years of being in business is quite a thing to achieve.  This feels especially so coming out of the pandemic.  So, to mark the occasion – here are our top highlights of Ditzy Media’s time as an agency.

Being able to support our community

Being in business gives us a unique opportunity to be a force for good when it comes to engaging with our community – doing our bit to support other business owners, charities and non profits.

We have been privileged to work with so many great SMEs and non-profits over the course of the last 7 years, and hope we have made a positive contribution, to their success using social media to meet their goals.

Supporting some rather awesome events

In our first year, we had the pleasure of supporting of Wyntercon, the first comic-con of its kind held in Eastbourne – and have gone on to partner the event each and every year since.

In 2017, we began working with Carnival Expo and sponsored their 2017 and 2018 events.  A chance for us to work in an area we are very passionate about – the business of Carnival!

The pandemic has not stopped our working with events thankfully, and we look forward to supporting the Eastbourne Vintage Festival, Wyntercon VIII and Eastbourne Carnival all taking place later this year.

Winning Awards for our work and customer service

We have been in the top ten most loved businesses in Eastbourne, and best UK PR & Media Agency on thebestof.co.uk/Eastbourne based on customer testimonials for our work and customer service.

In 2017, Mina was awarded Sussex Digital Woman of the year, which was a huge achievement – particularly receiving recognition from the Sussex community.

We are proud to have over 450 5* customer testimonials on The Best of Eastbourne.

Working on projects involving young people

We have supported Eastbourne Youth Radio, and The Big Futures Show for a number of years.  In 2021, we worked with Holding Space to contribute towards a booklet helping children with their mental health – providing guidance on tips to manage their wellbeing online.

We also get involved with school visits, Creative Cafes and work experience to try and inspire the next generation to think about tech and digital marketing as a career.

Our fabulous customers

Business is nothing without its customers.  We have had the pleasure of working with many sectors over the years including hotels, car dealerships, estate agents, home improvements, trades, food businesses, actors, authors, therapists, accountants, wedding suppliers, IT providers, events, numerous non-profits, and more!

Our training offer has seen us working with EDEAL, 3VA, Mid Sussex Voluntary Action, Business East Sussex, and the FSB East Sussex – delivering presentations, workshops and 1-2-1s.  We typically train on average 3 businesses per week so that is over a thousand businesses that we have helped start their journey online.

Looking forward

The pandemic has been a challenge for everyone, but we have loved the passion and resilience our community has shown.   We are rightly proud to be part of it and will continue to be supporting it in proving advice, training and social media marketing services, doing what we can to help!

The post 7 years in the business of Social Media appeared first on Ditzy Media.

Here are our top five writing tips to help inspire you!

Writing content for social media can be a challenge.  If you are posting 5 times a week to your social channels as a minimum, you will need to create 20 bits of shiny new content per month.

Knowing what to write to engage your followers and keep them coming back to your pages is an art in itself.

So, in the spirit of being helpful for National Writing Day 2021, we thought we would share our top five tips to help inspire and plan great content for your social media.

1. Set aside time to plan each month.

A couple of hours at the end of each month gives you the chance to reflect on your monthly analytics and consider what content performed well, and importantly, what didn’t.

You can use one of the many free social media planning templates available online – such as this one from Hubspot to help plan your key dates for the month ahead.

2. Key Blog or Vlog themes

Whether you are happy to write 300 – 1000 words once or twice a month, or go ‘live’ or do a pre-recorded video; Blogs and Vlogs lend themselves to writing richer content about a topic which relates to your business.

You could be responding to trends or current affairs which affect you or your customers, or be providing advice and information – just as we are here.

The great thing is they can become part of your evergreen content plan, which means, so long as they are not time specific, you can reuse them in future too.

3. Collaborate and support

As a business, you will have key suppliers, customers, charities and peers that you will wish to support online.

Keep an eye on what is happening in their world e.g. any milestones, events, job vacancies, new team members, fundraisers etc. so you can support them by sharing their content on your social media.

You can also consider asking them to guest blog on your website.  A great thing to do – as you get the benefit of not having to write the content, and you get the chance to support a local business or charity.

4. Awareness Days

These can really help with ‘writers block!’.   I am writing this on National Writing Day, so I hope to make the most of the online energy that will be around this awareness day today.

As part of your monthly plan, check in advance what key dates are coming up which relate to your business, or a cause that you are passionate about.

This will help give you enough time to get creative and generate good content for those key days.

5. Social listening and trends

Twitter is particularly strong for monitoring key conversations and trends.  Keep an eye on what is happening by going to the Explore tab, and seeing what the news of the day is, or what is trending.

You can save or follow hashtags which you want to monitor regularly for fresh content ideas on Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.

You can also follow content on Facebook and LinkedIn.  Just use the separate page news feeds features to monitor industry content, or pages which interest you.

We hope our tips help inspire your content planning, and help with Writers Block!

Strong coffee and decent chocolate can also help.

If you need help with planning your social media, content writing – or just need someone to take it off your hands, check out our services pages to see how we can help you

The post Writing content for your Social Media pages appeared first on Ditzy Media.

The best ways to support your favourite businesses is to buy their goods and services or gift vouchers – BUT you can also show your love for your favourite businesses on Social Media.

There are a variety of ways to support local shops online to help spread their content further and reach more potential customers. Doing some of the below actions can really make a big difference in helping get their content out to more people.

1. Like and Follow their pages on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and wherever else you or they may be active
2. React to their posts – On Facebook – a reaction such as a love heart or wow face is more meaningful than a like
3. Commenting on posts and tagging friends if appropriate whom you think may be interested in the post
4. Sharing their posts – you have options to share onto your timeline, share into groups or with specific friends via Messenger or as a story
5. Save posts on Instagram – this is the equivalent of sharing
6. Leave a Facebook or Google review – you may have seen Google Ads showing their support for local businesses and their campaign #DearLocal – here’s the link to the video from  Google Advert with Anthony Joshua
7. Suggest your favourite business when a person asks for recommendations in a group – you can do this by tagging the business account directly onto the post using ‘@businessname’

Times continue to be tough for many people and businesses so even if you can’t buy from them or pay for their service right now, you can still support them on social media for FREE!

Share the love to help local businesses stay strong!

The post How can you support your favourite businesses online? appeared first on Ditzy Media.

We hear a lot from business owners about the drain on time that social media can bring.

Fear not!  There are some simple techniques you can implement to manage the time you spend on social media – without reducing your impact!

Top top tip: Schedule time within your working calendar once or twice a week to work on your social media.

There are a number of tasks we all have to do to ensure our content is fresh and relevant.  Make sure you allow a few hours per week to enable you to do the following.

1. Social listening. What stories and conversations have come up which relate to what you do?  Can this inform the content you will create?
2. Content research. Looking at your main social media feeds where you may be drawing informative content from e.g. news sites, industry sites, activities from people you collaborate with.  What trends or awareness days apply this week?
3. Creating or sourcing suitable visuals
4. Writing or recording (if video!) your content
5. Scheduling your content to go out at the key times that work for your audiences.

If you post on multiple platforms – using a social media management tool to schedule your content is a no brainer.  Some tools are free or low cost but can save you priceless time within your business.

Our fave is Zoho Social as it can post against Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google My Business and YouTube! 

Three further social media jobs – the icing on the above cake of work you have already created if you are doing the above – is to make a little bit of time daily to:

• Engage with others
• Grow your followers on the platforms that matter to you
• Monitor messages and interactions on your platforms

Social Media is your online shop window.  Taking the time to make it fresh, interesting and above all, welcoming to your customers and community is time well spent!

If you need advice on how to manage your social media for your business – reach out to us for an informal chat.  We can offer training, and consultancy to support your business or non-profit to make the job of social media easier and less time consuming.

The post Making the best use of your time appeared first on Ditzy Media.

It can often be the last thing we look at before we go to bed and the first thing we check in the morning. Spending long periods of time online can leave a person feeling isolated, alone, anxious and unconnected which has a negative impact on their mental health.

Now, we’re not saying social media is a bad tool as there are so many positive features and people online to help inspire us, but now is a good time to have a healthier relationship with social media.

It’s important to remember that social media is a fabrication of our lives and the people you follow will want to showcase the best side of themselves and #livingtheirbestlife.

This isn’t always the case but more often than not it is. You only see a small slice of someone’s day not the whole picture so, if you’re having a low day seeing a friend or influencer online happy and smiling this can affect your mental health as you start to compare yourself to others.

With this in mind, is it time to have a good clear out and clean your feeds? Although it’s not easy to figure out why you’re feeling down – part of the problem could be due to who you’re following.

Top tips for a healthier social experience:

1. Go through who you’re following and try unfollowing or muting accounts that upset you and take up too much of your time.
2. You are in charge of who you follow and what you want to see – make it diverse, make it inspiring and make it a place you feel comfortable!
3. Be strict with your usage. Allow yourself set times during the day to use social media whether this is ten minutes on your lunchbreak or a quick five minutes in between cooking dinner. It’s equally important not to be harsh on yourself too, if you say, “oh I’ll have a quick ten minutes” and it ends up being longer don’t beat yourself up about it.
4. Recognise when you’ve had enough and when it’s time to put the phone down or shut the laptop – this can be very empowering!
5. Try to make a habit of spending the first and last hour of your day without a screen. Instead go for a walk, read a book, meditate or draw – find an activity you enjoy that doesn’t involve a screen. Easier said than done we know but practice makes perfect.
6. There’s nothing like picking up the phone to call a friend or loved one – particularly now. Proper contact (albeit still estranged due to lockdown) can have a positive impact on your mental health and wellbeing.

Put your mental health first and if that means deleting an app or two for a while that’s okay. You know what’s best for you so take care of yourself in both the online and offline world.

For more advice and useful links about mental health and social media visit:

https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/looking-after-yourself/social-media-and-mental-health/

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/mental-health-helplines/

https://www.net-aware.org.uk/

Blog by Verity Webb – to mark Children’s Mental Health Week and Time to Talk.

Part of Ditzy Media’s effort to consider social media responsibly – particularly for young people during this time of lockdown.

The post A healthy approach to social media appeared first on Ditzy Media.

Updated January 2021

A chat hour is a pre-determined time on Twitter, where a group of people join in using a hashtag to have a conversation.

A fair few news ones have sprung up recently as a result of the coronavirus pandemic – so we have updated our blog to reflect this.

In our local area (Sussex) we now have

• #BrightonHour – Mondays 8.30-9.30pm
• #MidSussexHour – Wednesday 11:00-12:00pm
• #1066Hour for Hastings & Rother – Wednesday 11:00-12:00pm
• #SussexHour – Thursdays 10am – 11am
• #EBHour for Eastbourne & surrounding towns – Thursdays 7.30-8.30pm – hosted by us!
• #UCCHour for Uckfield – Fridays 11:00-12:00pm
• #FirstFridayVirtual – every First Friday of the month at 1:00pm

How to get involved in a chat hour

• Log in to Twitter and then go to your search bar top right of the screen and type in the name of the chat hour with the hashtag e.g. #EBHour
• You will then be taken to a view which has two options – View Top tweets, and latest. You need to select ‘Latest’ so you can see the conversation as it happens.
• If you intend to join in regularly you can save that search (top right of the screen)
• It’s a good idea to open a second browser screen and have that screen logged in for Twitter and select your notifications tab. This allows you to check if someone tweets you directly, so you can reply quickly without going away from the search screen.

It’s just businesses selling – right?

Wrong! Yes, businesses are the predominant group in some chat hours, but they are there to develop relationships – just as with any networking event offline. Charities and other organisations also join in as do individuals!

Chat hours give people a chance to get to know each other as people, share stories, a laugh, and other experiences as well as a little bit of promotion what they may be doing.

If you are new to Twitter, chat hours are a great way of getting to know people and build a network.

Top tip! Don’t forget to use the hashtag for the chat hour in your tweet!  And don’t forget if you begin a tweet with a Twitter account (the @…) this can reduce the visibility of your tweet.

The post Updated: Guide to local Chat Hours on Twitter appeared first on Ditzy Media.

Review your 2019

So, what worked well in 2019?  How does this compare to others like you?  This will help inform what your overall marketing objectives and specifically your social media objectives should be for the coming year.

If you are starting up – this is a perfect time to research your sector and if relevant, your community and of course your competitors.

This can help you identify what makes you unique, what good looks like and also what mistakes to avoid.

A planned approach

The hard part can be getting started.  A plan can help greatly to ensure your marketing is defined and supports your business objectives.  You can then adopt this into your social media content.

Try to plan at least the first 3 months with key aspects of your business

• Marketing messages: Sales / Products
• Awareness Days & Events
• Your ‘Social’ content
• Frequency of content – how often are you going to post

Know where your customers are active

There’s no point posting to the wrong network if your customer is not there.

Equally, it’s important not to make assumptions about what type of person uses which platform e.g. Instagram or Facebook may not work for B2Bs – that would be wrong if you are working with SMEs’; or only young people use Instagram.  That is definitely not the case.

Take time to see if businesses like yours are active on each of the networks and what their following and engagement looks like.  This will help indicate the value of you using it.

Keep up with trends and technical changes

This can be hard enough if your Social Media IS your business – let alone if it’s not!

Try to keep your ear to the ground on a regular basis to see what changes may be coming on the platforms you are active on.  Technical changes happen all the time and can affect the way the platforms behave (glitches) or can lead to a complete platform update like we are seeing with Facebook and LinkedIn.

Trends in what works regarding creating engaging content for your customers is equally important.  If you write a blog will someone read it – or are you better considering a Facebook Live Q & A Session?

Having a plan, using your resources efficiently and being aware of changes will all help ensure your visibility and keep you hopefully ahead of your competition.

If you need advice, training, consultancy or for someone to take your Social Media off your hands – get in touch!

Wishing everyone a prosperous and healthy 2020!

The post Top tips to help you plan your Social Media in 2020 appeared first on Ditzy Media.

Marketing – whatever form suits your business – is hugely important in raising customer awareness of what you do or sell – and ensures you are reaching out to potential customers.

It can, however, be bewildering to know where to begin, how much to spend and where, and what to do to reach your potential customers.  It can be costly and whichever mediums you use – it is a long game.

Marketing of any form does not necessarily lead to new customers straight away. 

It’s easy to think you don’t need to do marketing if you already have an established customer base or are busy.

Not marketing during your busy times could be to your detriment if you suddenly lose customers and find yourself needing to shore up your customer numbers quickly.  Having a stop / start on / off approach to your marketing could work against you in the longer term.

What marketing is right for your business?

That very much depends on who your customer is – and how they may look for goods or services like yours.

It is not a one size fits all solution, and it is good practice to adopt a mixture of on and offline methods to get the best results.

Measuring Social Media ROI.

Social Media can be a very powerful tool for reaching new potential customers.  Just like any other form of marketing – it can be a long game!

Your objectives for using social media should be multiple – as it is more than just ‘marketing’.  It is:

• A way of demonstrating your expertise or being best in class in your field or for your goods and services
• A customer communication channel – with customers increasingly using Facebook Messenger, Direct Messages on Twitter and the equivalent on other channels to make enquiries about buying, as well as getting in touch if they have an issue they need to resolve.
• A great way of collecting testimonials and reviews – as well as being recommended to others via your existing customers.
• A cost-effective way to promote directly to your potential customers via Social Media advertising; using the tools within the platforms to promote events; offers and jobs.
• A way of showcasing your business’s personality – so people get to know, like and trust YOU– and when they are ready to buy – it is YOU they will want to come to.

All of this effort – if done right – will equate to people choosing you and your business over your competitors when they are ready to buy your goods or services.

Analysing and measuring your impact

A massive advantage of Social Media over other forms of marketing is the ability to track your results. All platforms have analytics which you can use to monitor your progress.

You can track:

• Increase in followers
• Particular posts for reach and engagement
• Advert statistics
• Overall account reach and engagement
• Some platforms will give you demographic data on what your fan base looks like e.g. towns, age, and gender.

Regular monitoring of your content and impact will help inform your future Social Media Marketing efforts.

Make sure you scrub up well!

Customers are increasingly using the internet to research businesses before they buy.  Your social media is an important first impression – and can make the difference in achieving a new sale or customer.  This applies equally to the Business to business sector as well as business to consumer.

Step Up Your Digital Marketing in 2019! One Day Workshop – 15 February 2019 – Eastbourne.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/step-up-your-digital-marketing-for-2019-tickets-52672970272

For information on our Social Media Outsourced services see:http://ditzymedia.com/services-prices/

For information on our Social Media training see:

http://ditzymedia.com/social-media-training-courses/

The post How do you measure your Social Media ROI? appeared first on Ditzy Media.