Everything in todays business world is social. Many of the top brands now use social media as part of any marketing camapign.

In the early days people thought social would be a new revenue source for acquisitions of customers, but those days didn’t last long. Social is now for me, a retention and customer tool.

During my time in the gambling industry for both Betfred.com and Ladbrokes.com I set up and ran social media campaigns. It’s crazy to think that even just a few years ago there was no one within the marketing team that would be focused on social media. Saying that, most the social roles I’m currently seeing advertised are pretty low salary / low skillset.

The initial pages i set up and ran were http://www.facebook.com/betfred and http://www.facebook.com/ladbrokes.

Both came with their own difficulties and rewards. In the early days facebook loved shutting down fanpages for breeching it’s rules. After the gambling companies started ponying up a fair bit of cash on ppc ads, it seems to be all ok these days.

Some of my favourite promotions were at Ladbrokes. During the world cup I ran a number of social promotions were we would use our live dealer tables as a live prize draw. See an example video . Everyone loved money for nothing and these were the days before the new wave of social competition whores! It was so easy at Ladbrokes to offer unique prizes as i have a whole suite of games to choose from. Here is another example. Ask your facebook rans to choose two numbers from 1-6. Screen camputure a virtual race and hey presto, give away just a tenner! is an example. I successfully ran similar promotions at Betfred during my time there. During both of these times I pitched social media to the senior management and managed some resource at both companies. It seems like they both now take it more seriously after both recrutiment new members of staff in this area.

On recent project I’ve used social video as a competition driver. After purchasing an old Triumph, I’ve ran a few video competitions to help brand awareness and engagement. for the campaign.

That’s a very brief overview of just a few of the social projects i have worked on. See my last social media posts at www.stephenjury.com/news/