The Social Angle: With Jason Singh, Tattersalls

More and more businesses in the thoroughbred industry are using social media to strengthen their brand and reach out to current and potential customers and clients. Jason Singh, Marketing Manager at Tattersalls, shares his insights on their strategies for social media marketing.

TDN: What are the benefits of social media marketing for businesses in the Thoroughbred industry?

JS: It provides another outlet to communicate with your clients. Not everyone wants to read a press release or reads publications that you might advertise in. The rise of smart phones has changed how people consume news and information and has been a massive part of the rise of social media. So it is an essential medium for us to connect with both current and potential customers. The way social media works also allows you to directly interact with individuals, albeit in a public space.

TDN: What social channels do you prefer, and what type of content do you post on each platform?

JS: Tattersalls currently use Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for our social media and whilst the content on Twitter and Facebook is roughly the same, we use Instagram slightly differently. On Twitter and Facebook we try and use content that is original and different to what everyone else is posting. For example, if a horse we sell wins a nice race, it's good to be able to post some pics of them selling as a yearling or as was the case recently with the unbeaten Denaar (Ire), we posted a video of him doing his 'breeze' before he was sold at the Craven Breeze-Up Sale which seemed to get a positive response.

TDN: What type of content do you post on Instagram, and why is it important for Tattersalls to be present there?

JS: We find that the users of Instagram are looking for different content than Facebook or Twitter. Of course being a visual medium, we try to post interesting and entertaining pictures and certainly we find that these are the things that are best received. We try to keep things a little more light-hearted here.

TDN: Do you look at other organisations, inside or outside the Thoroughbred world, for inspiration?

JS: Only as much as we see the way that lots of different types of organisations use social media simply through our own use of Facebook, Twitter etc. But with social media becoming an increasingly important tool, I think it will become more important to pull in ideas from other sources.

TDN: How do you measure success? Can you convert social media followers into customers?

JS: That's a very good question. Like a lot of marketing, it can be difficult to quantify and measure whether what you are doing is effective or not. However, social media is very good at giving you statistics on anything you do which is something that traditional media doesn't do nearly as well. With traditional print advertising, you might know how many papers are sold, but you don't know how many people saw your advert and or whether they paid attention to it. But with social media, you can see how many people saw it, how many clicked on it, engaged with it, etc. It provides a great deal more information. Whether it actually converts followers in customers I'm not sure, but it allows you to engage with lots of people and that can only be positive.

TDN: What are the biggest mistakes to avoid making?

JS: First of all, I think it's important to try to create content that isn't pure marketing. Followers tend to switch off a little if you are just banging your own drum. And whilst that is impossible to avoid completely, creating some original and fresh content is important too. And whilst we all have the ability to create decent content on social media, I think where possible, having someone dedicated to the role is important.

TDN: Going forward, what social media trends are you looking forward to?

JS: Well I think it's fair to say that it's difficult to know what the next big thing will be. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all very established at the moment and I think it will be difficult to break the hold that they have, but of course the next big thing is out there.