The seventh of our weekly interviews in which we discover how real businesses are making Social Media work for them. Please meet Anthony Wilson from Scraptors.
Who are you and what do you do?
I am one of a group of 3 people who make up Scraptors – we make sculptor out of scrap. We specialise in sculptor trials. We have recently created a trail at a Dorset eco farm and at the Stourhead National Trust property.
How do you use Social Media?
We are comparative novices with Social Media and learning all the time.
We have a blog which we update regularly with our latest sculptors and trails. I do use Twitter for getting information – for example, I needed to get my dogs micro chipped and I found out through Twitter that the RSPCA were doing it for free one weekend. In terms of Scraptors, we post our news to our Facebook page which is getting more interest now – as we are spending more time on it.
I have found Pinterest interesting – I spent time pinning images from people that do recycling sculptures. I pinned them to a board called ‘Sculptures we like” – this has already generated contacts with people all over the world. I aim to spend a day pinning more of our own images to generate more interest.
We are going to use Social Media to promote a crowd funding project on Sponsume. The Scraptors’ sculpture mad garden near Stonehenge has a public footpath at the bottom. This means that our project for a Bird Henge, next to the path, will be visible free 24 x 7. It will be a Henge, a circle of sculptors of Wiltshire birds. We are going to use 10ft high posts topped with birds made out of scrap. The birds will include a Great Bustard, a Red Kite, a Buzzard, a Kestrel, a Barn Owl and a Lapwing. The Great Bustard (the heaviest flying bird) has been reintroduced into Wiltshire on nearby Salisbury Plain recently and the Great Bustard group will receive 5% of monies raised from the project
We are looking for £2000 in funding for the project – everybody who contributes £1 upwards will receive a certificate by email with one of the birds to print. Higher contributions will receive prints and miniature bird sculptures. All contributors will be entitled to a visit, by prior appointment, to explore the 2 acre Scraptors sculpture mad garden.
I hope to use Social Media to promote interest about the project and also to inform our supporters of progress. On Twitter and Facebook we will offer certificates by email for all those that share our project.
Can you share a Personal Success Story?
We have won a commission for a small sculpture in Devon for SusTrans purely through our use of Social Media. Hopefully in a few months, we will be able to update this with the success of our Birdhenge! Social media needs to be combined, of course, with conventional face to face networking and marketing and that combination has meant that we are in exploratory talks with two estates, one at Strouhead in Wiltshire and another in Herefordshire about installing sculpture trails. In both instances the blog and other sites were a vital element.
Can you give our readers a top tip?
The words in a tweet are really important if you want people to click on a link – you need to give people a reason to click as there is so much noise out there. The other aspect I would try to remember is not every tweet should be about yourself!
Contact Information
You can contact Anthony Wilson on LinkedIn, and the Scraptors on Twitter, Facebook, Scraptors Blog, Pinterest, In June Sponsume Birdhenge Crowdsourcing project.