Lisa Marie, Cariads Local Ltd

Supporting the local community

‘At Cariads we have already been using Facebook to compliment our magazines that go out to the local communities of the Wye and Brecon areas, but we wanted to start using Twitter effectively and so decided to attend the workshops to see what they had to offer. We’re so glad that we went along, the information we received was great with lots of useful hints and tips and we now feel equipped to improve how we use Twitter.’

Based in Winforton in Herefordshire, Cariads Local Ltd is the brainchild of Lisa Marie Badham; with a background in design, print and advertising Lisa Marie found a gap in the market for monthly community magazines that would serve the Wye and Brecon areas, providing information on events, an advertising platform for local businesses and interesting articles. The Wye Local magazine was first published in 2006 and following its success the Brecon magazine, Local Beacon, was launched in 2009 and they now have a combined distribution of almost 10,000 copies. The business has expanded to include a ‘Cariads Family Magazine’ and the team also organises regular car boot sales and produces a Local Landscapes Calendar each year.

Lisa Marie is passionate about providing her local communities with quality publications and knows the importance of using social media to help increase awareness about both the magazines and the events and businesses being promoted within them.

Demystifying Twitter

Already juggling three successful Facebook business pages, Lisa Marie and her colleague attended the Faster Women workshops on social media to gain further insight into how to use Twitter and found the experience extremely useful. She said ‘I already feel confident using Facebook for my business and the advice given during the workshops confirmed that I was on the right track and using the pages as they were intended. However Twitter was a tool which I wasn’t as familiar with.

‘The course was delivered in a way which suited people of all different abilities so that nobody felt out of their depth. We all felt at ease and able to ask any questions that we wanted to without feeling that we were asking something silly or too simple.

‘It was so worthwhile and helped us to think differently about how we use Twitter. We are now trying to plan and structure our social media posts in advance and we’re analysing which of them have been most successful and making a plan from that. We found the workshops fantastic!’