Name: Stephen Paul
Company: Owner of Valued Accountancy Services
Twitter: @stephenpathome
Sector: Finance
Accountant Stephen Paul is first to admit that people in his area of expertise don’t make the best use of social media, a trend he seems to have bucked with his nomination in The Journal’s search for the North East’s Most Influential on Social Media.
As owner and founder of Valued Accountancy Services, with offices in Newcastle and Consett, Stephen has successfully won over £100,000 worth of business through using facebook and Twitter.
He said the key to successfully promoting his business online was to cross promote his clients at every opportunity, while ensuring he injects his own personality into his status updates and tweets.
He said: “As an accountancy firm we are different. We are a friendly firm. I try to post a lot about my clients telling my followers what they are up to to give them something back. I also post about any developments in the business and try to stay away from accountancy because it is not very interesting.”
Stephen created Valued Accountancy in 2011 and said it is this friendly approach which has helped to double the firm’s turnover in two years.
Among his 3,000 tweets are updates on the firm’s re-branding, announcements on latest job vacancies as well as generally nice comments about the businesses he works with. The recipe has garnered him more than 5, 600 followers from a wide range of industries and organisations.
His recommendations of people to follow online reflect his desire to help support his customers. He includes Blue Kangaroo ( @bluekangaroo1 ), the firm responsible for re-branding Valued’s website and client Collinson Jewellers ( @CollinsonJewllr ).
Stephen's recommendations include:
Xero Blog - http://blog.xero.com/
Customersure - @customersure
Collinson Jewellers - @CollinsonJewllr
Blue Kangaroo - @bluekangaroo1
