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Social Media Myth #2
Social Media Sites Are The Way To Go To Get New Customers
This is more of a “selective myth” than an outright lie.
I say “selective-myth” because not all social media sites are created equally, nor with the same purpose and goal in mind. A great majority of the sites are “social” first (hence the name), which means people are there to visit and be sociable rather than shop or be sold something.
Because of that oft-overlooked fact, many of the major social media sites are either not the best places for a business owner to spend their resources – time and money – and/or their “typical” approach to marketing is not ideal and must be reevaluated and redesigned to fit the social media landscape.
*Sidebar: Truth be told, most – as in 92.75% – of small businesses don’t know SQUAT about sales or marketing. They waste money on glossy brochures that end up in the trash. They turn over their sales force at an alarming rate but hold on to the doddering do-gooders that know how to brown nose and befriend the staff despite missing numbers year after year. Their media buys are based on the deal-of-the-month with no consideration given to creating and delivering a powerful message or considering how it will fit into a bigger strategic marketing picture. And they have no centralized, process-driven system for automating, tracking and measuring it all. Now back to your regularly-scheduled blog post already in progress…
When approaching social media for business purposes – and ALL businesses should – you must first determine your primary objective and there are only two choices: networking or link building.
Volumes have been written on the various means and methods to achieve both objectives (and a Saturday morning blog post before the Army @ Air Force and LSU @ Alabama games (Air Force and LSU will win, IMHO) is not the place to get into the weeds on those topics) but suffice it to say every major and minor social media site lends itself more adequately to one or the other for your business.
Once you understand the primary focus and benefit of each social media site for your industry you can then leverage them to first make the marketplace aware of you, then lead them back to your site or blog and then to become a customer.
Start small. Create a standard profile on several major sites and start listening. Demonstrate your expertise and skill level and industry insight by first asking great questions. This will show how good you are without bragging and provide insight as to the interest level and market potential in the chosen social network based on the degree to which others contribute to your question.
Answer questions posted by others. This again shows your expertise and will begin to attract prospects to you. (It also gives you a chance to create valuable content that can be used on your site for SEO.)
Integrate your social media sites together with free tools such as RSS feeds, Ping.fm and HootSuite to expand your reach and presence with minimal duplication and see which platform produces the best results.
Always keep in mind the primary function of social media sites is help you get noticed, which causes the reader to want to visit your site or take you up on a unique, timely, relevant call to action, which, at a minimum, enables you to capture their contact information and ultimately results in a sale.
There’s a lot of moving pieces and parts.
If you need a little help give me jingle and watch your cash register ring.
If you need more help growing your sales, check out the following resources scattered around this site and a few others I operate, such as:
Good Selling,