Tips to Beef Up Your Sales With Social Media Marketing

Can you really pay some high school kid or stay-at-home-mom or Eastern European “outsource firm” $3.68 an hour to automate some tweets of quotes of famous dead people to drive traffic to your site where people just hand over their credit cards to you while you shop for Ferraris and drink champagne?

Good. Keep reading. Social Media Marketing falls into a big, broad bucket often referred to as “Relationship Marketing” or “Pull Marketing” or “Inbound Marketing.” The theory behind it is to always stay in front of your marketplace and potential clients in small, subtle ways to help brand yourself in their minds so when they need what you offer they’ll come to you because they “know” you from your gentle, friendly online social media marketing. Like Yogi Bera said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”

This type of marketing has lured a lot of business owners and sales people into its seductive lair because it’s:

1. Accessible.

2. Fun.

3. Easy to do (not do well, but easy to do.)

4. Appears cutting edge.

5. Appeals to our human desire to belong (to a virtual community.)

6. Appeals to our human desire to matter (we can appear to be fat cats and big wigs with our “followers” and “likers” and “fans.”)

7. Free (if you don’t count your lost productivity, lost sleep, lost revenue and lost money paying smooth-talking smack-talkers to make you some latest and greatest social media profile that will be all the rage and bring you billions of views.)

And also because people want to believe they can’t grow sales with “Old School” “Push Marketing” or “Interruption Marketing” tools like:

1. Telemarketing / cold calling.

2. Print advertising

   1. Magazines.

   2. Newspapers.

   3. Catalogs.

   4. Direct Mail.

3. TV advertising.

4. Radio advertising

5. Outdoor advertising.

   1. Billboards.

   2. Sky-writing.

   3. Buildings.

Why?

Because all of the above require up-front investments of time, thought and treasures, which the lazy have none of. They’d rather login to Facebook and fire up TweetDeck and start wasting their lives away.

“But, Wes! David Ogilvy* and other famous Ad Men didn’t have to fight DVR’s and Caller ID and Satellite radio and RSSCable TV with 400 channels. I HAVE to Tweet and Status and Check In and Place myself in the digital social media world to everyone.

Today’s consumers have iPods and MP3’s and turn off the radio. They read an average of 6 blogs a day instead of magazines and newspapers. They are turning to “recommendation marketing” instead of “interruption marketing.”

I have to do Social Media Marketing above all else to grow. I have to. I HAVE TO!”

(*David Ogilvy, of Ogilvy & Mather fame, built his business up to to be acquired for $864 million by helping the likes of American Express and Schweppes sell hundreds of millions of dollars of products to consumers from 1948 onward. Yes, times then were different. But humans were not.

He was big into branding and big into big brands. You need to be big into building your brand, but doing so as by-product of providing great value to your clients. Social Media Marketing, when done correctly, can help you do just that.)

David Ogilvy had big budgets and a captive audience, which is certainly not the case for most of us. However, Ogilvy knew how to speak to the needs, wants and desires of his clients and prospects and used the medium best suited to meet his goals.

In today’s fragmented, un-captive audience you still need to connect with your clients and prospects and Social Media is helping to level the playing field for the small, nimble, creative entrepreneurs that are in tune with the needs and demands of your marketplace and who focus the power of Social Media and use it as one tool in a more comprehensive tool chest rather than the end-all, be-all of marketing.

When implemented properly, Social Media can empower “the little guy” to compete with “the big guys” and actually beat them at their own game if they can carve out their niche and stake their claim as the provider of choice for the discretionary buyer.

Social Media 101:

Create Profiles on as many Social Media Sites as possible and automate your distribution of content to those sites. I have profiles on approximately 123 social media sites but I only visit 3-5 on a weekly basis and most I never visit directly. However, I APPEAR to visit them ALL weekly if not multiple times a day.

There are free tools you can use to post while in traffic such as the free WordPress App for your iPhone. Hootsuite lets you link your Twitter posts to multiple sites while Ping.fm lets you link to even more.

If you’d like help creating all of the profiles listed above and have us create a custom Facebook and Twitter page for you and discuss strategize with you for a full hour follow this link to get started today.

If you are a do-it-yourselfer and you’d like to get started on your own here are some basic steps to follow to ensure you start on the right foot:

1. Facebook – Pictures are key here. Tag everyone in your photos and include hyperlinks to your website in the description.

2. LinkedIn – Business networking. Import your blog and be sure to include your phone number and email in the description so people know you are open to connecting.

3. Twitter – Google and Bing are now indexing Facebook and Twitter so be sure to create a custom page and send out relevant content daily vs. “buy my stuff” types of Tweets and Status Updates.

 Facebook:

Create a Fan Page vs. a Group for your business. Go here to get started: Create New Facebook Page.

 LinkedIn:

Create a personal account and then a company page. You can build your personal account here, LinkedIn Profile, and follow the instructions.

To create a company page on LinkedIn make sure you have your personal account created and then verified before you click on this link: LinkedIn Company Setup.

 Twitter:

Create a simple account and follow everyone they recommend in the setup to “seed” your account. (I’ll explain later.) Here’s the link: Twitter Setup.

Listen & Observe First

You have two ears and one mouth so start with listening and observing and asking questions. Measure the pulse of your your target audience. Only then should you wade out into the water with your opinion and advice and thoughts.

“How so?” you ask? For example:

 Facebook:

Write Notes. Ask questions via the “What’s on your mind?” section and/or use the “Discussions” section for deeper interactions. You can Attach Notes, Links, Events and even Photos and Video to valuable resources. Use your Facebook Fan Page like an open forum / chat room for your marketplace.

 Twitter:

Twitter is the best resource to help you practice consolidating your message to its essence. Remember, the purpose of headline is to have your prospect read the first sentence. With Twitter, the purpose of the headline is to click on your link. You have 140 characters to capture their attention, including the link. So get to the point. Include verbs. You can elaborate and pontificate at your site/blog. Google likes seeing inbound links to your site and as you increase traffic to your site/blog you increase the chances you have to make a sale. All are desirable and good.

 LinkedIn:

LinkedIn has a cool platform called “Answers.” Here you can ask and answer questions with members of your target audience and because LinkedIn is a “business” social media site it offers a powerful opportunity to connect with business professionals in your region and niche.

As an added bonus, the more you participate you can achieve a type of “expert” status when your answers are rated as “best” in your category, which is indicated with green stars next to your name/answer.

Finally, you can link your blog to your Company Page, which further enhances your expert status and helps you stay in front of a wider audience with no additional work. And that’s a good thing.

 Wrap Up:

Social media marketing mastery takes effort, planning and consistency. It’s not a silver bullet but a big ol’ gun that, when aimed truly and loaded properly, can help you land as much business as you desire. 

If you’d like to get in touch with me you can connect with me on Facebook at my Fan Page or send me a connection request on LinkedIn (I’m an Open Networker) or just pick up and the phone and call me. 

Wishing you all the success you have the guts to grab.