Understanding the Power and Utility of Social Media

Most companies fail when it comes to coupling social media to business development. These failures result in a lot of wasted energy and time, and a lot of chasing after worthless goals. The energy wasted could be so easily leveraged using  social media well. Let's figure this out a bit.

People go to social media for all kinds of reasons: for news, for local news, for entertainment, to see what their friends are up to, to look for funny, provocative and unusual information.

Businesses should go to social media to cross paths with new prospects. As business owners, we go here to drop attractants that relate in some way to our business services. We can attract friends and likes and shares when when we offer useful bits.

Too many businesses think like bosses. You can talk about anything you want with paid employees and they pay attention; probably not for the reasons you wish, but it is part of earning a paycheck. Make the boss feel good.

Too many businesses hire social media help using the same attitude. Social media creation types are there to make a buck putting up on social media what you want to see and hear. They are paid to make you happy. I am not. Therefore, this may feel like a face slap, but the people you are trying to attract and influence probably have the most fleeting interest in what strokes your ego. So why do we see so much of this type of content?

Reasons while social media failures occur so often might be in this list.
We love to make stuff up because we know what works.
Just too busy to stop and think about important stuff.
Creating content is an afterthought what with all the really urgent stuff to do.
We love being the boss and making stuff up. This is the HIPPO effect.

So what makes good sense when trying to use social media?
The great content that we share as blog posts or articles, fit into sharing on social media nicely. We also need a nice hook to get attention. We actually serve up useful information for our visitors. We give visitors an opportunity to use and share our genuinely important information. If the link does not relate to your core business, or if you think your role is to be share any funny thing, or talk about football or cats or dogs; you are diluting your utility. Facebook is full of entertainment. People do not come to you for entertainment. You just mess up your role and bore people. You need to concentrate on being in the cultivating new customers business.

Now grounded content can run over a gamut of creative tidbits. We are in the bonding business. We offer useful information, people get the answers they want, we earn trust, people ask us questions and ask us for estimates, and they become happy long term customers.

Here is a short list of useful topics that work well being shared on Facebook and social media. There are more; feel free to suggest a few. Oh, and I threw in some caveats, also.

• attractive bits relating to useful content around your specific service that you have published to your website. Facebook is not a reliable place to post original content. There is no reliable searching mechanism. This is called social media for a reason. 
• local events and community involvement by your people. There are interesting tools on Facebook to promote events. Document the events on your website. Share pictures  and links to Facebook. 
• Awards won and recognition earned by your people.
• great testimonials - this is a tricky place. Heap praise on the people who get mentioned. Humble bragging is not good. We are just red faced embarrassed at the profuse praise heaped on us... just shut up. People are  finding you annoying.  There are humble braggarts out there. Are you one of them?
• you can be creative but be real and do not just fill space.
• no gratuitous offerings of your brand logos. Why? might someone forget your brand? Just knock it off. You often see this when an agency has a box to check off as a post. 
• skip the empty reminders of important calendar events. I get newsletters from several companies' who email on Mother's day and the 4th of July and Christmas. My heart sings their praises for being so authentic and caring. That is Stu sarcasm. You can make these real, and make them personal. Talk about what your people are doing, maybe; but just the drab standard line and this is the only time anybody hears from you....  People know that software sends these out and the note was written 4 years ago. No points for priming the calendar. 

There is all kinds of space here for creativity and bonding to real people and we always link back to our website which is the hub of all our online activities. We must always be offering value. Now this is a wide ranging field. Just be real. Be there with real thought out additions to the dialog. Don't just fill space.

Your use of Facebook or any other social media tool must relate to how that tool is actually used for good purpose by the regulars and your posts must blend in with other useful information in that medium. We must not be interlopers shouting for attention.

We need to test and measure to see how we are doing. We talk about measuring metrics here.
Conversions are creating a link to useful content, say on your website around a subject that attracts attention.

Social Media 2.0
There are powerful ways to find influencers in social media that relate to the value you bring to the market place. You can friend them and win them over to common cause and combine your efforts to reach more people and create a win-win for both parties.

You can also collaborate in a group you build, but this is a big deal and will not be addressed here. You can also participate in other groups. But remember, work to add real value or you will be ignored and be worse off for trying. Be authentic.

We must be conscious of working to be useful.
This brings up a widespread issue in the publishing content world. The myriad forces which push towards mediocrity in content development. Leadership must refrain from making stuff up and doing the easy brain fart type of posting or allowing an agency to post hokum for you on a regular basis just to fill space. We must be conscious of being useful

Your content and your social media postings must relate to the buying cycle
You need to be strategic and you need to understand the multiple steps of a sales process and how to address each of these stages with your content.
You can work within any of these categories, and by being strategic you can create a matrices of content connection points that allow people to find a path to you and follow that path to giving you a call.
We are working in these categories. You might have some clearer verbiage here.

• capturing attention, 
• to creating the wish for more information
• to planting an idea in someone's head 
• to helping answer questions 
• to helping to solve objections and alleviate fears
• to setting your company apart from the competition
•  to cultivating a desire for the service, 
• to writing an estimate and closing the sale

Understanding buying cycles is important and we discuss several here. If you don't understand the buying cycle you can get your sales process out of order and miss sales.  If you don't understand the buying cycle, you could be missing a critical part of the market and have a weakness in your strategic implementation. The sales process is one step at a time, and you need to have a pretty good idea that there is time involved as people move through the buying process.

OK, so make sure you understand that there are no points won for the number of people who like you, or the number of posts you do. The value of social media is set by your ability to get shares and likes driving visitors back to your content on your website. Follow the stats. Follow the conversions. Improve by testing. Don't make stuff up.

Any other thoughts about social media?