Most of us have been exposed to the noise and chatter about all the many benefits of social media for business.  As the fastest growing sales and marketing channel, social media is the “buzz.”  Even though we are constantly exposed to trainers, educators, and consultants promoting their events, programs and seminars to learn, use, and understand this phenomenon known as social media, there are still lingering questions as to whether this is something I need for my business.

If you are like most businesses, you have probably already set up a Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or Blog site and are now trying to figure out what to do with them.  Or, you are standing at the starting line paralyzed by the daunting proposition of social media and not sure what to do first.  Many of you are asking the questions “is it necessary for my business?” and “I hear about it, but how does it financially benefit my business?”  Great questions.  Let me provide you with very simple answers and give you some tips to get started.

Social media is a valuable, highly interactive sales and marketing tool.  More and more businesses and individuals are utilizing social media to share information, find solutions, and look for suppliers and resources.  And the fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the over 50 crowd.  You will be using the social media tools eventually.  Why not start now?

Once you accept that social media could be of value to your sales and marketing efforts, here are the steps you need to take:

1. Have a plan.  The reason most people struggle with social media is they do not have a plan.  We rarely go into anything in our lives without a roadmap or a plan.  Social media is no different.  When I work with my clients, at a minimum, we answer these questions: What do you hope to accomplish? How do envision accomplishing that? How are you going to track and measure results? A social media strategy will help you avoid aimlessly putting out content that is not of value or does connect with your target market.
2. Know who you want to communicate with.  Any effective sales and marketing program requires knowing your target market.  Once you know who you want to communicate with, you are in a position to define where those people are, how they communicate today, and what to say to them. This process helps you focus your social media efforts specifically to your audience.  Know who your audience is, where they are, and have a conversation with them.
3. Remember this is a conversation.  The most valuable and powerful component of social media is effectively connecting and communicating with people.  Social media is essentially a virtual networking event where you connect with people and begin building relationships with them.  While you cannot see these participants, you can still connect with them.  Like any networking event, this is not the place to try to sell your product or service.  If you try, you will not be successful or well received.  The objective of your social media activities is to build connections, establish credibility and expertise, and create awareness of your brand and your value proposition.
4. Tackle one tool and get very good at it.  Once you defined your goals, your market, and know how to communicate effectively, the next step is defining which tool you want to learn to use first.  You cannot or need to do it all.  Start simple, keep it simple, and get very good at it.  Until you become proficient and understand how social media works, keep it simple.  Learn one tool first.
5. Expand your effort.  Once you get comfortable and proficient with how the social media world works, you can strategically decide where you want to go next and add another tool.  The learning curve on the next tool will be very short.  Next thing you know, you will have a complete social media program built into your business model.  And you will realize that it was some work at first but, it was worth it after all!

I encourage every one of you to think about your business.  Identify the conversations you would like have with your prospects, your customers, and your market.  Then, embrace the concept that social media is a great place to connect, communicate, and collaborate and collect (and share) information with them.  Enjoy!

More from The Sales Cooke

• The Prospecting Strategy
• First things First: You Need a Social Media Strategy
• Quick Start–Your Social Media Strategy

The Sales Cooke Recommends

• How Not To Use Social Media (The Arkayne Blog)
• Social Media 101 (Stealthmode)
• Social Media Confessions (Tyler Hurst)

As people continue to debate the return on investment for social media activities, one of the more important components they often overlook is the comparative amount of time many of them are already spending on business development activities.  Among many other benefits, the activities associated with social media need to be considered business development as it is activity focused on creating awareness, building relationships, and increasing connections.  Many people seem to have no issue with spending two or three and up to five hours a week on face-to-face networking.  Yet, these same people seem to be reluctant to engage in those same two-to-five hours of social media networking work.  For many, this feels like a waste of time.

Let’s talk about this. While we can compare the differences and the real advantages between the two, the bottom line is that whether your business development activities are social media centered or face-to-face network oriented, the power of the conversation and the connection drives everything.  This is what causes me to challenge those who value face-to-face networking over social media.

• The Potential of Many over the Hope of the Few:

Even if a networking event has 800 people in it, how many people can you effectively meet?  More importantly, how many can you effectively engage in preliminary chatter and introduce yourself to them.  You cannot build a relationship or close a sale at a networking event, you can only explore the potential to create interest in one.  With social media it is the same, except you have the ability to introduce yourself to hundreds of thousands of people every time you initiate a conversation through social media.

• Defining a Valuable Connection:

Relationships can be very effectively started on either medium.  How you develop them is dependent upon your commitment to real relationship building.  Effective networking relationships take time to build trust and rapport.  The best networking relationships are always cultivated over time.  Social media relationships are the same way.  The problem is, most people spend too much time selling and pitching on either platform to effectively build great relationships.  Which leads us to the next point—the conversation.

• The Effective Conversation:

Great business relationships require time to develop.  I have noticed that there is way too much “selling” taking place at both networking events and on social media platforms.  Both platforms offer people a great opportunity to create interest, establish connections and build relationships.  The only difference is that the poor, though ignorant, networker gets to make contact with the people they are turning off.  Hence, they confuse contact with activity and potential productive results.  With social media, the bad networker doesn’t get to see the people that are deleting his spammy tweets.

• Use Your Imagination:

If you knew you were having an open-ended conversation with 1,000 people with one message, blog, or tweat how would you feel about social media?  How would you feel about that opportunity? Pretend you have an opportunity to introduce yourself to 1,000 people at once.  Would you pitch them or introduce yourself? Would you find out what they are up to?  Would you work to discover what is important to them at that time?  As a very good networker you would introduce yourself and engage all of them in a conversation that made them the focal point. After all, that is true and productive relationship development.

Guess what, that is also networking and relationship building the social media way.  You probably haven’t gotten social media or think there is an ROI, because you have spent way too much time “pitching” or acting like an “expert.”  Start over.  Introduce yourself and start a conversation.  Listen, learn, and build some relationships, build a lot of relationships.  After you have engaged in this for several months, then talk to me.

More from The Sales Cooke

• The Challenges with Commission Programs
• It is time to leave the “nest”
• The Prospecting Strategy

The Sales Cooke Recommends

• The Rules of Sales (Chris Conrey)
• Social Networking Strategy: The AcmeAdd (Brian Shaler)
• Social Media Isn’t Just on the Internet (Chris Conrey)

With all the attention paid to social media these days, I am amazed at how limited the depth of knowledge and insight many “experts” actually provide their attendees.  There is simply too much talk about the tools and way too much talk about what has worked for other businesses.  There is not enough fundamental education and strategic planning information for business owners looking for real applicable answers to their social media challenges.

A case in point is this promotion on “how to make the most of your time meeting people online.” This presentation features benefits like “why you should update your status and with what kind of information” and “how you can use social media networking to further your brand” and “which four social media networks you should be using and why.”

This is all good tactical information.  Where is the real strategic planning for businesses?  What worked for these experts, or examples of what some random business accomplished, simply does not mean that these results automatically translate to success in other situations.

There is a missing component in these social media seminars—how to develop a social media strategy for your business.

Here is another event that asks, “tired of social media discussions that tell you to ‘just do it?’ Wondering how to make key decisions and how to manage and track your effectiveness? Have you signed up for a few accounts but aren’t sure what to do next?” The attendees will learn “which social media options are best for your company, how to measure your social media efforts and how to maintain these efforts in tough times.”

Tactics, tactics, and more tactics.  It is no wonder people keep going to these social media seminars.  No one has provided them a template to build a social media plan that makes sense for their business.  These events are missing the most important element—a strategic planning component.  A social media strategic plan asks several simple questions: What do I want to accomplish; Where is my market; and, What is my brand?  The result: A social media strategy that meets the business objectives in the targeted market with a clear understanding of the brand and value proposition.

It is not the tools that define the strategy or the tactics.  It is the strategy that defines the necessary tools.

Before going to another expert presentation on social media, ask yourself, “do I even have a social media strategy for my business?”  If the answer is no, stay home and work on that first.  And, if you need help understanding how to develop a social media strategy for your business, call me.  I have built the plan and I actively help businesses develop one.  Otherwise, keep wasting your time getting little nuggets of what everyone else has done and work backwards – you will eventually figure it out.

Some other blogs for perspective and reading pleasure:

Too busy for Social Media Marketing? Martin Zwilling

25 Tips to Choosing Your Social Media Consultant, Kyle Lacy

Creating a Strategic Communications Plan, Kyle Lacy

Social Media Books and Experts, Scott Monty

More from The Sales Cooke

• Everyone is Looking for a “Deal”
• A Tip to all Sales People…You need to start communicating better!!
• First things First: You Need a Social Media Strategy

The Sales Cooke Recommends

• Effectivenes of Social Media Marketing a Case Study by IZEA (Espreson)
• Jon Stewart had a hilarious (Stealthmode)
• A Different Kind of Crowdsourced Design (Stealthmode)

Currently, most social media activities are focused on learning how to use Twitter, Facebook, or LinkendIn.  Most business owners recognize the popularity and relative potential of social media for their business.  The missing link is that strategic and tactical component for implementing an effective social media program.  After participating in these “how to” classes business owners are left wondering “now what?”

There is great deal of excitement around all the shiny new watches in the social media world; but if you do not know how to tell time, how valuable are they?

Engaging in an effective, meaningful, and productive social media program for your company, requires a strategy and a plan.  You need to know:

• What you want to accomplish
• Why this is critical for your business
• How you plan to engage your clients, your market and your industry
• Where your target market is and effectively engaging

Announcing a very exciting and informative Webinar designed specifically to help businesses define their social media strategy.  This a Two-Part Webinar that provides you a framework for creating an ongoing social media strategy for your company, focusing on the Five Strategic Drivers for an effective social media strategy.

Participants in this program:

• Determine where to direct your social media efforts
• Understand how to build brand awareness for your business
• Learn the most important component for any social media effort – what too many businesses miss today
• Build a strategy they can implement right away
• Know how to begin measuring their success metrics
• Receive a Strategic Planning Workbook to build and develop their strategy during and after the webinar.

For registration information about this Webinar:

Thursday, August 27 or  Tuesday, September 1

More from The Sales Cooke

• A Tip to all Sales People…You need to start communicating better!!
• Quick Start–Your Social Media Strategy
• The revenue growth plan social media style

The Sales Cooke Recommends

• How Not To Use Social Media (The Arkayne Blog)
• The First and Only Rule of Social Media for Salesmen (Chris Conrey)
• Social Media Isn’t Just on the Internet (Chris Conrey)

Let’s get this out of the way–I get Twitter, I love Twitter, and Twitter is at the center of my social media strategy.  Twitter provides me access to people, information, conversations, controversy, and yes, spam like no other social marketing tool.  I do not spend a lot of time on Twitter.  But, I find it fun, useful, and informative.  Twitter helps me grow my business.

As I am so excited and committed to Twitter, let me share with you how I use this tool.  I see Twitter as a resource for me in my business in five ways:

1. Information Gathering (inbound): The people I follow and my keyword searches (”#”) provide me with access to all types of general and targeted information.  I enjoy and find valuable the tweets that offer access to articles, news, videos, general thoughts, clever sayings, and thought provoking comments.  I easily pass over and ignore the incessant spam and blather.  I know what I am looking for and I often find it.

2. Social Networking (inbound): No other social media tool allows me to follow or connect to anyone with simply a click.  If they are on Twitter and I want to link myself to them, I can.  That does not mean they follow me.  I am okay with that.  It is my job, if they look at my profile and my tweets, to be interesting and valuable enough to warrant the obligatory follow back.  I can build a network of pretty interesting and influential people.  Since, I am always looking for good information, I am pleased to be able to connect with the people I do.

3. Information Sharing (outbound):  There are two components to sharing information here–the information that I bring and the information I have found (retweets or “RT”).  I compliment the content of those I follow who provide good information by retweeting that information.  It introduces my followers to other interesting people and ideas, while building credibility with those I follow by acknowledging good content.  Note, the relationship building aspect of this approach.

4. Branding (outbound): The information I share from above goes a long way toward establishing my brand.  Who I am, how I think, what I value, and my perspectives on this information provide my followers a better understanding of my brand.  When I offer access to my blogs, videos, podcasts and articles, my followers are more likely to go to those sites as a result of the other things that I have done to build a relationship and develop my brand.  The work that I do to share information, engage in conversation, and acknowledge others enhances my brand and grows my business.

5. Promotion (outbound): This one is easy.  In fact, too many people do this way too well and way too often.  This is the part about Twitter that bugs and confuses those who don’t get it or don’t do Twitter well.  I am all in favor of gratuitous self promotion.  Promotion helps build your brand and raises awareness.  That said,  in Twitterland your promotional activity needs to be limited to less than 30% of your tweets.  Do more than that and your followers will simply be your existing fans, the people who already know you.  You will not build up a valued, viral and organic  following with a lot of gratuitous self-promotion.

Note that my Twitter strategy is very much about relationship building.  I focus on establishing credibility, building rapport, and finding cool and interesting people to follow.  It is like a networking event.  I am looking for interesting people to meet.  I am definitely not trying to jam my business card in someone’s face.  I love Twitter.  If you get it, it works!

More from The Sales Cooke

• “I don’t get Twitter!”
• How Soon Chrysler Forgets
• Of Twitter, Scott Monty and Autos

The Sales Cooke Recommends

• How Not To Use Social Media (The Arkayne Blog)
• What I Miss About Twitter (Brian Shaler)
• I find it very difficult (Stealthmode)

“I don’t get Twitter.” I hear this quite often.  Many people don’t get Twitter.  What they often see at the very moment they are looking at Twitter, is a lot of noise.   Or, as Julia Angwin so succinctly put it in her WSJ article “When I first joined Twitter, I felt like I was in a noisy bar where everyone was shouting and nobody was listening.”  When you first look at Twitter, it does seem like a lot of people are talking and no one is listening.  And there are some pretty stupid and spam-like things being said.  However, when you pay attention to Twitter, you will realize that the people who “get” Twitter are also responding to information from and with others by “retweeting” or commenting directly on that information.  The art of any social media program is fundamentally connected to the conversation!  Twitter is no exception.

My motivation for this post was a blog I read yesterday.  I was disappointed to read that the reader gave up on Twitter before giving it a chance simply because they did not understand what Twitter really was.  The following excerpt says it all.  “Monday through Friday, I twittered business facts that were helpful hints to most readers, or so I was told.  I got great professional feedback.  Life was good.  And then I noticed an interesting fact…my wonderful readers…became inundated with feed and weren’t able to read my helpful hints.”

Yes, Twitter provides people an opportunity to share information.  More importantly, Twitter allows people to use the exchange of information and ideas to build relationships, engage in building a network or a brand, and create community through this interaction.  Engaging in a one-way broadcast of information, tips, and ideas is not interactive or relationship building.  In the end, that type of behavior is strictly personal promotion.  Do people like that information?  Yes.  Will they embrace that type of one dimensional activity on Twitter? No.  What this blogger, or ex-Twitterer, experienced wasn’t fans who couldn’t find the tweets, this blogger had fans who moved on to build better, stronger, conversation based or interactive oriented relationships.

Building a community of followers on Twitter requires the ability to exchange and share ideas and information.  It also requires that you engage people in conversation about their thoughts and ideas.  And it is going to take a lot more time and effort than one week of diligently Twittering.   Next time you find that you just don’t “get” Twitter, contact me, I will help you understand it better.

Look for my next post:  How I use Twitter

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• You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know!
• How I use Twitter
• “We don’t support that anymore…”

The Sales Cooke Recommends

• What I Miss About Twitter (Brian Shaler)
• I wouldn’t read my blog. (Brian Shaler)
• Calculating Your Value on Twitter (Brian Shaler)