It seems everyone "knows" what social media marketing should be used for. It seems that everyone "knows" social media is not a form of advertising, but rather a way to market your business organically within your community. In case you aren't currently one of the many who "know" what social media marketing is, I'll start with that. When you do a google search for "what is social media marketing," The new definition states:
There you go, now we are all on the same page. If you talked to any guru or expert, they'd most likely add: "social media marketing is about building relationships with your prospects, clients, and community-with the focal point of your brand or business."
but...
The most dangerous phrase in the English language is "I know."
Everyone "knows" what social media marketing is for, and why it's used. They know in theory that social media marketing is about building relationships around a brand, but in practice they don't work on building those relationships. They worry about "being active" or "getting more followers." They focus on sharing anything they happen to come across in order to try and "market" the brand of their business. They worry mostly about the best times to post, what content they should post, and so on. We live in an age where a lot of marketers coach their clients to "share content based on a good headline, so you don't waste a lot of time reading articles." Or, "You need to make sure you're active on Twitter, or people will unfollow you.
Although some of this advice may stem from a kernel of truth, it is missing the point. Trying to "game the system" and build followers using these sort of tricks, without any real substance, will only lead to sunken marketing costs (similar to the effect of Black Hat SEO practices, that Google has recently been cracking down on). So let's do a search for your 5 biggest competitors, and take a look at their social profiles. Without knowing anything about you or your specific search, I'd wager they're all saying relatively the same thing. Further, you'll probably see one of two scenarios:
- No social presence, website, or web presence whatsoever
- A social presence that is cluttered to death with random quotes, retweets, shares, and the same rehashed "articles" floating around.
Very rarely will you see someone actively using social media to focus on building better relationships with their clients and prospects. Instead of worrying about writing five more articles, worry about what your current audience and readers thought about those articles. Worry about what your clients and customers thought about their last interaction with you, and whether or not they're in a position to "share" your brand. If you stay focused on the truepurpose of social media, and provide your community with quality content focused on them, your efforts will have not been in vain. A single real, quality relationship is going to be worth much more to your bottom line than 100 of those empty followers could ever be. In short:
Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on what your client's true needs are.
Recently, I spoke to quite a few different agencies that focus on running appointment setting campaigns. In an effort to expand our current business, I realized that the majority of our sales were coming from online sources, and I wanted to experiment with more "traditional" methods for Jay Nine, Incorporated. Out of five companies, four companies spent time telling me all of the wonderful things they could do. They asked about my budget and about what my target market was, and then immediately focused on how quickly they could get started for me and what they could do.
One company, however, did things differently. The representative took the time to read this blog (several times, and with comments on a few articles to boot). She took the time to fully understand what I was looking to achieve (rather than trying to sell me on her system). She focused on what I needed (which turned out to be much different than what I thought I needed). Finally, she insisted the first few weeks of the campaign should focus solely on her company getting to know ours, thus ensuring we would be a good fit for each other.
To sum up, she focused on building a relationship, instead of just selling to me. Further, she used the oldest trick in the book to ensure we built a relationship: she spent the entire time focused on me, instead of her objectives and company. Can you guess which company we moved forward with? Most online marketing campaigns follow the lead of the other four companies I contacted for appointment setting efforts. Campaigns that focus on their relationship building like the fifth company, they got our business.