Is Social Media meaningful to your business?
Posted by admin in Uncategorized, tags: Adopting Social Media, Social leads, Social MediaAs the world around us changes, we are bombarded with new streams of information with far reaching meaning with the world of social media.
As business owners and managers we have likely seen a number of trends come and go. Some quickly leaving no traces and others leaving marks on the pavement. We have spent money following the trend, sometimes trying to lead a trend, but most times just bouncing around within it. Now we have a new term – or maybe not so new – “Social Media”.
Social media is the phenomenon of every digitally connected individual having equal access to discuss events, products, services, people and other key “top of mind” items. Essentially, this is the new millennium’s, digital whispers. You know the ones, the ones that in the 60’s and 70’s were whispered in the hallways, never said aloud as it might be considered rude. Today, a whisper is written, published and distributed to hundreds of thousands, or even millions within seconds. It is very critical that businesses listen to these new whispers. These whispers are like the old ones, leading to reputation strength or destruction but certainly important to your business survival and successes.
If you fail to listen, the fallout could be detrimental to your business survival. So who are these whisperers, why are they so important, and what should we be doing to embrace this new mode of communication and communicators?
They are: your next customers, your future employees/partners, your neighbors, your relatives, your friends and not-so-friendlies. Bottom line is “they” are everyone and “they” can be tremendously powerful. Imagine your best friend controlling the Los Angeles Times and what it allows to be published. All would probably fare well for your business. But, imagine that your “friend” became a “not-so-friendly”, Oh my! With that in mind, lets look at how we can address this new opportunity, head-on and with a good attitude.
First, let’s agree that we will be out to make new associations in this new world not just sell something. A respected associate recently explained the Twitter world as “It’s like attending a party, you are there to meet people and share experiences, joys, excitements, and other things. You are building relationships not selling your goods and services. You wouldn’t simply say to a fellow party goer ‘hey… buy my stuff!’ So in the Twitter/social media environment, be like you would at a party, don’t be in my face with products.”
We are friendly, caring and helpful to others. Sure, we are looking to build business and gain market share, but who isn’t? Even the most frequent communicator in this online world is looking to be heard, to be known, and ultimately to gain from it. Many like to state they’re simply doing whats best for all or saying what others are afraid to say, but how many of us really agree with that when we have all the facts clearly visible. This is not to say these people are bad, it’s just implying that at the core, we (with few psychological exceptions) are all decent people simply exercising survival instincts and survival includes eating. We must gather resources to gather food – it’s that simple!
On to the business side of this.
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