Social Media Doesn’t Connect People Do
Welcome to the social web where everyone and everything is connected. Just build a profile and you are too! Right?
Well, maybe technologically, but it takes more than a few links to build a relationship with a person that makes a difference to building your brand or moving your business forward.
Social media tools work so much more effectively when we decide a few things before we use them.
What to Do Before You Go Social
Every now and then a event like the social web disrupts things and we need to figure out new ways of relating and connecting with the people who help us grow. Leaders reach out listen and learn from the best and invite those folks in to participate and be part of what they’re doing.
The social web has made it easier and faster to reach out further to find the ideal clients and customers we might want to work with. It’s foolish not to have a plan to use the social tools available to us to that in the best ways we possibly can.
Here are six ways to be effective at social business.
- Know what business you’re in. Sounds simple, but it’s not about what you make or what you sell. We need to be seriously sure of what we do for our customers.
- Choose the ideal customer you want to work with. The whole game changed when the world became our marketplace. We can’t do everything for everyone in the world. Draw a picture. Make a prototype of the customer you’ve just identified. What do you offer that makes that customer’s life faster, easier, or more meaningful? Choose those who are going to love what you do and build your website, your content, and your offers all around them so that they recognize you.
- Now that you think you know that. Go find people who meet that description and ask them what they care about … and listen. Find them where they meet online and where they meet offline. We can’t grow if we only talk to the people we already know and only visit the places we always go to.
- Use the social tools to talk to them about what they like to talk about. Then keep listening — build relationships and get to know your potential customers better. When you talk about what you do, talk the way you tell friends what’s going on in your life.
- When it’s natural talk about how you might align your goals with theirs and build something together … something you might not be able to build alone.
- Make it easy for your online and offline customers to meet you and each other. And encourage them to meet and talk with each other as often as they can.
And keep doing all six steps over and over again.
The generational nature of the social culture means that our base of customers is always shifting, growing, learning. Bringing our offline customers online and meeting our online customers offline will only deepen our relationships with all of them.
When we’re authentically listening, we can hear who actually needs our help. The best 30-second pitch is when when we can answer, “By the way, that’s what I do.”
Have you tried listening to find out who needs what you have to offer?
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your web presence!!