The (REAL) Idiot's Guide to Social Media Marketing
Excerpt from Do It! Marketing: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Boost Sales, Maximize Profits, and Crush Your Competition
Too many business owners, marketers, and sales professionals want to get involved in social media but—sadly—do not understand the intent, ideas, or influence factors that could make social media such an effective tactic in their overall marketing arsenal.
How can I put this? Ummm... well, they're idiots.
Relax... IDIOTS is an acronym that stands for the 6 key misconceptions, faulty assumptions, and pillars of goofy thinking that prevent most thought-leading professionals (YOU perhaps?) from generating maximum results from your social media marketing efforts.
Let’s explore these 6 mistakes and give you some strategies, pointers, and tactics to make sure YOU don’t make the same mistakes. Namely...
- I: “I, Me, My” syndrome
- D: Dumb it down
- I: Information without invitation
- O: Over-selling
- T: Talk without action
- S: Short-term focus
Now let's take a look at each of these six mistakes in a bit more detail—and how to do social media marketing the right way…
I: “I, Me, My” Syndrome
No, your social media postings do NOT need to be all about YOU.
In fact, if all you talk about is YOU—your company, your products, your services, your brand, your blog, your resources... people will ignore you, tune you out, and dismiss you for the self-centered IDIOT that you are. (Please remember IDIOT is an acronym—don’t take it personally!)
How to do it right: Experts promote other experts. Experts are not insecure about shining the spotlight on others. Experts are curators and pointers-out-of-cool-things.
Experts invite other experts to post guest blogs on their websites (and they, in turn, get invited to do the same!) Experts share, collaborate, and cross-promote with other businesses with a genuine abundance mindset and not a scarcity mindset.
The mantra goes even beyond “give to get”—rather it is “give to give.
As long as YOU and YOUR COMPANY can be counted on to share interesting, relevant, valuable, sometimes even edgy content, guide your followers to the "good stuff" online, and position yourself as a reliable guide and sherpa in your area of expertise, you'll get PLENTY of attention, love, and respect. Even MORE SO if you're not forever focused on hyping only yourself.
Grow up. Step up. Be a real expert and learn once and for all—it's not about YOU.
Question: When’s the last time you promoted a fellow business owner, expert, or thought-leader in any of your marketing communications?
D: Dumb It Down
This mistake comes from your fear that if you give away your VERY BEST ideas, strategies, tools, tactics, insights, and other secret sauce (yes, the very same ideas that go into your products and services—and with which you get paid BIG BUCKS from your paying clients!) that you will somehow diminish the demand for those same paid products and services.
So you “dumb it down.” You post that second-rate article. You remove some detail from that spec sheet because you want people to buy your consulting services and not do it themselves. You post the video that only has 3 of your 10 key ideas because heck, if you gave all 10 ideas, they'd never hire you—you've already “spilled the candy in the lobby.”
Yep—you guessed it: that’s IDIOT thinking rearing its ugly head!
How to do it right: The reality is—it works 180 degrees the other way. The ONLY way folks are going to pay you the big bucks is if they have a FIRSTHAND experience of your genius—if they feel it, taste it, touch it, and fully experience it. ONLY THEN will they want more. ONLY THEN will they share it with their colleagues. ONLY THEN will they call their boss over to look at your website or—better still—only then will they proactively email another decision-maker your link.
Imagine if the Rolling Stones decided that they wanted to fill their concerts with fans paying $300 per seat for a stadium show so they could make tens of millions of dollars… and the way they pursued that goal is to forbid radio stations from playing their songs (gasp—letting people listen for FREE) and if they pulled their music from online sites like Amazon and iTunes because, gosh if people can get the very same songs for 99 cents, they would never pay $300 to come see it live.
When you put this scarcity thinking in the context of the music industry, you see exactly how ridiculously faulty this argument is!
Do you want to be SHARED—or do you want to be SCARED? Your call—but you already know which answer will make you more money. (Unless you're an IDIOT!)
Question: When’s the last time you shared something for free that’s so valuable, people have paid you good money for it in the course of doing business with you?
I: Information Without Invitation
Social media sites and your blog are not a dumping ground for your second-rate press releases that you could never even get published in your local paper.
Even rock-solid, current, highly relevant information is NECESSARY but NOT SUFFICIENT to fuel your thought leadership platform and build your empire as a smart company.
Here's a secret—the Internet actually does NOT need more information posted on it. Not from you. Not from me. Not from anyone.
How to do it right: An effective social media campaign will share information of standalone value and then INVITE a two-way (or 5-way or 17-way) conversation around that information. How? Simple: Ask questions, seek engagement, invite involvement.
EXAMPLES: On your blog, end each post with the following: "What do YOU think? Use the comments area below and share your experiences or advice on this topic."
On Facebook, don't pontificate with your posts—engage your friends with questions such as: "How would you handle..." "Looking for good ideas on..." or "Just blogged about Topic X—would love to see a comment from you."
On Twitter, don't drop fortune cookie rants, ask QUESTIONS. Simple questions get amazing results, for example: "What's exciting in YOUR world?" "What are you working on right now?" or even have some fun with "fill-in-the-blank" tweets like: "Fill in the blank: I'm passionate about ______" To further increase engagement on Twitter, feel free to SELECTIVELY add the request "Please Retweet" so your engagement question spreads even further. NOTE: Do NOT use this request on more than 5 percent of your tweets otherwise you'll look sad, desperate, and lonely.
Offer value, seek opinions, spark conversation—and ask the most powerful question in sales AND marketing AND leadership AND relationships: “What do you think?”
O: Overselling
One particularly IDIOTIC business owner bragged proudly that ALL his social media posts have a hyperlink. Every. Single. One.
Hyperlink to where, you ask?
To HIS online store, HIS products, HIS consulting page, HIS services overview.
He said, "If you're not linking every post to a selling opportunity, you're just putting a lot of dead-end junk out there and you'll never make any money."
Now that is pure IDIOT thinking. And the sad news is that it’s also the number one complaint that most buyers have about the way most business owners and small companies market themselves—namely, that it’s all self-promotional hype with zero relevance to buyers or their organizations (and zero relevance to helping them solve their urgent, pervasive, expensive problems!)
Social media is not about posting "here's how to buy my crap"—it's not about creating an extra dozen or so sales pages for your products, services, or programs.
If your goals are: Sell on Twitter. Sell on Facebook. Sell on LinkedIn. Sell on YouTube...
Your results will be: Unfollow. Unfriend. Unlink. Unsubscribe. You're done. Buh-bye.
How to do it right: Content comes before commerce. Offer solutions, answers, strategies, templates, tools, and ideas—not sales messages.
Why? Because we’re living in an environment of voluntary attention. The age of "old school" outbound selling (random cold calling, batch-and-blast direct mail, buying ads, and working hard to interrupt strangers) is broken.
The new reality is: First you earn their attention. THEN you earn their money.
Question: How can you turn your next sales message into a value message? How can you solve, fix, advise, and guide instead of hitting your prospects over the head with yet another blunt “buy my stuff” message? And which one do you think they will keep, share, forward, and remember you for?
T: Talk without Action
After just now discouraging you from over-selling, the next mistake is leaving OUT a vital ingredient to your social media marketing efforts: a “call to action” (often abbreviated as CTA.)
Too many business owners, entrepreneurs and independent professionals do almost everything right… but then leave their fans, followers, and subscribers wondering what to do next.
See how many of the following statements sound familiar:
- “I’ve been blogging for two years and haven’t gotten a single call or email about hiring me.”
- “I work for hours and hours on my ezine and although I get compliments about how good the articles are, I’ve never gotten business from it.”
- “I post all the time on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn but I’ve never gotten a single phone call from any of my social media efforts.”
How to do it right: The answer is simple—people need to be told what to do next. If you want people to email you, explicitly invite them to do so AND give them a compelling reason AND provide your email address. Example: My friend Scott Ginsberg always ends each blog post with an invitation similar to this one:
LET ME SUGGEST THIS...
For a list called, "9 Things Every Writer Needs to Do Every Day," send an email to me, and you win the list for free!
* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Publisher, Artist, Mentor
scott@hellomynameisscott.com
If you want people to call you, use the same strategy. Invite the call and provide your phone number. For example, Gerard Braud is a media training and crisis communications expert who introduces himself to hand-selected high-probability prospects on LinkedIn and ends his message this way:
If a brief conversation about your team’s media-readiness and/or crisis communication plans would be valuable, please call me or drop me a line.
Wishing you continued success,
Gerard Braud (Jared Bro) Tel: 985-624-9976
Question: Are you using value-first CTAs in your emails, blogs, and social media postings? Are you giving people a compelling reason to engage further with you in meaningful ways such as subscribing to your ezine, calling you, or emailing you?
S: Short-term focus
The final mistake is to think of social media in the same way that you might think of outbound sales activity.
Think about it: Cold calls. Email blasts. Direct mail. Do those things and the natural question to ask is: OK, how much did we sell today?
You made 100 dials, you connected with 20 humans, you had 14 conversations, you qualified 5 serious prospects, and then how much did you SELL TODAY?
You sent 10,000 postcards. Requests came back for 300 quotes. So how many widgets did you SELL TODAY?
Social media marketing doesn't work that way. Social media is... well, social. It's about relationships and trust. Relationships and trust don't have an ON/OFF switch—they develop over time.
Transactions happen today from relationships you built last week, last month, and last year. The benefit of that—and the reason it's worth the "wait"—is that social media gives you a permanent asset: TRUST.
How to do it right: Blog entries are forever. They continue to sell your expertise, your company, and your value day after day, week after week, year after year. LinkedIn recommendations are forever. People that wrote glowingly of you in 2002 are still "selling" for you and your reputation TODAY.
A voice mail? BEEP—gone. An email? ZAP—gone. A face to face meeting? DONE—bye. Those happen today and they're gone today.
Sure, you have to sell today. You have to make your quota today. You have to feed your family today. But social media marketing helps you ensure that what you create ONCE today works and lasts and brings customers and clients to you for many years to come...
Not because you SOLD them like an IDIOT -- but because you built the trust and relationships that HELPED THEM BUY today, tomorrow and beyond!
Question: What permanent assets are you building today so that your best-fit buyers will seek you out for your expertise, ideas, and solutions at the precise moment they are ready to spend money on what you sell? Are you putting irresistible bait on enough hooks in the right ponds so you won’t go hungry next week, next month, and next year?
__________
David Newman is a marketing expert, professional speaker and founder of Do It! Marketing, a marketing strategy firm dedicated to making thought-leading entrepreneurs and executives more successful. David’s book, Do It! Marketing: 77 Instant-Action Ideas to Boost Sales, Maximize Profits, and Crush Your Competition is available now. For marketing keynotes, seminars, and 1-on-1 consulting, contact David directly at david@doitmarketing.com or call (610) 716-5984.
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