Most business use social media wrong. Are you one of them?

To which do you give more credibility; a business advertisement or a friend’s recommendation?

Of course, in most circumstances, it would be the personal recommendation.  We all would.  This is the secret to social media.  Where social media has value is in what others say, not what you say.

Most businesses and organizations have a “backwards” social media philosophy, where they invest time and energy to broadcast their message to their facebook friends or twitter followers.  You can tell how successful your social media strategies are by their ROI.  Are you generating enough dollars (sales or donations) for the amount of time invested?  For most businesses and organizations the answer is no. 

People believe in social media because it is near internet marketing sacrilege not to use it in today’s market place.  I am certainly not going to get up on a soapbox and preach that social media has no value, but I do believe that we have not yet found the true marketing power of social media.

If I post on facebook that I am doing something fun or struggling to make a household decision, I will get hundreds of people to look at the post, about 20-25 comments, and at least twice as many likes.  If I post that I am running a “sale” on website development, I will get a couple of people looking, a “like” or two and almost never a single comment.  People don’t use facebook to get solicited by everyone they know.  Most people use facebook “to share with family and friends the mundane and important things in their life.”

Then there is the “boy who cried wolf” syndrome.  When businesses bombard us with too many messages they all become equally important, or worse, equally unimportant.  Think about your own behavior.  When businesses email me every day, pretty soon I stop opening their emails until I need something from them, and then I am usually looking for a coupon or a deal.  Locally, it seems like TAFT furniture is always having a HUGE sale –offering 50% of or more.  I certainly would never go when they aren’t having a sale because their sales are so big and so frequent.  Rarity gives value; frequency makes your messages cheap.

So if you have a business facebook page and a whole lot of facebook likes, what have you really got for yourself?  Can you put a return on the capital expense of money, time, and energy invested? Is it all worth it??

Probably not.  But that is about to change.  Here is the key to a winning social media strategy:

Create a social media strategy around encouraging others to do the work for you.  It matters very little what you post on your facebook page, but what does matter is what your clients post about you on their page.

Consider this extreme example:

One day you decide to give away $50 worth of merchandise to anyone who comes to your store and uses the code word “facebook.”  If you simply post this on your company facebook page, you may get a few visitors. Depending on how long you run this promotion for, word will start to spread because your clients will want to get the word out.  Your clients will go to twitter and facebook – even without your direction – and post to their friends that your business is giving away $50! This will be seen by everyone’s friends  instead of just being seen by the people who happened to your facebook page that day.  Not only will people post your deal to their page but their friends will see it and post it to their friends, who in turn post it on their page.  Your reach increases exponentially. 

You see the power of social media is not the message that we broadcast to our clients, but what our clients are saying about us on their own.  Of course, when you leave messaging completely up to clients they may not say what you want them to or say it the way we would, but the impact of what they say will be much greater. ( So maybe we just guide them a little… I mean this still is marketing.)

Successful social media campaigns are those where we encourage our clients to talk about us.  To quote my most famous relative, one Mr. P.T. Barnum, “It doesn’t what they say as long as they are talking about us.”  Spend your time providing great products and services, great customer service, great prices, etc. and stop spending your time sending messages few will read.

Does this mean take down your facebook business page, quit tweeting, and give up on social media altogether? Certainly not.  Just the opposite. Except instead of getting facebook likes and twitter followers, use social media to make dollars.

If you are interested in a creative social media campaign that will not require daily posts and tweets, then give me a call at 518-542-7959 or email chad@webv5.com