In the midst of a teleconference earlier this year devoted to the importance of using social media, one attendee offered her introduction to the use of Twitter. “I signed up last week and was anxious to get started. Once I completed the profile and introductory steps it was time for my first entry which was ‘I just ate yogurt.’”
After what seemed liked an interminable period of silence, the conference facilitator offered: “You blew it. You just described yourself as being boring. Why would anyone want to follow you or read anything you have to write?”
His point gets at the crux of one of the major pitfalls with the various social media tools, be they Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter. Why bother communicating the most boring aspects of your life when you have at your fingertips an amazing array of communication tools that can help you build you business and stay in immediate touch with business peers?
Speaking to that point, Rebekah King, who heads Rebizworks, a consulting firm in Southern California, maintains that on the positive side, the various social media tools allow individuals to “Stay in immediate touch with people over great distances and life circumstances. While that’s a beautiful thing, it’s accompanied by a dark side in that the technology can take away from the personal touch. Removing a personal touch results in a sense of anonymity. You’re not seeing the person’s face that you’re communicating with and as a result, some people take that as liberty to communicate what appear to be fairly random thoughts or comments such as ‘I just ate yogurt.’”
To counter the tendency to communicate such random thoughts, King urges people to be sure to put the human touch back into their communications. “Be less stuffy in your approach. If you take it down a notch, you’ll probably find that your communications are much more effective.”
Taking That First Step
For those ready and willing to take the plunge and embrace social media as an integral part of their communications and marketing plans, King and another consultant familiar with everything from LinkedIn to Twitter to Facebook, offer some thoughts.
Julie Wright, president, (W)right On Communications, a communications and consulting firm with offices in California and British Columbia, says that “The biggest advantages social networking tools offer are their ability to target markets extremely narrowly, produce real-time feedback and results, and generate word-of-mouth.
“My recommendations would be for manufacturers reps to start with an evaluation of which social media networks your target audience uses. Twitter skews toward an older demographic. Facebook is younger. MySpace is entertainment focused. LinkedIn is a smart choice for B2B companies. YouTube allows businesses to create their own YouTube channel to share frequent video messages if your audience wants to see what you do.
“Twitter has the benefit of being very fast-moving and potentially viral with high pass-along or word-of-mouth effect for businesses using it correctly. Facebook is more of a ‘walled garden,’ and there’s a rush by businesses to create ‘fan pages’ on Facebook but creating the fan page is the easy part — giving people reasons to become fans and then providing sufficient material to keep them engaged on Facebook is what’s hard. Neither Twitter nor Facebook are going to become significant drivers of your business’ brand or customer interactions without a decent strategy, significant investment of time, and consistently relevant and compelling content. (Remember that all of your businesses’ fans and followers are one click away from un-fanning or un-following.)
“It’s a good idea to cross promote your business’ social media activities, so your Twitter feed can drive people to your Facebook page or LinkedIn group and vice versa.”
King is equally complimentary of LinkedIn for B2B purposes, but she offers the caveat that “for it to be truly effective you’ve got to first completely fill out your profile. Once that’s done, use it. In addition, make sure you show your job history and ask for and display recommendations. This allows you to show your audience that you are a true businessperson and not just some ‘fly-by-night’ person. Also, don’t be afraid to run your picture — let people see who they’re communicating with.”
While complimenting LinkedIn, King also points to the value of Facebook and Twitter. “If you want your information in nuggets, then Twitter is for you. And, for reps, Twitter would be an ideal vehicle to regularly communicate how products and trends are affecting your business.”
Don’t Start Too Soon
It’s one thing to say you’re going to integrate social media into your business plan, and quite another to do it effectively. Among the challenges a business might face executing such a plan, according to King, is to “start talking or communicating too soon. Here’s what happens when you do that. You’ve started your LinkedIn profile, for example, but you’ve only completed it half way. In your excitement to communicate, you connect with 10 people, but face immediate disappointment because you don’t get any tangible response. Too many people start selling themselves before they’ve actually got something to sell. At the very beginning put time aside, set a goal for yourself that will include what you want to happen for both you personally and for your business. Get the work done ahead of time and then move on.”
Just like King, Wright points her finger at the need for reps to take their time to do it right. “Time is the first challenge. How many businesses have an excess of it? When you try to automate Twitter feeds to save time, for instance, you can turn off followers by coming across as ‘spammy.’ However, building these social media channels takes legwork.
“Additionally, businesses cannot approach these communications tools as broadcasting tools. They are real-time feedback loops and businesses need to be ready to truly engage, start conversations and contribute to conversations with their customers in order to use them properly.”
Both consultants acknowledge the proliferation of publicity and activity surrounding social media, but what does the future hold?
King maintains that “I think we’ve already had our major revelations. I don’t think we’re going to see any real explosions of interest in the future. What we will encounter will be various adaptations and adoptions of the technology. This will allow us to make what we have work even better.”
When it comes to advising reps who may not already be on the social media bandwagon, King does urge them to get on board. “Let’s assume there’s something like 300 million users of social media sites. If out of that number of 300 million people, not one of them is a potential client for you, it seems to me you might very well be in the wrong business.”
Build Your Network
As she considered what she might like to recommend to reps considering social media, Wright offered, “As an agency owner, my Twitter strategy has been to build my network and contacts with media and the business community as well as with people based in San Diego, California and Vancouver, British Columbia, where my agency is based. For our clients, we’ve developed Twitter feeds that have established their credibility on topics from technology to recruiting. As a result, when any of these clients Tweet a message about a rural broadband project or funding opportunity or a new job opening, they are ReTweeted by their followers who trust them for good content. With the LinkedIn Groups we have established, we are able to establish leads for our clients as other professionals join the groups showing that they have an interest in the topic it’s built around. Answering questions on LinkedIn is a good way to build new business contacts too. As a member of a LinkedIn Group, posting articles and sharing content within the group is a very good way to raise your profile and add value to the other members of the group.”
She continues, “The reason these tools are becoming essential to business communications is that word-of-mouth continues to be perceived as more and more credible than paid messages,” explains Wright. “People are going to their social networks for recommendations and ideas the same way they used to turn to their colleagues down the hall or peers across town. Additionally, 140 characters (the maximum length of a Tweet) is a highly efficient and focused communication that can actually be a more convenient way to stay in touch and connected with your network than seeing folks a few times a year at trade shows or conferences — and it’s a lot more affordable!
