The business world is buzzing with questions about Social Media Marketing these days.  Whether they’re trying to figure out what do to now that they’re on LinkedIn or Facebook, or what exactly is Twitter and how would I use it for my business or ‘how do you find time to do all this Social Media stuff?’, there’s a lot of talking going on.

I was lucky enough to present last week at the Central Exchange to a sold out room on How to Use Social Media for your Business.  We only had an hour, so it was basically just scratching the surface but the discussions I’ve been hearing and having about the topic over the last couple of months have been fascinating.

Opinions are a lot like…well let’s just say that everyone has one.  What’s great about Social Media is that a lot of people feel very strongly about it, in both directions!  Everything from “It’s the best thing ever!”  to “What a waste of time – who cares what I had for breakfast!”.  The reality is somewhere in the middle – used the right way, Social Media Marketing can be a big benefit to small business owners, a great cost-effective way to generate leads, drive traffic to your website and make your customers happy.

Anyway, I thought I would share a list of 9 things about Social Media and Business that I’ve heard recently that are just bogus – let me know what you think.

1.  Social Media Marketing doesn’t work for small businesses.

Social media marketing, done correctly, in a well planned mix of other marketing strategies can be a fantastic way to multiply your marketing results.  Major companies like Dell, Southwest Airlines have used Social Media for success – and here’s a great example of a tangible product business that’s used it to great success as well:  Social Media success story – Masi Bikes.  Closer to home, I’ve heard all sorts of stories about people getting leads through activities on LinkedIn, the Kansas City Online Community or Twitter.  None of these stories are the equivalent of winning the lottery, but the return on investment is generally really high.  Here are two more quick examples of business success – Lewis Howes (I met Lewis via LinkedIn when he was just getting started – it’s amazing to see how far he’s come), Crescent Solutions – an IT staffing company.

2.  Social Media is for kids, not business!

The average age of a user on LinkedIn is 41.  A recent report on the state of Social Media Marketing showed that the age group of 30 – 39 are the most prevalent users for social media marketing (by the way, check out that report – it’s a free download and it’s very well done).

There is a generational bias (or comfort level) initially and Myspace is definitely oriented towards kids, but there are plenty of social media tools that are intended for and are being used by adult business professionals.

3.  I’ve got an offline business, I don’t need an online presence

This one is just sad, it wasn’t true 10 years ago.  There’s a reason that major metropolitan newspapers are going out of business.  There’s a reason that the Yellow Pages (and similar competitors) are quickly losing revenue from the print side of the house.  Other than being a convenient doorstop, most people aren’t using the phone book anymore, they’re searching online – and if you’re not online, then you’re in trouble.

Question:  When’s the last time you googled yourself and your company name?  If you don’t have a Google Alert set up for at least those two items, then you’re flying blind.

4.  Social Media Marketing is all about the tools and the technology

Despite all of the training courses, the e-books, the videos and the early adopter obsession with the technology that’s available, they are all missing the point.  It’s great that Twitter has 37 different interfaces you can download or that there are dozens of applications you can use with Facebook, but the reality is that it doesn’t matter.  Just like any other strategic marketing activity, you have to:

• Understand your target market first, where are they, what do they do, what do they like…?
• Understand your benefits – what makes your product / service different, interesting, valuable (to your target market)?
• Have a plan – what is it that you want your target market to do?

It’s easy to get wrapped up in the details of the technology, but it won’t help you grow your business without the right strategic approach.  John Jantsch makes this point very powerfully in his post today All Tweet and No Cattle!

5.  Social Media is great for selling

Success in using social media is built on building genuine relationships.  Aggressively trying to sell into your contact list will work against you, not only will people not buy from you, but you run the serious risk of them telling everyone else not to buy from you as well.

You can increase sales due to social media marketing, but it’s not because you used the tools to ‘sell’.  Marketing is about finding and connecting with people that are interested in the value you bring and the problems you can solve.  When they’re ready, they’ll buy from you, but you won’t be able to sell them directly without aggravating everyone.

6.  Social Media Marketing is a quick fix when you need more sales

Unfortunately there are no silver bullets.  Viral marketing is a great thing, and you may be able to catch lightning in a bottle, but the highest likelihood of success is slow and steady growth.  Find your target audience online, figure out how to connect with them and gradually convert them to customers.  Just like anything else that’s worthwhile, it takes time to succeed.

A lot of people jump onto the Social Media bandwagon with an expectation that creating a profile or two and updating your status 3 times a day will generate all sorts of traffic and leads.  People don’t care what you had for breakfast, but they do care that you understand their problem, that you suggest great resources, that you’re interesting in some way or that you’re genuine.  All of those take time.

7.  Social media doesn’t work, I’m on Facebook and I’m tweeting 10 times a day about my product and I’ve got no new business!

See point number 6 above.  Just like hard sell tactics don’t work at networking meetings, they really don’t work for social media.  You can’t force yourself on people, you have to figure out how to attract them to you. 

Also you need to figure out where your target audience hangs out – if you’re selling professional services to business owners and executives, Twitter and Facebook probably aren’t the right strategy – a better approach would be establishing your expertise, either through a blog, writing articles, doing insightful videos or demonstrations and sharing that content with your target audience.  That could be an email campaign – it could even be direct mail, sending them to your website to find the information.  Social Media marketing works best when it supporting other marketing initiatives.

8.  Social Media is only for touchy-feely people that use Macs

Alright, this one is mostly true.  Certainly it’s that kind of crowd that really got the ball rolling, but with the adoption numbers that have been growing by leaps and bounds in the last 6 months, all sorts of people are playing in the social media space these days.  In January, Facebook had over 57 Million unique visitors in the US – LinkedIn had almost 8 Million and both continue to grow at a huge pace.  Check out more details about US Social Networking Rankings.

9.  ?????

I need your help with number 9.  What common statements do you hear about Social Media marketing that aren’t true? 

Share your ideas in the comments below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

• Is Social Media a Silver Bullet? Part 1
• How to actually use Twitter for your business…
• Is Social Media a Silver Bullet – Part 2

picture by NCinDC 

I’m a big fan of models or metaphors as a way to discuss complicated ideas.  Anytime you can give someone a visual representation for a complex idea you’re a lot more likely to get your point across.

One model that I stole ran across recently is called the 8 Pillars of a Profitable Enterprise.  As a business coach, I’m always trying to figure out ways to focus (and get my clients to focus) on what the real constraints to their business are.  “We don’t have enough customers.” might be a true statement and could be a problem, but as a business owner you don’t have control over your customers.  You have control over your marketing message, how you deliver your product, how you handle your customers during their transactions – all of which could lead to a result of not having enough customers.

Enter the 8 Pillars model.

What do you think is holding you back?

By having a comprehensive, but straightforward model as the starting point for the discussion on what’s holding you back, we should be able to isolate some root causes that are constraining your business.

The 8 Pillars aren’t really 8 Pillars in the drawing – it’s 3 foundation components and 5 Pillars of growth.  However a problem with any of the 8 will drive to a bottleneck and a constraint to profitability…in other words, you are only as profitable as your weakest link allows you to be.

Let’s take a quick look at the different components:

Foundation Components

These go across all aspects of your business and a weakness here can really cripple the entire enterprise.  However an extremely strong foundation can make the growth pillars much stronger than they might be on their own and possibly make up for other weaknesses.

Leadership

Leadership is about creating and communicating a compelling vision for your company and getting everyone rowing the boat in the same direction.  Without strong leadership, you will have poor performance best case and serious in-fighting and backsliding in the worst case.  However strong leadership can enable you to pull off some pretty amazing results.

People

Getting the right people into the right jobs is the single biggest driver to long term success.  If you have the right people, then you can figure out and fix a lot of other problems.  However with the wrong people – the ones that don’t really want to be there, aren’t really capable of delivering or just don’t understand what you’re all about, you’ll be lucky to have even moderate success in the long run (and you’ll hate every minute of it…).

Systems

Most business owners appreciate the need for systems – a good system will allow you to scale your business, incrementally improve your results by using process improvements and create a valuable enterprise that can be sold at much higher multiples than other similar businesses (because it’s repeatable).  Having said that, it takes a lot of discipline and focus to step away from the day to day fire drill and document and implement your systems.

Pillars of Growth

The remaining 5 pillars will directly impact profitability – if there is an issue with any one of them, it will constrain the overall output even if everything else is humming along.

Strategy

Without a clear and successful strategy, you run the risk of leaving the outcome to chance or if it’s a poor strategy, then you will fail.  Creating a product that no one wants, trying to sell a quality product to the wrong people – both are examples of bad strategies that will cost you.

Marketing

You could have the best product in the world, great delivery, superior salesman to close the deals, but if you don’t make people aware of what you have to offer and entice them to contact you, then you are going to limit your revenue and profitability.

Sales

Similar to marketing, you could have the best product or service ever, but if you can’t get people to buy it, then you’re not going to be making much money.

Money

You’ve got money coming in (hopefully), you’ve got money going out and if you’re not careful you’ll end up with a negative balance on that equation, which can shut you down faster than almost anything else can.  If you don’t have the cash to pay your suppliers or your employees, you’re not going to be in business very long.

Delivery

Delivery really encompasses getting the product or service to the customer as well as keeping the customer satisfied before, during and after the transaction.  Poor delivery or customer service may not impact profitability right away, but it will almost guarantee that you won’t get repeat sales or any positive word of mouth – and in the age of the Internet, bad news and good news travels very quickly.

Overall Evaluation – what’s your constraint?

Using this model as a way to evaluate where you are, should help you dig down to the root cause of your biggest constraints.  You may be doing very well overall, but if you can figure out that Sales conversion is your biggest constraint (plenty of people asking for the product, plenty of capacity to deliver it) then it may make a lot of sense to spring for some Sales training.

So what do you think is constraining your business?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

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For those that don’t know him – Seth Godin (you can read his frequent updates at Seth’s blog) is an author of many books, including Permission Marketing, Purple Cow and Meatball Sundae.  Not only is he a compelling writer, but he also has a history of illuminating (perhaps leading) changes in the marketplace that we’ve been seeing the last 10 years.

At first glance, Tribes appears to be more of the same – written in a stream of consciousness style almost as a collection of blog posts (which is likely where they started).

However the real value of Tribes is the ideas that get sparked from the conversation it feels like you’re having with Mr. Godin.  Here are a few that came to me when I read it:

Leadership Not Management

There will be always be a place for management, but what the world desperately needs now is more leadership.  Management is about continual process improvement – incrementally improving things but fundamentally keeping the status quo.

Leadership is about creating change that you and others believe in.  (I don’t know if Obama borrowed it from Seth or if they came up with it independently, but I like the definition).

The reason that leadership is so important, now more than ever is that the world is changing faster than ever – either we are collectively out there changing it in a way we can be excited about, or we’re all victims of the changes, which won’t end well.

The World has already changed

Along those lines, the business world doesn’t work the same way it did 5 years ago.  You can not be successful in the long run by pushing yourself or your product onto your prospects.  You can’t trick them into buying using a clever closing technique, you can’t get away with offering a sub par product and glossing over it with marketing.  The market wants transparency and if you don’t have it you won’t succeed.

Technology is part of the reason the world has changed, but technology is almost a symptom of the change – people are inherently looking for answers, people, things they can trust.

Push beyond the fear

Fear is clearly a four letter word.  Without fear, most of the media outlets wouldn’t know what to report on.  However the only way to push through to success is to take positive actions despite your fears and make things happen.

The Curse of Sheepwalking

Sheepwalking is a concept that I’m very familiar with (as most people with corporate experience are) but I didn’t have a name for it.  Here’s the definition:

Sheepwalking is the outcome of hiring people who have been raised to be obedient and giving them brain-dead jobs and enough fear to keep them in line.

How many people have you worked with (or for) that did things just because that’s the way it’s always been done?  If I had to pick out one thing that will eventually bring most big companies down, it’s the continued focus on killing any inspiration or initiative, keeping people from ‘rocking the boat’.  Sheepwalking at it’s finest and the scary thing is that our educational system encourages this mind set – it’s bad now and if we’re not careful it’s going to get worse.

Do you have any examples of sheepwalking?

Failure is expected

Part of the process of leading requires you to take a stand and put something out there.  You will fail at some point, maybe repeatedly.  However the big picture isn’t the specific result, it’s the act of taking action and doing something different or new that really makes the difference in the long run.

Doing nothing or sheepwalking to avoid risk is the sure way to fail in the long run.

Worthwhile Book

All in all, I would highly recommend Tribes – you won’t find any answers there, you likely won’t even come away from it with a clear idea of what you should do or could take action on.  But you will come away with some new questions, some new insights and some new thoughts – which makes it a very valuable book indeed!

Share your thoughts on this post or the book if you’ve read – I’d love to hear what you think.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

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I’m a big proponent of Social Media – to me it’s pretty clear that it is the wave of the future that will eventually knock down old-school sales and marketing techniques.  In a world of active Social Media, you can’t hide from your customers or prospects – people will say what they think and the best way to generate positive feedback is to deliver quality and value (and isn’t that really the point anyway).

Blogs, professional social media sites and Youtube all have a fairly clear place in an online marketing and Social Media strategy.

However I will admit that to this point I’ve been stumped on how to really view the value of Twitter. 

I understood that Twitter was huge and growing fast and it’s clear that the people that really buy into it are rabid fans, but I was finding it difficult to explain to other people exactly what the benefit would be from a small business perspective.

That is, until I found the following presentation (ironically from a Twitter post – a tweet…the other day).  Take a look:

If you have trouble with the presentation, you can find it online here.

Depending on the size of your business and the type of your business, a lot of the Twitter strategies outlined may not make sense.  Most really small businesses probably aren’t doing much Crisis Management, but I can imagine some examples where that kind of thing might be necessary.

Where I see some real possibilities include the Customer Relations aspect and Product Promotion and Sales – as with any Social Media, you have to be very careful not to cross the line into spam / selling outright, but it can certainly be a powerful tool for getting the word out about timely sales, new products, how to use new features, etc.

What do you think about Twitter and are you using it with your business?  Share your thoughts below, I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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If you’re looking for success stories of social media, then you should check out Queensland Tourism board’s latest marketing idea.

It’s a contest called The Best Job in the World – basically it’s an open video audition for the newly created ‘Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef’.  This is a 6 month contract (with a salary of $105K Australian plus expenses) and the responsibilities are to share your experience with the world via blog, video and interviews.

The process is closed now, but they received 34,684 applications and they’ve now narrowed it down to the top 50 finalists.  They will interview the final 11 applicants, with the top vote-getter being automatically selected in addition to the 10 finalists they choose.

Check out some of the amazing entries below:

This is Mitchell from Canada.

This is just an amazing 1 minute video by any standards, I don’t know Mitchell, but I would have to think he’s got a chance to write his own ticket when it comes to Broadway, Madison Avenue or Hollywood!

This is Cali from the US.

From a credibility perspective, I would think Cali would be tough to beat – she’s already doing a lot of this stuff, all she would have to do is relocate!

These videos are getting over 100,000 hits each so far, the main website has over 1200 backlinks to it (which is a lot) and the story has been picked up on major media sites and mainstream television like the Today Show.

I first saw this referenced on a blog (although it’s been going on for a while) – this is a fantastic example of a very cost-effective word of mouth campaign that is generating huge positive exposure for Queensland – compare that to the average 60 second ad on the Superbowl.  Which one do you think is more effective?

As an added bonus, a lot of the videos are great examples of how to market yourself in an interesting way – demonstrate your skills, your assets (you should definitely check out Julia from Russia…) and your personality.  The best videos let you know what the candidates are like and present something interesting that you’d like to see more of.

What entries are your favorites?  Share your thoughts in the comments below – I’d love to hear them.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

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