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Do you do business with Companies or People? Essential Social Media Marketing Lesson.
Me and Beth Schoenfeldt at Collective-E launch party
One of the mantras I learned from my entrepreneur Dad a long time ago is
“Businesses do not do business with businesses. There is always a person in a company doing business with another person in a company.”
Let me explain why understanding this is vital for your success in social media marketing.
TWO WAY COMMUNICATION
The main thing about social media marketing is that it’s not one way communication. It’s TWO way - you talk to your audience/community and it talks to you and you listen, take notes, act and that’s how you make the results!
There are several how-to-get-rich-on-social-media handbooks telling you to send auto-response notes and teaching how to do advertising on social media sites. The same type of handbooks tell you how to increase the number of followers or subscribers, how to “catch” people’s email addresses and how to build “landing pages”.
Don’t waste your money or time on those handbooks.
While learning how to make Facebook fan pages or how to really use Twitter for self-promotion is important, SEO is important and advertising is important, the most important thing about social media marketing is to learn to do two-way-one-to-one-communication, not how to blast out information to masses.
See, blasting out information is the old school way of doing things, also called “shoot and pray” - blasting out information to large quantities and praying something sticks somewhere and you receive the wanted result. The new way of doing things is to send out information to a trusted network of people who already know you.
CASE STUDY: BLASTING TO MASSES VERSUS CONTACTING YOUR NETWORK
I was recently working with a project that needed bloggers’ participation and I needed to get 5-10 bloggers involved. I contacted 10 bloggers who already knew who I was, and 10 bloggers who didn’t know me, but who blogged in the target market I was looking for. Out the first group, of ten people who already knew me, nine said yes to the project. Out of the ten who didn’t know me, nobody said yes.
Out of 20 bloggers I contacted I got 9, that’s 45% return rate on the whole group, and 90% return rate on the group who already knew me. Sadly, in this example the return rate on the “shoot and pray” method was 0% - I wonder how many unknown to me bloggers I would have had to contact to get the 9 bloggers I needed for the project.Katja Presnal
PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS MAKES DOING BUSINESS A PLEASURE
Don’t get me wrong here - I’m not even close to suggesting mixing business and pleasure, but saying that doing business with people you like and know is much more pleasurable than doing business with someone you don’t like. Me? Frankly, I try to avoid doing business with people I don’t like.
The personal relationships matter in business, and with the social media tools people can easier find the people they want to do business. Social media sites also make referring people easy and finding business partners people who you already know recommend. The whole beauty of sites like Twitter is that you can easily jump into a conversation with people and get connected without even having to just talk business. When people know who you are as a person, they are more likely to do business with you.
Also, when you get to know a business person you like, you will want to do business with her/him and often can create something new and exciting with a company that on the first look may have seemed like the unlikely match with your company.
CASE STUDY: CROSS-PROMOTION WITH A “FRIEND” OR AN “ENEMY”
Sam’s Sandwich Shop had been open for a year and Sam wanted to do a big birthday party to get more potential customers to visit his shop. Sam sort of wanted to do cross-promotion with one of the other store-owners in the same strip-mall. A lot of customers bought both, a sandwich from Sam and a smoothie from Pete’s Smoothies next door, and it would have been a natural connection to do cross-promotion. However, Sam and Pete didn’t get along at all.
Sam mentioned this to Ashley, the flower shop owner, and since they had been helping each others out in with other business questions, they decided to do a cross-promotional campaign together. Sam’s Sandwich Shop was decorated by flowers (giving ideas what kind of bouquets work for birthdays) and Ashley hosted a “How to make centerpieces” class and served sandwiches for her clients. They advertised both events on a same newspaper ad, splitting the cost. Many people had only visited either one of the businesses before and now were introduced to another business in the same location. Both Sam and Ashley received positive feedback for their events, and received new customers for their businesses.
Many people in the social media world focus more on the word “media” and they even call it “new media” instead of social media. However, the “social” part is essential, and being the gal or guy who everyone wants to do business with is the key to success. You do not get there by just blasting self-promotional information.
When your business partners and customers become part of your community, you will have a word-of-mouth marketing network built in, and you can leverage it for business when needed. These people already know you and trust you, and know that you are not just using them to promote your business, they know they can trust you to give your helping hand for them too.
Me? I have taken social media to the next level - I am meeting people in person, like Beth Schoenfeldt, Sabina Ptacin and Katie Hellmuth from the recently launched Collective-E, a women’s networking company offering support and advice for womenpreneurs. It would be risky to take your online business relations offline, if you are not being authentic and honest online, my tip is - be yourself, no matter what.
Ladybug Landings to you too
In many cultures Ladybugs are believed to bring you luck, money or even your future spouse!
What is Ladybug Landings? And for whom?
- Ladybug Landings is a PR service for small business owners, helping them to connect with online media and online retailers, as well as teaching them how to use social media as a marketing tool. Even small companies with shoestring budgets can enjoy big successes by using the tools new media offers, working hard, and with a little touch of ladybug luck.
- Ladybug Landings is a PR service for bloggers to find more ways to monetize their blogs and get more traffic.
- Ladybug Landings will bring together manufacturers, retailers, bloggers, website owners and PR professionals.
What will we offer?
- Networking. Tell us what you need and we will try to find a person to help you.
- Tips & advice. We will offer tips from marketing your product to how to make money blogging, and we ain’t inventing the wheel again - we are collecting a resource list for you of the already written articles.
- Results. What ever your short or long term goal is, we will help you to achieve it and support you.
This can’t be free, can it?
- Yes. At the moment the service is free for everyone. At some point we will start collecting a small membership fee and get more organized. But membership will always be free for people who pitch in by promoting us or our members, or writing us blog posts, supporting our bloggers etc etc. You help us - we help you.
- Ladybug Landings is made possible by product sales of our ladybug gear and by everyone working together. We also offer advertising spots for sponsors on our site.
What is it really about?
- With one word: SYNERGY
Synergy refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents.
Basicly synergy is when 1+1=3. When you and I work together towards the same goal, we both gain more than when working alone. Yes, with the same work input.
We have a lot of amazing women in this network. We all have something to teach and something to learn. Let Ladybug Landings to be the connector between people - you help someone, and someone will help you.
What are people saying?
“Thank you for your help! I tripled my blog traffic.”
“I would have never thought of doing that little change to my website and it making such a big difference. You really know what you are talking about.”
“Thank you for all those connections you got me within a few hours - I made a contact with one of them.”
“I just wanted you to know I just started a new venture. Thanks for inspiring so I had guts to do it.”
Luck lands briefly. Are you ready?
