People are always asking me what marketing and systems I use in my own business. And once they have met me or have followed me for a while, the question changes to HOW I came up with these ideas.
As much I wish I could claim it was spontaneous brilliance, I owe it to how much information I take in. I read constantly in all aspects of business and marketing. I subscribe to several insider publications, read other service organization journals (I’m hot and heavy into carpet cleaners, right now. And I have picked several great tips for my business as well as for my clients.)
I collect almost every piece of ‘junk mail’ that comes across my desk to evaluate how it might be something I would use and how to improve it. And I pay close attention to other businesses as I use them for my own benefit or as I’m traveling.
Every experience is an exercise to learn something new for me. And through this consistent habit, I have trained my mind not just to put two or three things together to come up with something but rather what components to combine to create an exponential explosion.
Now with Social Media, I am always looking at other people’s or business’ pages and watching how they interact with their fan base. Facebook is my favorite tool because it has so much tied right to the site and I’m not being constantly directed off to another place.
With Facebook Pages, the technology allows many businesses to run a complete and full website right on their page directed to Facebook users.
Facebook is always changing and updating their site. And when this happens you will read grumblings for users who even go so far as to create their own fan page called “Change My Facebook Back” to collect thousands of supports. But this constant change just demonstrates how committed Facebook is to improving the user experience while making it more business friendly so you and I would want to advertise with them.
But regardless of Facebook’s technological advancements, the real power of Facebook, or any other social media tool for that matter, is how it allows you to ENGAGE with the follower.
Facebook is a relationship builder. And business has changed from a one step transaction game. No longer do you put in one ad and then millions of people flock to your door with wads of money in hand. Before, you would get them to like you as you did business with them over time and later in the interaction, you hope they would stay, spend, and refer.
Now you have to get them to like you before they will even consider calling for their first appointment!
And people are slow to do this. Gone are the days of “one night marketing stands” and the return of lengthy relationship “courtships.”
The problem people have with success with any social media is not that it doesn’t work, but rather the amount of work you need to put into yourself over time before you get results. No longer can you just write a check and expect instant results. To be effective you either have to put the ‘elbow grease’ into it yourself or you make a relationship with a good company that will do that for you while showcasing your personality of your business.
Social media is an effective tool to aiding business in building relationship with prospects and is no longer an option approach. It doesn’t replace all other marketing efforts but rather, combines to create that exponential expansion.
We will address ways to get the most out of your Social Media and build some guidelines to help navigate this new business avenue in the future.