First of all, each business needs to have its own social media strategy. If facebook isn’t right for your business, then don’t feel compelled to use it. It works great for B2C and for relationship-sale solutions. So many times, we don’t REALLY even know what most of our friends DO for a living. So if you are sharing some of your success stories / advice on Facebook, you might perk up the ears of a friend who says, “I need a ____ (accountant, lawyer, consultant…) I didn’t know what’s what you did. Same goes for Twitter. You might not close a deal on Twitter, but you might bring someone to your website who becomes a key client. I’ve bought and sold thousands of dollars worth of ’stuff’ on Twitter. I turn to Twitter to research my purchase decisions (Blackberry vs. Droid). I find resources. Twitter is the least intuitive of the sites — because you need add-ons like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to make it at all effective. And LinkedIn helped me launch my business, and feeds me a steady stream of business to this day.

Second, the social networking sites (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc) are the places where you share, but it’s equally important to focus on WHAT you share. Video is part of social media. Blendtec has had millions of views and sold millions of dollars worth of very pricy blenders with their internet sensation “Will it blend?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg1ckCkm8YI Ford launched their successful Ford Fiesta campaign by putting their cars in the hands of influential young bloggers, asking them to share videos, pictures and posts about their experience. Lots of smaller B2B companies use Slideshare to develop credibility and expert status.

Third, you touched briefly on SEO, and I’d say that’s one of the biggest reasons that people are still jumping into social media in force. Having a website is no longer enough, you need to be present, engaged, and FOUND – by the search engines, and by the humans. Once you are found, you need to have content that makes people feel compelled to take action and engage with you. There’s an art to how you have your website, blog, fan page, etc setup.

You might be interested in taking the class I teach because it seems like you “get it” that social media CAN work, but that you’re just not understanding how to connect the dots. My class is this Thursday at the UW http://www.dcs.wisc.edu/pda/workplace/social-media.htm, and the expanded version is available online. http://www.artofsocialmarketing.com/rc/

Hope to see you at the next chamber event.
Adrianne Machina

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