Nothing can frustrate you (and your customers) more than use of a “slingshot” approach to social media to grow your business. I teach this in The Media Is You, and it resontates with students who have never been exposed to the benefits of a systematic approach.
Recently, on INDIE Business Podcast, I interviewed Jamie Turner, co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media: An Insider's Guide on Using New and Emerging Media to Grow Your Business
- Approach. Social media is about having a dialog with prospective customers, and not about forcing them to take any particular action as a result of your interaction. For maximum effect, maintain as many active social media outlets as you can so your prospects have as many options as possible to connect with you. Maintain consistent and interconnected messages across each platform (that is, avoid the “slingshot” as discussed at 11:47), and interconnect them so each one can easily take each participant from one platform to another platform — where he or she may be more comfortable.
- Strategy. You neither want nor need to be present at every single social media outlet that exists. However, says Jamie, you do want to be present at as many as you can. Settling on the outlets that will work best for you requires you to “test your way to success.” While blogging, for example, may not be for you, you can certainly have a FaceBook page, a Twitter page and a YouTube page.
Consider that consistent blogging will produce positive search engine outcomes, while other forms of social media might generate more interaction. Set your goals, try out different things and settle on the ones that work best for you.
- Post-Mortem. After trying a new strategy for a certain period of time, it's important to look back and assess its effectiveness. What you did, over what period of time; how many inbound links occurred as a result; how many new prospects came your way; how many of them converted into sales? Once you measure results, you can answer the question whether or not it was a good investment, and therefore, whether you will do it again.
Jamie said that social media is “over-hyped” in that, contrary to popular belief, it does not replace traditional forms of marketing such as brochures, websites, and online newsletters, which Jamie agrees are a vital social media tool. An informative discussion about the importance of newsletters starts at 7:00. There's also a great real life example of why a popular restaurant's social media campaign didn't work, and why it didn't work, starting at 11:47.
About Jamie Turner
Jamie Turner is the Chief Content Officer at the 60 Second Marketer, and has helped companies like AT&T, CNN, The Coca-Cola Company and Cartoon Network grow their sales and revenue with innovative marketing programs. He is a regular guest on TV, radio and the internet on the subject of branding, marketing and social media and is an in-demand keynote speaker for global corporations, events and trade shows. You can connect with Jamie on Twitter.
How to Listen to the Show
This post contains my paraphrases of the information Jamie shared. To hear it from the horse's mouth yourself, listen to the entire show using one of these options:
- Download it on iTunes. (It usually takes a day or two for iTunes to feed the show there.)
- Click on the arrow at the bottom of this post to listen now! (The beginning of this podcast is an introduction of my new assistant. Our discussion of virtual events begins at 7:33.)
- Because I have not had a chance to load all of my shows to this blog, you can listen to hundreds of interviews from 2005 to 2010, each one as relevant today as it was when I recorded it, at my Indie Business Radio site.
Question: What do you think of Jamie's 3-prong approach? What questions or tips do you have about using social media to advance your business?
