You would think by now most people using the internet to promote their business would understand what ‘social’ means. Unfortunately, there are still many people online who see social networking sites as just another type advertise medium. There is no denying the potential to capture a large audience online is there in the social networks, but the effort many make to capture people not interested in their business work against them. Especially, if viewers see the content posted in their social space as not being ‘Social’.
So why are there so many businesses and business people who are not interested in being social in the social spaces?
It is important to understand why people and businesses use the internet the way they do. Understanding why there are so many people using non-social methods of marketing will help explain, and serve as examples, on how to correctly use social media when doing business in the social networks.
Why Social Media is NOT Used
The biggest reason business people hit the social networks to post non-stop, non-social promotions has to do largely with them
- Not knowing what they are doing or how what they are doing makes them look
- Caring what they are doing or how they look
- Or both
In speaking with a large number of people over the years on why they do what they do online I am finding most people know how to be social, but do not see being social as being professional. Most humans do a good job of socializing offline and understand the benefits of socializing. However, when it comes to doing business people change their thinking and see the internet not as a social network or a place to be social. They see only a market of potential consumers and treat the people in social networks as if it was like any other traditional market where advertising mediums like television, radio or print work the best. This is where most business people fail and fail miserably.
Why They Stay Non-Social
Those business people who are not social online do not know how to use social media. The travesty is the vast majority are not interested in learn how to be social online since their thinking is if old traditional marketing has served them well in the past it will serve them well online. Being social in any market is foreign to them and in many cases being social with consumers is seen as something ‘beneath’ their interests.
Many of the larger businesses, or businesses who traditionally only service the larger corporations, have invested billions of dollars in setting up their old school ways of marketing and advertising. They refuse to throw that investment away to move to more modern methods of marketing and feel they have the clout in the market to push aside the need for using social media. These are the businesses who are violating the social spaces with their spam like attitudes.
Unfortunately, these icons of the advertising and PR industry are also influencers to the many entrepreneurs who are churning up the social spaces with non-social marketing. These are the people who use non-social marketing methods on Twitter, Facebook and the other social spaces.
What many businesses and individuals base their online success on is the number of Friends or Followers they have accumulated. They view their results in how many updates, posts or links to things they can shove into their connection’s faces. Profitability to them is measured in fractions of what they could be if they were to be more social. They produce very, very small results using non-social marketing compared to those who use social media in its purest form.
How to Do Business in Social Networks
Interesting enough, there are some business people waking up to the fact that the social space is not a market where a slick advertising campaign works wonders. They see they are having to change their approach to deal with the smarter consumer base economy. Following are a few things to do to do business in the social networks:
- Turning down the volume and the number of promotions posted a day. Business people have to fight the urge, and the economic pressures, to attempt to force business out of the majority of people they gathering in their community.
- Use a social approach to reach out to people. Asking someone ‘How are you doing’, develops a foundation of trust more so than, ‘Hey, thanks for Following me, Make sure to Check this out…”.
- Respond, Respond, Respond, and then Respond some more. Being social is being responsive to the people who chose to be your friend. Of course, there are those who want to be your friend in hopes of you being their friend who also pose as the non-social element of social networking. Responding to these people can be worthless…still, responding to everyone who reaches out produces more than TV ads.
- Participate in constructive conversations. Reply to a contacts status report or update. Stay connected to the conversation. The reality here is there are thousands, if not tens of thousands, of by-standers who also are watching the conversation. These by standers could be people interesting in being part of your community. The profitability factor rises each time you reach out and make a comment.
- Avoid being controversial. Remain neutral. If you are online to enhance your business’ image you do not want to get involved in anything your contacts, customers or community will see as controversial. Getting behind a charity cause is good, but think out which charity causes make sense and avoid the hidden political or religious agendas. If someone reaches out to you to ask your support of their cause that maybe seen as unpopular by most people it would be best to cordially thank them for reaching out but not agree to be part of it.
- Choose the social networks that promote conversation and have volume controls that offer you a clear channel to speaking with your friends. For those who are serious about making their time in the social spaces worthwhile it is best to spend it in the social networks that offer rational conversations and tools that allow a well rounded view of you and your business. Sometimes Twitter, with its fast paces incoherent firehose of questionable information, is not always the best place for a business person to be.
- Send the business deals to your blog or web-sites. The people in the social space are also very savvy consumers. They have one of the most powerful tools for shopping in their hands. The power is in how they are able to access information on who it is they are socializing with in the social space. Expect your friends or contacts you have made online to go beyond your image in the social space and look behind what your social image appears to be. Make sure your blog and web-site is ready for this investigation your serious contacts are going to make. Getting your social friends to check out what you do professionally is what you want them to do so do not blow this opportunity by not having a Blog or a web-site.
- Online Honesty pays off. Being social online is being honest. Holding up a false image is impossible to do online. Being straight up with people on what you do professionally is what makes social media a powerful marketing tool. Being honest and not misleading people makes doing business online so much more profitable.
Being Social online is exactly the same in the offline world. So why don’t more people online become more social? Could it be they don’t know how? Let me know how I can help.
