I have seen, listened, been to seminars, and discussed social media with a lot of folks and the truth is that I see so many people doing it wrong.
I don’t teach social media. Nor do I want to.
And social media is here to stay (for as long as anything stays on the internet).
But, it absolutely grinds my gears when people say you can make money with social media or use it as a “marketing source” for lead generation in every niche market. The truth is you can’t.
Sure there are always exceptions. And there are folks out there that are absolutely crushing it with social media. Good for them.
But for most niches it does not work as a “marketing source”.
If you happen to be in a niche that social media works. Great!
If you are not (like most of the clients I work with and most of my niche businesses) then it is a total time waster.
And your valuable time can be better spent elsewhere.
Notice how I said “marketing source” earlier. Not all traffic is created equal and social media is not a place where you pump out offers or promotions all the time.
I heard once that, “If it is something really important it is worth repeating to get your point across.” So here goes…
Notice how I said “marketing source” earlier. Not all traffic is created equal and social media is not a place where you pump out offers or promotions all the time.
Also, it takes forever and there is so much noise out there and you are most likely not to see any results.
There are 2 truths about social media.
Truth #1…
Social media is about engaging your potential customers and turning them into virtual friends.
And…
Truth #2…
Social media is about building brand awareness (aka turning yourself into an expert).
That’s it. None of this B.S. about siphoning off twitter followers or publishing offers continually or (spamming) your “friends” about every group/event known to man, women, child, or beast.
And the list goes on… and on… and on…
Let me back it up a bit.
About a year ago I started following and unfollowing Twitter followers, I did the Facebook thing for a while, etc.
It took hours of my time away that I will never get back and at the end I really have nothing to show for it.
That’s what the so called “gurus” said. And it was hot at the time so I bought into the kool aid. Hard.
However, I did find it works for more mainstream markets (video games, entertainment, sports, teaching social media, etc.) but good luck trying to monetize your twitter followers, or friends/fans. (Are they even called fans any more or are they called “likes”.)
Some traffic will never monetize. Period.
Side Note: I think over the next 6 months to a year facebook fan pages are going to go down the toilet in terms of responsiveness unless you’re super super cool to them. Let me explain…
If more people “like” things. The more noise there is on their FB profile. The less responsive they are. And the glory days are over.
Gary Vee said on his blog that he likes the “like” button. I totally disagree. Look at twitter. Everyone is a spammer. I sent a tweet out the other day to 45,000 followers and it got one click. One lousy click! (By the way, I don’t spend much time engaging folks on twitter so that was probably the problem but still only one click.)
TOO MUCH NOISE.
Great for Facebook because now they can serve ads to all these people and make profit from advertisers. But really bad for marketers.
Anyway I digress. Back on topic.
It’s not all bad news. I have seen some examples of doing it right.
- Like adding squeeze pages in facebook fan pages.
- Using graphics to explain your story on your fan page.
- Becoming the pivot point of news.
- Communicating with folks at a conference with a hash tag.
- The annoying orange. Nuff said.
- Running contests that give away free stuff.
Let me explain the last one.
My brother Colin is on FB all the time so I said one day, “Hey, why don’t you start a fan page for one of the products we’re selling and give stuff away from time to time.” He agreed.
The most successful strategy he runs are contests on the Facebook fan page that gives away the item every time the page reach another 100 fans. In order to win he tells em’ they have to comment or like the post. Which increases fan page quality score and “engages” the customers. They tell their friends and voila. Instant super hungry fan base.
We’re cool to them. And there cool to us. Plus, I get over 20% of my website traffic for that niche from this Facebook fan page alone.
Simple.
However, if you are just starting on the interwebz I would not start at social media.
Here why…
That micro niche business in the example above has been growing for a year now so I knew with a high degree of probability that it would work.
If you don’t know your market (or don’t have one yet), defined your niche; preferably a micro niche, haven’t built a list, don’t have a website, are not creating great content…
Then why are you on social media wasting your time???
You will have more success if do these things…
- Doing market research.
- Building great content.
- Crafting offers.
- Finding new products.
- Sending emails.
- List building.
- Direct mail offers.
- Managing outsourcing.
- And creating JV partnerships.
Notice how I did not say social media once.
If you are not working on the things above then you are probably having issues making money online, or at the very least you’re not making as much as you should be.
So get to work on the things above.
In conclusion…
If you are not engaging or being super cool to your folks on social media then stop. Reevaluate. And change. (And change only if it fits your marketing strategy)
Do the things above and I guarantee you will have more success online!!!
What do you think of social media??? Do you agree with me or not? Leave a comment, I am always interested in what you have to say.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article.
Talk soon,
Mark
P.S. I didn’t mention LinkedIn or YouTube. The truth is I don’t spend a lot of time on LinkedIn so I will not pass judgment; and YouTube is great!
P.S.S. As for local businesses I think you can see better results elsewhere in the beginning. Social media is great for setting you as an expert in your marketplace. And being the “expert” is cool and profitable. But social media shouldn’t be the only marketing source you use, and it should receive the appropriate amount of time and effort for the results it generates.