… why wouldn’t you join in?
When you tell people you spend a lot of time on social media for work, they generally assume this means messing around on Facebook all day. Even if they profess to get social media.
“I don’t understand why you do this Twitter stuff to promote your books,” my grandfather recently said to me. Now, before you write him off as past it (because he’s not – he may be nearly 84 but he has a Mac to surf social media sites and Ebay), my grandfather is well versed on why people use social media. Well, you’d expect him to be with a granddaughter like me.
That’s a much-echoed point by people who don’t get it. Despite social media gurus heralding the conversation as the next big thing, most CEOs assume this transparent customer interaction won’t affect revenue because there’s no obvious way to sell your products and services. But what they don’t see is the immediate impact on brand awareness and customer engagement, and that speaking directly to your customers may be more effective than broadcasting at them.
What so many people, including my grandfather, don’t understand is that dialogue is a powerful tool, with influence over purchasing that can create a new revenue stream. The way we buy things is changing at an almighty rate. We research products and services online before we part with our money, so how can reinforcing your brand values with positive sentiment, and reacting well to the negative, be a bad thing?
In a digital age where democracy rules and people expect, rightly, to have their say, not interacting with your customers means you’re missing out on a whole new audience. If given the choice, a person will buy a product they already have an emotional attachment to, or at least awareness of. You can create that relationship through social media. Talk about what you do in an open and transparent way with your customers, create a good feeling about your company online, explore new networks and you’ll develop cumulative social capital.
Using social media is a no-brainer. All you need to consider is who your audience is and where they’re talking, then join that conversation. You need the skill to create awareness of your products without even mentioning you have something to sell in the first place. It’s about being smart, being imaginative and talking with, not to, the world.
If you can get your message right, why wouldn’t you want to do that?
This column originally appeared in New Media Age magazine.
Added – because of the word count of this column I wasn’t able to use Jay Rayner’s full quote. I think it adds a lot to this piece, so here it is in full:
The only reservation about using it is that, for the most part, it doesn’t amount to a whole hill of beans. it has to be done, because to not do it is to be seen not to be covering the bases. the reality is however that most of the people you reach – via Facebook, on Twitter – will be followers of yours anyway and are already going to know about the book. Unless of course a word of mouth campaign starts. but here’s the thing: a word of mouth campaign via social media is no different from the old fashioned kind. it’s just more visible. perhaps that makes it a little easier to initiate one, but it doesn’t make it any easier to get people to part with their money. The only thing that can do that is the book itself.
All that said book PRs love social media. Why? Because it is visible – it can be measured – and it costs nothing. So what that they didn’t get you on five live or start the week or the Alan Titchmarsh Show (the things that actually sell books). there’s a facebook fan page with 30,000 members. the fact that it costs nothing to join a fan page, unlike the book, which still costs £6.99, is conveniently forgotten
