Paul Krupin's Trash Proof Marketing and Publicity Blog

One person on the publishing and promoting list at Yahoo posted the following message:

> “For any of those that are still questioning the importance and/or value of Social Media, check out the stats in this video…”

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Another person responded:

> “Those who pooh-pooh it are going to be the ones running to catch up.”

———

Social media rah rah sis boom bah.

Yes you may think it’s cool you can text with your iPod and splatter words all across other people’s machines everywhere.

But if you are in business, social media is more than just tweeting and facebooking. Social media Is not a quick fix for sales or marketing success. It’s not something that you can start tomorrow and go to the bank with a smile on your face in two weeks.

Social media is a specialized set of communications technologies and tools and tactics that can be used to improve how you communicate with people who use these technologies.

They can only help you generate profits if you use them to communicate meaningfully with your particular pool of interested clients, prospects and customers if this is how they communicate and make decisions.

Even getting followers is no guarantee that you will be able to turn them into raving fans and paying customers. You need to learn what to say and how to say it to get people interested and then you need to keep them interested.

The numbers of people using these technologies follows the adoption curves of all sorts of technologies that have spread into use before. This should not be a surprise at all. The past 50 years have seen all sorts of devices come and go. Phones, TV’s, faxes, computers, email, PDA’s, now iPods.

Now the online technologies have diversified. First there was the Internet, then there were news search engines, mailing lists, discussion groups, forums, blogs, audio, then satellite radio, video, and now social media technologies.

The ways to communicate with people continues to evolve and get smaller, faster, and easier to use.

But each technology has special communications requirements. Each requires training, practice and skill if you are going to use the technologies to persuade people to take action.

So the real question is can you use these technologies and use them well?

Regardless of the technology you use, you need to focus on your message. This is because your message is how you connect with the mind of the person who receives the message.

So what are you saying?

Do you have a purpose and a goal of triggering action?

Does your message trigger interest?

Are you giving value? Are you truly making a favorable impression? Are you making people laugh, cry, jump for joy or cringe? Do you achieve emotional and intellectual engagement?

Do your individual messages or even the suite of message you send over time result trigger people to action? Do you see sufficient numbers of people investigate you, your products and services? Do enough people make a decision to buy what you sell so that you can operate your company?

Where do people go after you persuade them to take a step your direction? Do your landing pages result in favorable response? Do you see sufficient conversion to sales?

Then when you finally get a customer, do you really deliver something of value? Is your product and service and performance of sufficient quality to achieve sales and positive reviews? Will the personal satisfaction people experience result in them spreading the word for you?

You have to have something worthwhile to offer in the first place.

Social media is a suite of tools that you can use *if* you take the time and put in the energy to develop the relationships with the people on the other end of the messages. You need to think out how all the tools you use interact to develop interest, satisfy needs, build credibility and trust.

And sell product.

Would you believe, that to date, the statistics and studies continue to show that base level income and profits in most companies continues to be derived from the old fashioned conventional methods of communicating and marketing?

The social media is an expense that comes as an addition to all the alternative technologies that are available for people to use. It takes money, time, skill, and expertise to operate these like any other of the technologies businesses use. Which technologies and which communications tactics and systems produce the income and profits that allow a company to survive and thrive have to be developed, determined and managed.

But no matter what technologies you use to communicate with your target audience, the message is perhaps the most crucial decision you can make.

The good old person to person “How can I help you?” is about the best place to start.

I wrote a few more posts about the ROI of Twitter a few months ago. If you’re interested, you can find them at my blog – here’s the link on the tag social marketing:

http://blog.directcontactpr.com/public/category/social-marketing