{"id":863,"date":"2012-09-11T11:22:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T11:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jonhartley.com\/blog\/?p=863"},"modified":"2013-08-30T09:58:11","modified_gmt":"2013-08-30T08:58:11","slug":"is-social-media-for-you-oh-yes-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/is-social-media-for-you-oh-yes-it-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Is social media for you? Oh yes it is!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I have spent a lot of time this last year talking social media. I don\u2019t mean long conversations. I mean hundreds of short conversations with people whose businesses could benefit from taking social media seriously.<\/p>\n

Here are a few of my favourite answers to the question \u2018Do you use social media?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0Our customers tend to be older and don\u2019t do that sort of thing\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe all your customers are old because you have never tried to market direct to the young via the media channels they use. Is your product the sort that will appeal exclusively to the old? If not, why not try selling it to the young. Get with it! (incidentally, I don\u2019t think there is any product or service that can only be marketed to a specific age-group. The young purchase items and services for their elderly relatives and friends don\u2019t they?)<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t have time to do that<\/span><\/p>\n

Make time! There are over 500 million Facebook users, many if not most of whom only gather their news and information from online sources. Transfer some of the time you use in your old fashioned or conventional marketing into running a Facebook, Youtube channel, Twitter account and blog.<\/p>\n

Make time. Move customer service processes over from e-mail to twitter. Alerts on late deliveries or billing information can be broadcast to all followers and billing info via direct message.<\/p>\n

Retire that print newsletter and use the time saved to develop a blog where customer can give you feedback.<\/p>\n

Divide the responsibilities for social media. Every person in the company can do some tweeting and Facebook. Members of every department can contribute responsibility-specific posts to the blog.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not the sort of business that excites people enough to like us on Facebook<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media is not just about creating buzz. It\u2019s not merely a marketing tool. It can be a customer service tool too. It\u2019s also an excellent place to gather feedback on the market.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We already find enough business through word of mouth<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a bizarre answer that I have got from several small bike shops and a couple of hairdressers.<\/p>\n

First let me just say ENOUGH BUSINESS!!? What kind of go get it attitude is that? What about building the business? What about a chain of shops? What about doubling or trebling your customer base? No one has enough business. There\u2019s always reason to get more. If you\u2019re comfortable on 60 clients what happens when the economy is squeezed and you lose 20% of them? That kind of reduction wouldn\u2019t be so bad if you had 100 clients would it?<\/p>\n

On the subject of word of mouth, Social media is the ultimate in word of mouth marketing. IT\u2019S ALL MOUTH! It\u2019s called social for a reason \u2013 because it is an interactive space online where publisher (that\u2019s the person who tweets, blogs and Facebooks \u2013 we\u2019re all publishers now) and reader can talk direct to one another.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve tried social media stuff but it hasn\u2019t made any difference<\/span><\/p>\n

Well that\u2019s why I am here! Let me show you how to improve it so that it does make a difference because the numbers do not lie. The busiest news and information channels are online. That\u2019s where the modern audiences are and that\u2019s where you have to be.<\/p>\n

In order to benefit from social media you have to know what you\u2019re doing. You need to know your target audience and how to find and communicate with them in a way beneficial to your business\u2019s future. Learning that stuff takes time.<\/p>\n

No thanks. My boss won\u2019t be interested<\/span><\/p>\n

Hey! I\u2019ve tramped cross town to deliver this leaflet\/to talk to someone here! Don\u2019t make decisions for the boss on what he will like or not like. Let him or her know I was here. Let him or her have the leaflet. Maybe he or she\u2019ll surprise you.<\/p>\n

\u00a0We have someone looking at that\/doing that<\/span><\/p>\n

They\u2019re looking at it are they? Well not since June six months ago when they last tweeted to your company\u2019s 15 followers. They\u2019re doing it? Not since September when they Facebooked an item on a special Christmas offer.<\/p>\n

Too often the responsibility for social media is handed down to a junior as an extra chore on top of their normal workload. This reflects the company\u2019s poor understanding of social media\u2019s importance and potential. The result is poorly tended social media, often full of boring advertisement texts and listings of events instead of material that is going to interest and inform a loyal and growing audience.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/span><\/p>\n

Social media is here to stay and it will only grow bigger and bigger as the old ways and the adherents of those old ways diminish in number. Don\u2019t appeal to tradition, act on prejudice or be complacent. See social media for the opportunity it is and grasp it!<\/p>\n

Take a workshop<\/a>, get some staff training<\/a> or maybe even get someone to come in and set you up<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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  I have spent a lot of time this last year talking social media. I don\u2019t mean long conversations. I mean hundreds of short conversations with people whose businesses could benefit from taking social media seriously. Here are a few of my favourite answers to the question \u2018Do you use\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[128,131,130,132,61,129],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facebook","tag-complacency","tag-customer-services","tag-new-audiences","tag-prejudice","tag-small-business-social-media","tag-tradition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1870,"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions\/1870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonhartley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}