“I have no idea how to manage salespeople so let’s hire a couple of them.”
Would you really hire someone if you had no clue what they did, what they could do, how they spent their time, and even what their results should be? Of course not. Yet I see this all the time and, in my case, I see it with people using social media...or attempting to.
that a trade show would.
The second step would be to investigate the different types of social media and which one(s) might fit with what the company wants to accomplish. Want to be seen as an integral part of the community? Maybe Facebook is the answer. Want to be seen as leading edge technically? LinkedIn is going to need to be a part of that. Have a lot of breaking news? Twitter is great for headline style posts.
Companies should also talk about it internally so that everyone knows what part they may play. Surprising someone with an extra one or two hours of work a week is not a good method to get them on board. Think of all the background work you would think of with a new tradeshow: Who will man the booth, will the current booth work for this tradeshow, what work is required beforehand to drive traffic, and what follow up is required once we get back home? Do the same due diligence with social media marketing.
The third step is to cut your starting plan in half. You heard that right. An old business axiom says that a new business will take twice as long and twice as much money to get established as the founders thought it would. Social media is like that too.
Everyone tends to think optimistically instead of realistically. Taking on too much, too quickly can often make a company look worse than not taking anything on in the first place. Start small, see what works, and grow from there.
The fourth step is to be patient. Good things will happen. For example, I came up with the idea of using LinkedIn to generate sales leads for my clients. I can now provide unlimited sales leads using LinkedIn in combination with a few other websites, and I can customize it to my clients’ needs.
But...it took me two years to figure how to do it really effectively and another two continually fine tuning it. It took a lot of patience to finally come up with a product that was attractive to my clients (and for such a big pay off, the patience required was worth it).
Finally, a fifth possible step would be to get advice from someone you trust. A couple hundred bucks that will help you decide on whether investing in social media will bring the returns to make it worthwhile is money well spent. Social media marketing can be a powerful tool, but like all tools, it needs to be wielded properly.
http://www.pcbdesign007.com/pages/zone.cgi?a=103821
No comments:
Post a Comment