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Overwhelmed by Social Media? Read This
April 15, 2013 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
I get this question all the time from companies investigating social media use for B2B sales and marketing: “How can I keep up with everything being said on social media? I read five or six tweets and as soon as I’m finished Twitter notifies me that 20 more tweets have come in. And with Facebook and LinkedIn and it just goes on and on. How do I read all this stuff?”
Easy. Be selective.
Look at it this way: You may like the New York Times Sunday edition. Do you panic because you don’t have enough time to read it cover to cover? Of course not. Because 80 or 90% of the paper does not match your interests so you don’t bother with it.
I often compare social media to a big party with hundreds of people in attendance. At that party, there may be 100 conversations going on at once, but you can’t be involved in all of them; you wouldn’t want to be. What you want to do is to find the conversations right for you or to start one of your own. There may be a wonderful conversation about a new restaurant in Moscow, but that may not be of interest to you.
With social media, as with our party analogy, you want to find a good conversation and become part of it. You want to find a conversation that revolves around your area of expertise--a conversation to which you can contribute. Adding to the discussion is a very important concept--not dominating, not taking over, but adding. A discussion revolving around your area of expertise, one where you can help with concepts the participants are not clear on or offer a different way of looking at or attacking a central issue, reflects well upon you and makes the participants want to hear more and know more about you. On the other hand, someone who butts in and starts telling everyone what they should do will soon find themselves alone.
I see this mistake continually in LinkedIn groups: Someone will ask for help with a problem and 20 vendors jump on him saying that buying from their company will solve the problem. I’ve talked with a couple of these people and they always, always, end up being approached quietly and privately by the person that asked more questions and helped them understand how to fix their problem. And, if they were a vendor, they wound up doing business with the person.
And there’s nothing saying you can’t start conversations yourself. Solicit a discussion about a particular problem. Ideally, as you are the one who started the conversation, you can now frame it and guide it. Those involved will think you are solicitous and thoughtful in starting the discussion.
With respect to multiple social media, that’s easier to manage than you think too. Just go to your customers and figure out what social networks they use. If your prospective customers are all on Google+, who cares about Facebook? Get thee to Google+ and get a presence there. If your prospective customers seem to use multiple social networks, roll out your own use, but do it one by one. Get comfortable on one before you add the next. Doing a half-baked job on three social networks for the next year is pointless when you can do a good job on one in just a couple of months.
Once you grasp these initial concepts, social media is pretty easy to figure out. Pick your spots and lead or participate in conversations that illustrate you are really good at what you do. People will recognize your knowledge. They may not act now, but just file away your information for later. When they have a need, they will remember you as someone worth talking to. When you plant enough of these seeds, some will grow into sales.Bruce Johnston is a sales consultant specializing in social media. He has over 25 years' experience in high-tech sales and management, most recently as general manager of a PCB manufacturer. He can be reached through his website www.practicalsmm.com or through his profile on LinkedIn.