The Network Solutions sponsored Solutions Stars Video Conference (Oct. 29 at 1, don’t miss it!) features nine content themes:
This is the second of nine posts in nine days, offering thoughts on each section.
The Social Opportunity
Small businesses have a fantastic opportunity to bypass conventional media and advertising to directly reach their stakeholders. Whether that’s through social networks or blogs, entrepreneurs and marketers can engage their conversations in one on one relationships. But rather than provide a straight synopsis of the video vignettes, I’d like to offer an afterthought…
Though the opportunity is great, it can also represent the first wrong turn for many entrepreneurs. Why? Because they approach it from a “what can I get” perspective, they try to generate instantaneous leads or generate immediate ROI. In many ways, the opportunity is great leveling the playing field, but there is great danger if small businesses approach the social web with an attitude of get instead of give.
See, while those are obvious goals, and ones that should be at the heart of any strategy, they fly in the face of the media form. The timeless Cluetrain Manifesto, whose words, “There is no market for messages,” still rings true to this day.
That means social involves conversation, understanding the stakeholder, speaking on their terms, and quite frankly, in some ways, doing the antithesis of marketing.
I spoke at a networking event sponsored by Network Solutions last night in Atlanta (above). And it was a pretty educated crowd, but afterwards I had three different entrepreneurs ask me how they can create this instant return on investment. It reminded me of Ike Pigott’s words, that social media is organic, not something you can fertilize causing instant results. Relationship building takes time.
When companies do this, they often find their efforts fall on deaf ears, or worse, angry bloggers’ ears. The community is by its very nature social, and messaging and sales-oriented behaviors are considered anti-social by most people. Consider your own experiences as a consumer.
The next section of the video conference helps alleviate the issue with its focus on listening first. Companies and individuals have to understand the nature of the medium. It’s participatory, forcing networking skills to become paramount over messaging or closing skills.
Marketers who appear in The Social Opportunity:
In addition to the main site, please visit the Solutions Stars Video Conference event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:
I enjoyed the event and came away with the following observations when Twitter arrived as a topic:
1) People stumble on tool selection relevant to their craft.
I don’t think there are a lot of plumbers on Twitter with a strong local following of toilet flooding customers. I could be wrong.
However, the Home Depot example shows that a plumbing supply company could benefit from plumbers reaching out to them and proving a view of the supply company that only a vocal customer can provide. The same holds true for plumbers being followed perhaps — but search and the dashboards that Leary mentioned make this a more sensible mechanism than a Follow.
2) Quality over quantity appears to still be a debate.
Lamenting the lack of followers truly misses the point if those followers are not actively engaged. Having 4 readers where 2 readers care is greater ROI than 0 readers that care. It’s still fascinating that people and businesses want some abstract measure of success in something like Twitter (for those that know what it is).
3) Events tend to be very topical to the here and now and buzz-ish
It was interesting that so much time was spend on areas such as Twitter and Facebook. I think the money quote was the one regarding the inverse relationship of having elder relatives on a service and cool factor.
One of the side discussions in the rear of the room was what Linkedin Companies (new feature) would look like if there was a Twitter indexing of profiles as well.
Considering your comments to the effect of “edit yourself before you wreck yourself” in managing the streams of personal and business — imagine the vetting and SWOT possibilities of pulsing the general group feel and emotion of an entire corporation. Is that really where we are going with this for the Enterprise?