The Network Solutions sponsored Solutions Stars Video Conference (Oct. 29 at 1, don’t miss it!) features nine content themes:
This is the fourth of nine posts in nine days, offering thoughts on each section.
Strategy Drives Outreach
Here were my thoughts after viewing this series of videos:
The most common errors in social media and marketing in general come from lack of strategy (beware the self-touted social media expert). Without a plan, without knowing what you need to achieve, or with whom you need to communicate, and what value have to offer them, marketing becomes a vain exercise in the futile. You need a plan.
Otherwise you are just another silly social media expert bragging about the number of friends and page impressions you made. Or even better, claiming that throwing the eff word down on a blog is a great way to be authentic and generate real relationships. Yeah, I’ve heard that one recently (I’ve been guilty of it, too).
Look, cursing and or adding personality in less controversial ways have brought people down from the corporate control tower. But that desire to be “authentic” can be a distraction. There’s too much focus on being the uncontrolled social media friendly personality — and not enough on understanding what drives corporate social media: The ability to have two-way conversations with the community and build real relationships vis a vis giving back through information, commentary insights, or geez, just being generous.
In a recession, acting with precision and building great value for your stakeholders — giving to your community — is what drives relationships. It’s all about them, not your corporate ability to demonstrate personal flair. Most small business owners and entrepreneurial types have plenty of personality. That will ring through, believe me.
Instead focus on what you can do to make people’s professional or personal lives better. That’s the heart of the strategy. In classic marketing terms, it’s called the value proposition.
Without an intrinsic understanding of your stakeholders drivers, you may make friends, but you won’t get results. Instead, build a strategy with a value proposition for your community clearly defined AND then participate and communicate conversationally. Common sense and well chosen tactics can deliver results.
Marketers who appear in Strategy Drives Outreach:
In addition to the main site, please visit the Solutions Stars Video Conference event pages on Facebook and Upcoming:
Well done, Jeff. Clarity of the argument had me nodding and saying “duh!” to the many people I’ve heard pushing social media for its own sake. It’s a channel, not a cure for cancer.
Thanks for underscoring it.
Hello Geoff,
I’m curious what comment you were reading, because I don’t recall writing that dropping F-bombs “is a great way to be authentic and generate real relationships.”
The gist of what I said is it’s what I choose to do with my free time. And that I wouldn’t want to work for a hypothetical employer who is going to go trolling around my blog/Facebook/Twitter holding perfectly legal and ethical things I do off the clock against me.
I don’t understand how you interpreted the comment to mean something other than that.
@Rusty You don’t get it, just like you don’t get why an f bomb on your personal pages impacts your personal image. And that’s because you are too focused on how you want to be, rather than how others perceive you. Personally, I don’t care so much about cursing unless it’s cursing on every little thing. That as an employer is a red flag. Regardless, I found your comment to be laughable and worth pointing out as erroneous. Thus the link.
Something you apparently don’t understand is that responding to a civil critique of your work with words like “laughable” and “erroneous” makes you look like either closed-minded moron or a hack with something to sell.
I sit in the interviewer chair myself from time-to-time, and it just doesn’t matter to us whether someone has photos of themselves doing shots on Facebook. Our dev team will run circles around pretty much any dev team in the city that I know of. If we listened to you, we’d miss out on a lot of good candidates. It’s a good thing we don’t.
@Rusty Thank you for your differing opinion.