Social Media for Lakeland Business, Part 1

I helped produce a presentation last month on Social Media, for the Lakeland Chamber  Board. The presenter was,  Board Member, Todd Baylis from Cipher Integrations and its spinoff company Qgiv.com. He did a great job of giving a basic introduction to the whole social media phenom. Starting with a simple how-to, and getting into how it relates to business. We had Q & A throughout, which I think may have muddled the point he was trying to get to.

So I wanted to dig in a little bit:

The power of social media comes from the ability to access  your current & potential clients. It is basic networking, just like the Chamber’s events (Business After Hours, Business & Breakfast, & Schmooze a’Palooza). Most companies do save time for such events, and in the same manner one should do so with these Social Media tools. I heard one of the members say, I don’t want my employees wasting time telling everyone what they are doing on Facebook, and he’s right. What they should be doing is finding out what people online are saying about his company, if they  are saying anything at all.  Now if your listening to them, and they know it, then you must begin to engage. Why? Because we are living in a New Economy, customers are going to let their beliefs be known, whether you like it or not, and they are beginning to expect that engagement. That is why I included the Radian6 quote in the presentation. For those of you who weren’t there it was from the Radian 6 About us page:

 A brand is now defined as the sum of all conversations taking place amongst users and it’s happening regardless of whether you are part of these conversations or not. 

These conversations become the power of the social media platform. Seth Godin (a noted marketing genius) wrote a book called Tribes . The basic premise is taking a group of people with shared intrests and leveraging their power as a “Tribe”, through marketing and particularly word of mouth.  All tribes need a leader, and that is why companies must be a part of the conversation, if not leading it.  So that the Tribes are for them, not for someone else and hopefully not against. If your intrested in a review of “Tribes”, try here. He is basically leveraging leaderhsip and the power of the people to succesfully market products, whether that product is a person, thing, or company.

Now I certainly realize that several of our Board Members have a regional or city brand, so I understand the hesitancy regarding this media transition, and frankly a new way of thinking.  Though some of our Member companies have a more wider appeal, and others a wider understanding. I know intially, it does seem like a waste of time, but that is why you must have a plan of engagement. I will get back to that in a bit.

First though I want to dive back into this transition, which is a lot like moving from the telegraph to the telephone. As Godin phrased it on his blog:

Here’s why people liked the telegraph: It was universal, inexpensive, asynchronous and it left a paper trail.

The telephone offered not one of these four attributes. It was far from universal, and if someone didn’t have a phone, you couldn’t call them. It was expensive, even before someone called you. It was synchronous–if you weren’t home, no call got made. And of course, there was no paper trail.

Now people don’t want a paper trail they want a  digital one, and that is substantiated by the declines in all national advertising revenues except online. (Sorry I couldn’t recall the referance to this). Social Media is the same way and will be universal just like the phone is today, and the telegraph used to be. Why you ask? Because of the genreal acceptance that social media platforms, like Facebook, are seeing. Facebook’s fastest growing demographic are those 30 years and over, and over half of Facebook’s users are out of college. You can see several more statistics on the Facebook Press Release. With this level of  ’adult’ acceptance, users will be looking to their social tools to give and receive information.  Facebook has more than 175 million users is looking to hit 200 million before the end of the year. That’s 2/3 rds of the population of the United States. That is huge. Companies will have direct access to customers, clients, users and partners, with-in minutes. That is the power I referenced earlier. Communication is key to every companies success, and having the ability to reach your customers quickly, and inexpensively is critical, especially for small business. 

There have been numerous examples of how customers are being surprised by companies, after customers have quipped about the  ineffectiveness of  Comcast or bad the bad customer service of Tivo   and then their problems are being handled much faster as they go public through these social media outlets. With these resolutions being handled via social media customers are begining to expect that treatment in all aspects of their life. 

This expectation has already begun to weed out companies who aren’t engaging their customers. This is quite evident by the fact that the  Search Engine Door Slowly Closing on Small Business. In this post Scott Campbell states:

the majority of small businesses continue to avoid, seemingly waiting for something
to happen that will help them better understand and harness this technology

This is vital in this knowledge based economy.  We should all take care to think about these factors that impact us. Since this is quite long already, in a later post I will dive into forming plans and taking that first step.