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Social Media & Your Business

Submitted by Sean McCandless on Fri, 01/08/2010 - 4:12pm

It’s hard to escape the press surrounding social media.  Twitter and Facebook are pervasive and Green Chamber users likely have one more accounts on these two sites.  But, what is the value of these sites and how can you use these sites to support your business?  Let’s begin our conversation on social media by evaluating an even deeper question – how can I use social media to support and enhance my business?

Many different channels of communication can be considered social media – Blogs, Twitter, Facebook are some of the most common.  I am particularly supportive and interested in blogs as they provide unedited comments about what your customers say and think about your products and/or the market.  Blogs allow anyone an outlet for their opinions and they have proven to be incredibly influential.  The trick is developing the right methodology and tool to listen.

To begin listening consider setting up an RSS feed through Google reader.  The steps below will walk you through the process.   

  1. If you do not already have one, set up a Gmail account at www.gmail.com.
  2. Go to www.google.com/reader.  
  3. Go to www.technorati.com.  Type in your subject, name, etc. in quotes into the search bar.
  4. When the results page comes up and you have found a blog that is of interest to you, do one of two things.  Right click on the RSS button, which looks like this:  or copy the link manually using Ctrl V.  
  1. Go back to Google Reader, click the blue “+ Add a subscription” button and paste what you copied. 
  2. Repeat these steps for as many different topics as you desire.
  3. Google Reader will automatically receive updates from the blogs that you choose to follow.  Log in to your Google account as needed to keep up to date.  

You’ll find that marketing through social media is much more about helping people achieve their goals rather than pushing product to them.  Someone once told me that with web presence you should feed customers and the market with as much helpful information as you can and be there when the customer wants to buy.  

We look forward to any comments or questions and furthering the discussion on social media.  

 

Sean McCandless and Beth Bond

Social media

Submitted by admin on Mon, 01/11/2010 - 12:10pm.

Great advice. Thanks Sean and Beth

Is anyone listening?

Submitted by admin on Mon, 01/11/2010 - 12:09pm.

What a timley topic!  It seems like everyone is finally recognizing that twitter  and facebook is not just the "new thing to do..."  most places, however, the discussion seems to be about getting your name and brand out via Social media, but very little is said about using social media to LISTEN, i.e. how can social media be leverages to do better customer service, to understand your cusomer's needs and address them.  Thanks for approaching social media form this angle. Otherwise, it is just another way of pushing out advertising, and consumers already have quite a bit of that...

 

Thanks!

Learning how to listen to your customer

Submitted by Beth Bond on Mon, 01/18/2010 - 4:56pm.

I loved your comment about LISTENING. Yes, there is a ton of stuff out there telling you how promote and ironically that is exactly the incorrect way to approach Social Media according to my Social Media Consultant, Les Adkins.

 

We have been working with Les for about 4 months now. He doesn’t do any direct work for us. Instead, we schedule appointments and I bounce ideas with him. Think of him as a shrink for Social Media : 0 )

 

Here's what he emphasizes all the time. Social Media is social when you are social. It means you are actively participating in a gathering. Not just talking. You wouldn't walk into a networking event and just start shouting buy my stuff. If you did you would probably be asked to leave. In Social Media, you simply get tuned out and you probably didn't even realize it.

 

Listening is key to being social and asking people for their input is probably one of the most under-utilized aspects of the platforms. Of course, people want to tell you something when they want to. The real challenge is to get information when they aren't focused on you. Hopefully we will all be able to help each other figure out how to do that.

Thank you for that thoughtful

Submitted by Sean McCandless on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 8:46am.

Thank you for that thoughtful response.  I particularly liked the comment from Les, "Social Media is social when you are social."  It takes a different type of commitment to make social media work successfully.