Pick up the damn phone!
Social marketing is truly social and it’s not something where you can stand idly and pretend that your fingers typing on the computer will make truly valuable relationships. So many “social gurus” become too concerned about how many followers or friends they have rather than concerning themselves who’s in their network. If you’re working on a company’s social engagement or your own pick up the phone and reach out to the people you admire or want to connect with. For myself here’s the usual workflow.
- Follow the people I like or see possible partnerships with
- Engage via social networks
- Carry on conversation
- DM email
- Connect via email to discuss further possibilities to collaborate
- Pick up the phone and set things into motion
If you don’t go pass the initial engagement via social networks you really minimize you chance for building collaboration opportunities and new business developments. If your network is filled with people that you’re truly connected and only have a small # of followers you’re more valuable to your business than a community with a million followers.
Mainly internet marketers like myself stayed away from social media for these very reasons. Building a million followers who don’t know you well enough to buy goods and services is essentially worthless. Many like myself were convinced it was a large time sink but the PR side of business can never be denied. A game like Empire Avenues makes it all fun and actually turns a task I avoided like the plague into something fun and engaging.
If one does use social media as a major marketing tool then providing valuable content to a few targeted followers is infinitely more valuable than a mass of disconnected people.