Give Away the Secret of Social Media!

I need your help, fellow social media enthusiasts! I’ve spent the last few weeks working with some well known companies and pitching them to create and maintain a social media presence on their behalf, using corporate blogs, Twitter and forums. The thing that has amazed me is that the senior management of most companies have not got a clue about how social media can benefit them. These folks are focused on how effective their web 1.0 site is, and really don’t know what social media can do for them.

Let me give you an example, a power tool manufacturer. Now this manufacturer has a simply brilliant website – it works beautifully, and it’s amazingly optimized. It would be almost impossible for anyone searching for power tools of every shape and size to not come across their site. So what are they missing? The much, much larger audience of people who aren’t searching for power tools. Maybe they’re looking for advice on building a bookcase, or ideas on how to create a patio. With a blog, being fed by a Twitter account, they can talk to all these people, give them some great free advice, and then tell them how much easier the job would be using one of their power tools. Within a few months, they can send lots more targeted traffic to their main website, and generate genuine incremental sales. Easy, isn’t it?

The battle is explaining this to people who have never looked outside the traditional sales process box. And this is where you can help. Become an evangelist for social media – explain it to your friends, colleagues and your boss. Help them to understand what they’re missing out on, help them to get into social media, or even help people like me to pitch these ideas to them. Why? Because we’ll help to strengthen the businesses we work with and for, and we’ll bring more people into the fold to read our own blogs and communicate with us on the web.

What do you think? Should we be doing this, or should we keep social media to ourselves?

Check out the video on my Beginners Guide to Twitter page!

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