When asked to explain social media profit strategy, I often reply with two words. “listen” and “love”
Amanda Palmer uses another two words. “Just Ask”
The latter did make for an outstanding TED Talk and won accolades all over the net this week. If you haven’t seen it, I put the video here. I just watched it again. .. WOW!
Don’t make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them. In a passionate talk that begins in her days as a street performer (drop a dollar in the hat for the Eight-Foot Bride!), she examines the new relationship between artist and fan.
Alt-rock icon Amanda Fucking Palmer believes we shouldn’t fight the fact that digital content is freely shareable — and suggests that artists can and should be directly supported by fans.
Amanda’s story is great. I love how she learned to LISTEN. That’s very easy to practice when you spend five years professionally being quite.
Instead of pushing her music (message) on others, she found out what they wanted and saw that they got it. That’s what we call “LOVE”
Listen and love. It’s and easy as that.
Social Media Profit Strategy
When I work with clients, we do far more than talk about love. It’s serious business and we set up systems and KPI’s to measure attraction, retention and bottom line profits.
But let’s never forget. Today, more than ever, people are looking for a connection, real human to human contact and sharing of stories. This has always been what people look for in business and life.
In the 20th Century, it was easy to win with a big message blasted out using the most power you could find to millions of consumers who were lucky enough to have mass media for the first time and happy to sit through ads.
We always preferred a two way dialog. Thanks to the Internet and the technologies calls social media that’s possible. Some companies are learning to use what Amanda Palmer talked about, they listen to the their audience (prospects/customers) and do right by them (we say “love”)
Who Else is Using Love as a Strategy?
Most of those asking me for help in social media have one thing on their mind “How do I get this message out?”
We have the answer. We let the market know that our clients are ready to listen.
Do you have a social media profit story? Share below in the comments. I’m listening.
Last night on Facebook, Robert Scoble asked if people thought that company reps and fans were cluttering up the marketing technology landscape with too many people saying the same thing.
I said the problem was not consumers, it was the company stuck in the paradigm that they had to be talking about their new products.
I’ve been saying:
If you’re the only one saying how awesome your product is, you don’t need to yell louder. tweet this
It’s a topic I’ve been YELLING about (irony is not lost on me) since we wrote Twitter Revolution.
We recognized that we were leaving the anomaly of the 20th century, the mass media one way blasts, and were having two way conversations. I’ve been saying how we spent the last hundred years getting good at pushing out a message, and that now we needed this Century to teach (or have die off) all the people who assume LOUDER is better.
Since then, I’ve learned that dialog is just one step.
OLD MARKETING = One Way Blast from the Center
SOCIAL MEDIA = Two Way.. LISTENING
SUCCESS = Two customers talking to each other.
Your Job is Help Customers Talk to Each Other
Its Word of Mouth and Social Graph and the move to LISTENING put together with a huge amount of data. Working toward knowing the needs of influencers and ALL to anticipate their needs and see that it’s available WHEN THEY ASK FOR IT.
We used to craft marketing messages and announcements. MOST marketers think that’s what social media does: just another media (they are the ones going away over the next 100 years :).
The marketing technology landscape has evolved. The business of the future will have smart relationships, use all the data they can mine, wisdom and insight to design better products and then let the market find them.
Marketing is Seduction
Like any seduction, marketing that looks like marketing is third rate marketing. We don’t chase the one who is chasing us. The ART of this is knowing that people are anxious for your new products, your excellent service and your fresh ideas. More important, they are dying to tell their friends that they found the newest thing.. not parrot what we tell them.
Today’s post answers the fundamental business question we get about using social media.
How do I know if my social media activity will be profitable?
Social media profits can be different. It almost always is far more than quick sales transactions.
I have found that once I sit down with a business and discuss what they mean by profits, quite often, the goals they have in mind haven’t translated into the simple business math that can make social media marketing, or any activity outrageously profitable.
Watch this short clip and let me know if I’ve made this point.
Social media strategy for using social media in marketing your business
My objective when I make a video today is to put important concepts into a simple presentation. There may be things that are left out, but I hope the meat of the message is here.
When you know the life time value of an average customer, you are way ahead in business
I’ve been getting a lot of questions about a service that promises to add a whole lot of unsuspecting followers on Twitter. There are still some marketers who think that all we need to do is build up a massive list of people and then they all will magically buy stuff.
I’ve been replying with “This is a chain letter.. what’s next? Will you have me send $5 to each person on a list?”
But one of them admitted he didn’t believe the claims himself, and asked me to explain why it might not work.. I wrote:
It’s never a question if the chain letter works.. in fact, they were banned in snail mail BECAUSE they were so effective.
Here they have removed the “you will have bad luck if you don’t” and “send $5′ part.. thanks to emails, you can blast this out a lot keeper and don’t need to twist arms.
So I’m not saying not to do it.. I’m just betting that the types of followers you get from automated systems will be like FFA pages and freebie list builders… short lived.
Social media does because it’s so easy to opt out of reading the over hyped messages. The average person looks at 19,000 follower in a month and thinks scam and wont want to follow you.
If you pay someone to follow you, they will be more loyal.. but it’s kind of like paying people to be your friends.
Think of Twitter like a party. You can pass out a lot of business cards.. but you’ll be known as “that guy” and shunned.
Don’t you want to be invited to the next cool party? If so.. make conversations, be helpful and build a real relationship.
Some people look at social media as a new way to build a pyramid scheme.
Fortunately, we know have control.. we just avoid following them or un-follow. If we don’t follow, they become irrelevant fast
Social media gives you the chance to meet people, build relationships and meaningful connections. No reason to be THAT GUY.. you will do a lot more business if you treat people right and listen to them instead of spend your time on scams and schemes
This video is a dramatization of the speed of Twitter.
But in real life, social media is not spreading news in real time.
Whether it’s an earthquake, weather, new product or angry customers causing your next crisis, you won’t have time to plan on a profitable social media strategy.
Today, like it or not, we need to be ready to react in real time.
