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.
This is a great article. When you strip away all the technology and b.s. it is, and has always been about one person making a decision to make a transaction with another person (or group).
yes!
Amazing story… listening is so important in business, as an entrepreneur.
in business, and in life 🙂
It’s taking businesses and artists a while to work out that social media is not about broadcasting your “stuff”… if you do that, people will switch off. Earn genuine evangelists by demonstrating that you’re human, you care and you listen.
right. social-99% and media-1%
The randomness of life is often the most precious – and I have to thank you and Amanda for reminding me of this. The profit found there far exceeds the sole monetary ones!
we called this “Serendipity Selling” in the book. The cost of encounters is so low today, that we can do many and expect to hit a few.
Smart business would be to focus on the ones that work, but pre-planning what those are reduces us to our own experience and capabilities. The world have far more to offer
When folks ask me about the most important skill in selling, they sometimes think that I am trying to be tricky when I reply listening. Sometimes it is a really tough skill to implement.
I’ve always joked that I have the rare ability to listen while talking (fooling myself, I suppose). When I’m in the zone, I talk way too much, but constantly watching the face of my prospect.
Frankly, I think there is room to talk. It has to be about what the prospect is very interested in (quite often NOT your product) and you have to throttle back to allow them to speak.
My struggle is the throttle… but I do know you CAN listen with more than processing the words from their mouth 🙂