Peace, Love, and Social Media
You’re hep, you’re groovy, you’re now. You’re down with your peeps but not quite up on technology. You think, “This blog and Twitter jive might be what’s happenin’ but I’m not down with it”. Bummer, man.
Back in the day, as the internet and email evolved into business tools, some people thought they could wait it out and it would go away. Maybe they were intimidated or clueless as to its importance. At some point they got on board because the only option was irrelevance, business-wise. Now? How could we function without Google or email?
Well kids, its déjà vu all over again. If you’re a B2B business and not exploring and implementing social media, your competitors may be soon enjoying your reluctance.
Successfully broadcasting your message with outbound marketing has an increasingly shorter shelf life. Consider how many ways you block the intrusions of companies trying to sell you something (DVRs, spam filters, caller ID, circular file).
In the coming years (well, now, actually), consumers of your product or service will find you – or not – based on your level of engagement with social media. That means optimizing your website, blogging, connecting, commenting, and generally participating in the online conversation. Contact Management and CRM systems that are staying with the curve are incorporating social media connections to make this process easier and more effective.
Engaging customers so that they want to connect with you is the new paradigm. Now is the time to create or improve upon a clearly defined, ongoing strategy that focuses on inbound marketing driven by social media practices.
There are any number of experts who can help you get started: I just Googled social media for business and found a terrific article on businessweek.com. As they say in the article: Catch up . . . or catch you later.
So get started and define a strategy. Refresh or design your website to optimize searches, start a blog, ramp up your inbound marketing with tools that demystify the process, create a profile on LinkedIn. Do any or all of those things, or you’ll be far out, indeed.
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