No one cares about you – they care about how you can solve their problems. Write for your readers.
These two expressions epitomize the most important marketing (and social media) concept: relevance. How often have you seen a post, picture, tweet, or comment that adds zero value? Or where the signal-to-noise ratio is, well, noisy?
Are you involved in your professional association? Or do you run one – either as a director, staff, or volunteer?
If so, you’re probably concerned with one aspect of Social Media: How do you compete with free? (Or perhaps, you’re concerned with a more existential question: Does social media make associations irrelevant?)
Yes, we do market research. In fact, each year we (108 ideaspace and Bramm Research) have done industry benchmarking and best practices research in the area of Social Media. So it might be surprising to read a post about when – and why – market research should not be done.
What do houses, cars, and Social Media all have in common? For one thing, they all share a primary question: Buy or Rent. Buy a house, or look for a rental? Buy a car, or lease it? And should we rent our Social Media, or build our own?
Have you ever put in a proposal, or answered an enquiry about your products or services, and then waited patiently for their answer about the next step? While images of pulling petals off a daisy might come to mind (“He loves me, he loves me not”) the words that ultimate come back are either yes we want you, or no we don’t.
If you are reading this and profess to have some expertise in Social Media, then you may be offended by my next comment: it soon won’t matter, and your “expertise” is fast becoming irrelevant.
[Free Download] How do you organize your Social Media activities? Most people have a system – whiteboards, excel documents, Google Calendar, or often, scraps of paper. Unfortunately, none of these are particularly effective, nor are they efficient. And they certainly don’t help you share your activities with your colleagues.
Ever feel slighted, ignored, disenfranchised, “sold to”, taken for granted, or just plain commoditized? For many prospects, these feelings are what prevent a sale from taking place. They prevent repeat sales, prevent referrals, and encourage negative word-of-mouth.
The reasons for poor customer service range from poor hiring, ineffective (or invisible) training, poor attitude, and inadequate resourcing. Most customers don’t really care why – they’ll vote with their feet and leave.
Last week’s blog post focused on the top eight factors in creating a great video. This week’s blog post takes it home, with practical advice gleaned from hosting 180 hours of Professionally Speaking TV, being interviewed hundreds of times in media, and filming 100s of short promo videos for clients.
