The Single Question to Help Guide Your Social Media Marketing

Neal Schaffer: 0:04

Welcome to maximize your social actionable 10 minute advice on how your business can maximize your social media presence. Now, the host of maximize your social social media author, speaker, consultant, and founder of maximize social business, Neal Schaffer. Everyone this is Neal Schaffer, welcome to a another edition of maximize your social. Well, the summer is coming to an end. Our kids have already been in school not since this month. But since July because we're on a year round calendar here in Irvine, California. And believe it or not, they actually start three weeks of vacation starting today. Unfortunately, Daddy's a little busy with work, don't know what we're gonna be able to do. But even if your kids are back to school, and you're not on vacation, which I wouldn't expect you to be. Well, q3 is coming to a close right, September 30. So hopefully everything that you wanted to achieve in this quarter you have and you can end the quarter on a great note. So a lot of things I'm working on feverishly to the very last day of the quarter, let's see how much I can execute on. But now let's move on to Social Media for Business. And let's move on to our topic of today. Today, I want to talk about one question, one question that you can ask yourself about your business or a question that you can ask your clients that will really help you focus on what you need to be doing in social media. And I say this, I mean, even listening to me, you know, I like to take a very, very holistic approach, sometimes that helps to really take a 35,000 foot view, instead of getting lost in the weeds or in all the details of all the different social media sites and tools and tactics. And if you've been following me on social, you know that I have had a partnership with Comerica Bank. As a client, they've brought me out to a number of different events here in the Western United States to speak to their business clients. And I just spoke last week again, previous week was in San Diego last week was in Hawthorne, California near lax. And I just love the questions I get when I speak. And there are a lot of obviously small businesses that are late to the game in terms of social media. Whenever I bring up the stat that 94% of businesses already are involved or engaged in social media marketing in 2014, I always have to tell people well, there's there's a disclaimer with that step disclaimer is if you look really closely, those are companies that have over 100 people, those companies that have less than 100 people, I honestly do not think it is at 94%. And I think a lot of you can share in that. So when I talk to these Comerica Bank events, and there are some events for small businesses, some for SMEs, this particular one was small businesses, and obviously got a lot of great questions. And one of them and it's a very, very common question that I wanted to share with you is, it's basically someone who is selling a product that people don't need to worry about until they die. So I guess you could say, you know, buying a plot in a memorial park is is a similar type of business, you could say that maybe living in a senior citizens home is another similar thing, this was actually something a little bit different. And the interesting thing is that, you know, he immediately thought, How do I get the word out about my business to people that might not know that they need and it's sort of like a financial risk instrument for people when they can't manage their own estate. And it sort of works with the legalese, of financial planning, and having a you know, a living trust, and yada, yada, yada, I won't go through the details to bore you. But my laser focused approach to all this and I don't care, you know, I don't care if you're selling apples to overseas markets, or you're selling a niche b2b product, niche b2b industries, but it really comes down to the same thing, right? Because, as I always say, social media, complements everything and replaces nothing. So in the grand scheme of things, what do you think my question, my single, most loaded question that is going to give you all you need to know, just at the very beginning, at least, of where you need to focus your social media activities? And a lot of you obviously already engaged in social media, very experienced data, but are you really focusing in the right area? A lot of us tend not to because we we start a process and strategy and we get going, and we sort of get lost in it over time. So when asked the gentleman it was this question, and this is what I want to ask all of you as well, where do you get your leads? Where do you get your business? Okay, now, this gentleman like a lot of other people, obviously, he does business with people with consumers. So you could say it's consumer facing brand. But at the end of the day, he goes, You know, I get most of my business from referrals. And there are a lot of people that should be nodding their heads right now, because there's a lot of business that happens through referrals through partners. In this case, he gets his His referral business through estate lawyers, right? People don't, you know, go knocking on his door or go to his website and, and ask for information directly. It's all because he has relationships with estate lawyers, and they're looking for products and services and people that they can trust that they can help with their clients. So immediately, instead of him thinking, Wow, do I need to be on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter, the conversation immediately shifted to well, what can I do in social media to help my relationships with these estate lawyers, so that they introduced me to more business? And right there, you have a classic example of a great objective. Now? Are we trying to build more relationships? How much of the market do you think you have in terms of your relationships with the state lawyer as well, it's business that he can do nationally, and he gets requests nationally, well, now, you're no longer just targeting local lawyers in your local metropolitan region. Now you're talking nationally. And this is obviously where social media can help you to scale and help you develop relationships nationwide, whether it be LinkedIn, which is probably the preferred place where lawyers are whether to do a blog to educate lawyers on these issues, and let them know that these sorts of services exist. And just all the networking that you can be doing even targeting lawyers with Facebook ads and trying to get some FaceTime that pun intended, in the Facebook newsfeed with your advertisement, you know, LinkedIn and LinkedIn groups that lawyers often appear in, or blogging, like I said, topics Twitter, you know, even on Pinterest, there are people that are pinning legal issues, especially when it relates to social media. So hey, where's your market? And this actually leads into if you listen to me last week, I'm actually going to be speaking as part of Social Media Examiner Social Media Success Summit on this very topic of where do you find your customers and social media? How do you find them? And the answer that really comes down to well, what is the objective who are your customer? And I think a lot of people, a lot of businesses still aren't very clear about that when they think about social media. So you have a lot of consumer facing companies, but you also have b2b aspects of your company. This isn't a great example of a b2b referral network that this business has, I often bring up the case study of Irish dog, Bloody Mary mix, and they are a case study that made my second book on LinkedIn, maximizing LinkedIn for sales and social media marketing. And yes, it's consumer driven with a fanpage. But they get a quarter of their sales through distributors that they find in LinkedIn groups. So it's easy to focus on the consumer facing side. But it's often the business facing side, that is actually giving you your sales. And it's really trying to map out both and understanding that, you know, I was talking to a manufacturer of chocolate chip cookies last week. And he gets his business mostly not directly from consumers. But because he has relationships with buyers at different supermarkets locally, that has helped him really, you know, generate business, and maybe he has some direct relationships with them. Maybe he has some indirect relationships with distributors. But that obviously is where the business has been generated. And on the flip side, he obviously wants to influence consumers into buying his products. So he does stuff to influence consumers as well. And as long as you understand that, and you can answer those questions and understand that it's going to take a very, very different approach, you know, potentially different networks, obviously, different tactics and different objectives for your b2b and b2c side and learn how to shuffle your budget your resources for each one, and to be able to calculate your ROI, I think you're gonna do really, really well. And maybe you just start with one of the two sides. Most companies immediately start with the consumer facing side, they immediately think Facebook or Instagram, and that's all great. But really, as in the case of this person selling these special services and dealing with estate lawyers. You know, chocolate chip cookies is something that can more resonate with consumers, what this other gentleman was selling was something more specialized. And it probably makes sense to invest more of his effort on the b2b side, in terms of social media and using that to help foster and develop those relationships. Well, I hope you enjoyed this week's edition of maximize your social ads. You know, I like to keep them very, very short and sweet, and give you advice that I've given clients and others during speaking engagements and what have you. But it really is a great question. And if you talk to any business owner out there, if you're in marketing, or if you're trying to sell consulting, or you're working with clients, that's really the golden question, especially dealing with small businesses. And it's really about building out a social media program or a social media strategy and tactics that revolve around answering that one golden question. How do we get our leads? How do I get our business today without social media, and really complementing it with a social media program? Tip for today? Hope you enjoyed the podcast. I look forward to future podcasts. As always, if there's something you want me to talk about in the podcast, let me know if I don't hear back Emil, I'm going to keep on going with with my mission and speaking to you on topics that I find timely. And I find a lot of people are asking me as was this question. So that's it for today everybody, wishing you a great social day wherever you are in the world.

Unknown: 10:13

Bye bye. Thanks for listening to maximize your social. We appreciate your iTunes subscriptions ratings and comments. If you would like to appear on this show or recommend content, please contact Neal Schaffer at Neal at maximize your social.com make it a social day.