321Punch.com

The 4 Reasons Why Your Social Strategy will Fail.
By Scott Allen & Terry Knealing, 321Punch

Remember that scene at the beginning of The Patriot where Mel Gibson and his two young sons are attacking a line of British soldiers? Up on the ridge, Mel is hopping here and there; behind a tree. Then a rock. Then a bush. All the while loading, shooting, picking off Red Coats. In the scene following, a wounded British trooper, bleeding on a litter, recounts the experience. “It was one man. But he was upon us, everywhere at the same time. Like…a ghost!”

Some of you reading this article might respond to our dismissal of most Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin strategy with the same level of incredulity that the British commander had when he heard the soldier say that a ghost had wiped out his cohorts. Poppycock!

However, there are some of you reading this that may be secretly harboring such unpopular doubts about the importance of social networks for your business. You have this sneaking feeling that what the media (and everyone else) is telling you is somehow flawed. No need to reveal your identity, we’ll take the hit for you on this one…but only because we’re right.

Social networking is a largely ineffective means by which to stimulate sales.

Don’t we wish we could be more like Mel? Where our marketing is effectively everywhere at once; guerilla in the bush, picking off customers left-and-right? This is probably why so many companies are looking, incorrectly, for customers in social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. They want to engage customers everywhere the customers are.

Surely the hope is that if you’re a successful social maven online, your business will thrive. We all know that hundreds of thousands of people are using those networks every day. Finding customers in such a target-rich environment is as easy as hiding among the green ferns picking off guys wearing bright red coats. It’s just a numbers game right?

Don’t be fooled. The people that are selling you on social networks are the same jokers who join network meetings to take part in the inane ritual of “sharing leads” over food-served-on-a-tray at La Madeline. After the second meeting you’ve exhausted your opportunities within the group. Now what are you supposed to do, hope that someone “brings a friend” to the next meeting?

Quality content is more important than Friends.

You might think social networks are the heart of guerilla marketing, the tip of the spear in your lead generation process.  They’re not. Going social is more akin to hanging out at the water cooler pretending to be busy. Oh sure, someone new drops by here and there, and you get to chat them up. But are these people at the water cooler really your customers?  The answer to that question is…no.

If location, location, location is a montra for physical-world success, then content, content, content is the analogous watchword online.

What’s nice about content online is that it can be written once and then disseminated and consumed in a number of different ways. Let’s take this article as an example.

When we’re done writing it we’re going to post it to our blog. But that’s not all.  We’re also going to record it in audio so it can be downloaded and listened to as a podcast. Following that we’re going to make a video out of it and upload it all over the place.  The last thing we are going to do (and yes we’ll do it) is we’re going to Share it to our Facebook and Linkedin ‘friends’ and post a trackable link back to our blog to it from Twitter.  Heck, we might go crazy and Digg it.

Now, ask yourself which one of these activities is going to get us the most customer leads?  Hint: it’s not the socials.

Social Success Does not a Customer Make.

We’re running into too many companies that think that if they can get a bunch of Twitter followers, they will sell more stuff.

The painful truth about Social Networking is that adding your traffic to a social feed is like throwing a rock at a waterfall. Oh sure you see the hole it creates in the sheet of water, but a nanosecond later that hole is gone; swooshed down into the pool like it was never there.

One of the last things that Mel says to his frightened boys before taking his own hiding position in the scrub is “aim small, miss small.” This is exactly the opposite of what most people think their online marketing should do. They think, “aim big, score big!” They hear about these online gurus that have hundreds, even thousands of followers and/or friends online and dollar signs dance in their eyes.

Here is a hint about social gurus. Yes, some of them, very few of them, are making money. But just because you have a huge social following doesn’t mean anyone cares about your business. By and large the people who are actually making money with the socials are those that ALREADY had large networks of dedicated followers in other media. Tech TV personality Leo Laporte, for instance, had a loyal following before he created his online network TWIT.TV. They did not create his network because he woke up one day and decided to “go social.” Instead, he moved his pre-existing network over to the new tools so he could engage it in a fresh way.

The great misunderstanding that most companies seem to be having is that they think if they get social, then they will be able to cultivate a huge network of dedicated buyers. In reality, it’s the other way around. A huge network of dedicated buyers can definitely benefit from being moved to your social network, and engaged in new ways. But, creating that database of devotees—in the first place—starts with more fundamental marketing activities that don’t include Twitter or Facebook.

A company that has not covered its marketing fundamentals first, that wakes up one morning and decides to “go social,” we guarantee failure 90% of the time. No doubt about it.

Customers don’t Friend you. They Google you!

Now, so far we’ve made the case that for most businesses looking to the social networks as a way to generate new customers (in any meaningful way) isn’t a lost strategy, so much as it’s a misplaced strategy. Where are the customers? We think the chart from Pew/Internet answers this question perfectly. Search is where your customer’s at.

In Conclusion…
During a recession, time is not your friend. But the degree to which you can get time on your side, by engaging low-overhead, high-yield, measurable, self-replicating projects will determine how well you emerge when the recession ends.

Social networks will fail to support your lead generation process simply because you don’t have the time it will take to make them successful. The requirement for your ongoing live presence, plus the temporary nature of your message coupled with the fact that your buyers don’t turn to social networks to find products, means that while social networks have their place, that place is behind the horse, not in front of it.

If you would put more time into a search strategy than you might a social strategy, you’d be seeing mega dividends for your effort. AKA more customers. Why? Because customers are not Friending you, they are Googling you. The key point here is to be found when a prospect needs you.

Yes, when you step into the world of search engine marketing you are jumping into a battle where the big guns roam the countryside. This is the quiet war. Why? Because people “in the know” recognize that search is the #1 generator of new customers.

There is no denying that search is complex, it’s intimidating and it can be expensive. But If you want a shot at amazing numbers of new customers, socializing with your “followers” isn’t enough. You must have a search strategy, designed to target your opportunities and pull them in.  Search is where the volume is. Search is where the customers are. Search is where the money’s at.

It’s all about time and our use of the minutes and second that tick away at our days. In the end “time well spent” is the currency of healthy companies and the wellspring of profits. What a company needs to do when the economic environment turns murky is preserve time, invest in learning new ways to create time, extend time, even slow time. Nowhere will you find the social environment a friend of time. So the choice is up to you. You can either go out with guns blazing, or you can wait till you see the whites of their eyes.