15 Jul Social Media Expectations
There is no shortcut to an effective social media strategy. Too often business leaders want to just throw money at the problem, and they are disappointed when they don’t get the results they expected.
Let me define what I mean when I say “an effective social media strategy.” I am talking about making money from your social media following. I am not talking about likes or follows. I can point to examples of people I know who have a very large social media following, yet it is all about vanity. They have built a social media following to feel good about themselves, not to make money. Call me crazy, but if I am going to invest time and money into a project, I want it to yield a return.
Just like a mirage in the desert, it might look like someone has a ton of followers, when it is just bots or fake accounts they have paid for.
Another word of caution: before you get too jealous of someone else’s social media following or likes and comments, look past the “Social Media Mirage.” As Elon Musk has famously pointed out, there are a lot of bots on social media. Not just Twitter. Just like a mirage in the desert, it might look like someone has a ton of followers, when it is just bots or fake accounts they have paid for. I recently tried an experiment to prove my point and hired a company that promised to get me real followers. I canceled the agreement before the trial was over after they added more than 300 Twitter followers who were only following one person: me.
For those who do have an active social media following, do you want to know their secret? It is not complicated. They take the time to engage with their followers and engage with other social media accounts online. The key word is SOCIAL media; you must be social. This is not a traditional marketing campaign where you spend dollars and watch passively. You can hire a company to do that for you, but to do it right it will take time and money. You are asking a company to engage on your behalf, so make sure you trust the company.
“How are you managing your sales funnel?” That was a great question I heard our VP of Business Development, Ryan Rives, ask a client. What a concept. Most business owners don’t have a plan to use their social media to feed into their sales funnel. They have believed the lie that just posting content on social media will yield sales results.
Imagine running a campaign before we had social media, and the call to action was asking prospects to call a number and leave a voicemail. Now imagine you never took the time to return those calls. Your sales numbers are in the basement. Would that be the campaign’s fault or the fact that you never took the time to call the prospects back? Yet how many times do business leaders get prospects to comment on social media platforms and never follow up with building the relationship and asking for the business?
Before you get started, ask yourself what your motivation is for posting on social media. If you want to grow your sales, build a real social plan to grow sales. If you want to be famous, just post pictures of babies, puppies, or some crazy dance video.
Scott Miller is the CEO of Centerpost Media, host of the Create. Build. Manage. show (seen on BizTV, heard on BizTalkRadio, and available wherever you listen to podcasts,) and a member of the Forbes Agency Council, Entrepreneur Leadership Network, and Dallas Business Journal Leadership Trust. You can find Scott on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter via “@scottmillerceo” or on LinkedIn via “@scottmillermedia.” Centerpost Media is a content marketing agency with a vision to help every business they encounter with their media needs by providing outstanding quality, service and value. Centerpost Media is the parent company to BizTV, BizTalkRadio, BizTalkPodcasts and Bizvod.