How to Sell Social Media by David Bullock - HTML preview

You Sell with Knowledge.

The web is emerging as a new force within all markets. Social technology is a new knowledge domain and requires new thinking. Without the knowledge you cannot apply the right thinking. Social media requires new thinking about everything.

By David Bullock & Jay Deragon

 

November 6, 2009

 

Table of Contents

What Solution Does Social Media Create? ..................................................................... 1
The Problem With Expected Results............................................................................... 2
Why Do People Use Social Media?................................................................................. 2
Why Do We Communicate? ............................................................................................ 3
So Why Do Others Use Social Media?............................................................................ 3
Do You Know Why? ........................................................................................................ 4
The Right Questions About Social Media........................................................................ 4
Back To “Do You Know Why?”........................................................................................ 5
If You Know “Why,” Is Your Organization Ready? .......................................................... 5
The Force Field Of Social Media ..................................................................................... 6
How To Think? And What Should You Think About? ...................................................... 7
What Has Changed? ....................................................................................................... 7
What Direction Should Your Organization Follow? ......................................................... 8
Social Media Can Cause A Change In Your Directions................................................... 8
How Do You Explain Social Media? ................................................................................ 9
The Story....................................................................................................................... 10
So What Should You Do First? ..................................................................................... 10
What Drives Social Media ROI? .................................................................................... 11
A Problem With Thinking About ROI ............................................................................. 11
So How Do You Measure ROI? .................................................................................... 12
Trying To Sell Social Media With The Wrong Knowledge Devalues It .......................... 12
The Revaluation Of Social Media .................................................................................. 13
How Do You Sell Social Media?.................................................................................... 15
About The Authors ........................................................................................................ 20

The issues of social media (and how to use it) are usually ambiguous, often confusing, and sometimes baffling to business owners. Often, people not only don't know all the answers... they don't even know what questions to ask!

(But the one immediate question that all our clients do ask us is how to use social media to create revenue.)

 

This means that we often find ourselves trying to sell knowledge of social media to a market that doesn’t understand it and is already programmed to believe it is something it is not.

We’ve sold professional consulting services all our lives. We're selling knowledge people want or need to make something better. And bettering a business can be sorted into two categories: reducing expenses without hurting services, or selling more of something a business has (or don’t yet have but want to develop).

As consultants, we always have to provide not only subject-matter expertise, but also critical thinking coupled with a neutral perspective gained from experience dealing with very similar - and also very different - situations. The difficulty in selling social media is that the market is tainted with misconceptions. There is so much noise about social media, with everyone telling everybody what it is and how to use it.

As consultants, we have to add value through communicating capabilities and enabling relationships. But we also have to actually create value through intellect and experience combined with just the right level of creativity. In other words, we must approach a prospective client with solutions - thinking that appeals to their needs.

What Solution Does Social Media Create?

 

The right question is: what problem does social media solve? You can’t recommend a solution if your client doesn’t perceive it as solving a problem they have and want to fix.

So the first issue is to understand what problem a client has that they want to solve. Clearly identifying and defining the problem is half the battle. If you can’t identify a problem that social media may be able to solve, your chances of getting engaged are slim. Worse, though, is giving the impression that social media can solve all their problems. Because it can’t.

Social media can’t solve all your problems. As a matter of fact, using it improperly can create more problems than you ever had before. Yet everywhere we look, many consultants seem to be selling social media as the cure all for everything. (Here is a hint. It isn’t!)
The Problem with Expected Results

Most of the market is consumed with creating an ROI from social media. Many want social media solutions that drive revenue. The problem with these perspectives is they haven’t identified a problem they want fixed or a solution that want to achieve...besides more revenue. ROI comes from lowering cost or improving revenue from investments in new initiatives aimed at solving problems. Social media doesn’t do either without knowledge.

Social media is a system of communications , period. While communications is part of any solution to solving problems and generating more revenue, it is not the whole solution.

Social media is a communications tool that can help you increase awareness, improve brand recognition, reach more people efficiently and pull a market to your value proposition. However, simply starting a social media campaign doesn’t translate to revenue or solving problems if you don’t think through the process and related issues.

Jumping into social media and pushing your message without planning is like just yelling at your sales force for more revenue. If you haven’t first figured out what your market wants or needs and whether you are capable of delivering it - then you are peeing in the wind. How’s that for an analogy?

If you don’t know where your market is and how they are participating in social media how will you communicate with them? Worse yet, if you are communicating the wrong thing the wrong way how can you expect the market to pay attention to you or your proposition? The analogy for this is throwing money into advertising with no way to know who it reaches and who is responding. Sound familiar?

Social media affords you that specific data so you can measure how effectively you are communicating with your market.

So again, what is the ROI on social media? The answer lies in two metrics: how well you communicate with your market (all social media does is deliver it) and what value you have to offer (that is the job of every business to define, improve and deliver).

Fix your communications and deliver superb
value...and social media will return a huge ROI.
Selling social media is only relevant to improving
your market communications, which can improve
revenue and saves money if you know how.

Why Do People Use Social Media?

My six-year-old asks a lot of questions. Most
questions start with “Why?” The reason children
ask why a lot is because their minds are geared to

learn why things are the way they are and why people do the things they do.

A lesson we can all learn from the minds of children is that asking "why" is always a good question to ask about anything and everything. However, the older we get, the more educated and the higher position we have in a company we assume we know “why” about a lot of things. In reality, we really don’t know why...but we pretend we do!

When I look at how brands and people use social media it becomes obvious that they never have asked themselves "why" before they started using social media. How can I tell this? Because what they use it for and how they use it isn’t connected to why people use it.

We must understand why people use social media so we can better define why we, as individuals and organization, should be using it.

 

Why Do We Communicate?

 

In a previous article entitled “Again, What Is Social Media?” we said that, fundamentally, social media is a system of communications. The process of social media involves:

1. Use of technology.
2. Identifying and providing valuable conversations.
3. Distribution of conversations to appropriate and relevant markets.
4. Methods and messages that create pull, and engagement.
5. Building and sustaining an audience (relationships) of listeners.
6. Continually feeding the audience with conversational currency; value they can use.

Now if you agree with our definition of what social media is (and the process of use) then the answer to “why” is relevant to thinking about why and what you communicate to the market of conversations. However, to determine why you or your organization should use social media...it is best to understand why others do first.

So Why Do Others Use Social Media?

We are consummate students of social media. We say "students" because our primary motivation for using social media is to learn how the market is using it and what methods create what results and why.

The word study means : a state of contemplation: application of the mental faculties to the acquisition of knowledge: a careful examination or analysis of a phenomenon, development, or question.

Notice the last word in the definition: "question ." If you haven’t noticed, 99% of our articles start out with a question. The reason is we are asking questions is to know why. We learn why based on what others do and what the system is meant or enable us to do.
People and organizations are producing varied results when using social media. As you can imagine, there are numerous methods being used and because most view social media as a marketing channel they are getting the same results as other marketing methods, AKA terrible results.

But when you instead study why, what and how the crowd of sincere people, not institutions, are using social media...you’ll find different methods and different results. Whether it is learning about new tools and the application of use or simply answering questions about anything, everything and anyone, people find utility in learning from others.

The results that come from learning are much different than those that come from marketing. Learning pulls people, which enables and enhances relationships. Marketing pushes people and is not centric to relationship-building.

Learning has always been and will always be a powerful force that draws people. Whether it’s an individual or organization asking the question, the answer to "why" leads to another question. What can you communicate that enables people to learn something of value they can use and share with others how they used it? In order to find out why you must listen to the market’s needs and wants. Your response to the wants and needs may not have anything to do with your own product or service but it has everything to do with building market relations. The results of doing so will surprise you.

Remember, the title of this article is “How Do You Sell Social Media?” The answer to this question lies within asking the right questions...and the first one is why.

 

Do You Know Why?

Young children ask a lot of “why” questions because they are curious about everything. Adults then ask their children “why did you do that?” When others ask us why, we want to know “why do you ask?” In organizations, success is influenced by a common understanding between people as to “why” things are done the way they are and why do we continue to do things that simply don’t work or matter to anyone.

Learning the answers to “why” about everything is a lifelong journey of experience and study. Unless people know the answers to why, they cannot apply the right knowledge to the right circumstance and subsequently responses and actions may not yield the right result. Ever wonder why you don’t get the right answers? Just maybe it is because you are not asking the right questions.

The Right Questions about Social Media

In a previous article, we discussed “5 Things You Must Ask About Social Media.” In this article, we addressed some fundamental issues to consider before using social media. Additionally, we’ve created a “How” series which begins to address what, when, where, how, who and why questions which we should never stop asking. The relevant questions are proposed collectively in a white paper titled “Social Media Directions” available here.

As more and more individuals and organizations continue to use social media, effective results will be realized by those who know “how” to ask the right questions and subsequently never stop seeking the answers. What is today’s answer to market needs can change at the click of a mouse as consumers find more relevant and relative answers from their friends on a daily basis.

The science of social technology accelerates consumption of answers to questions the market has relevant to anything and anyone. Your answers can become irrelevant unless you are monitoring the relative questions that consumers are asking. Worse yet if you are not engaged in the market of conversations then you are not likely to even know “what, where, when, who, how and why” the market is conversing.

Back to “Do You Know Why?”

Not knowing why social media is so powerful means you won’t know how to use it effectively. Not knowing “how” means you are likely to use it out of alignment with “what” your market wants.

If you are communicating out of alignment with your market then your market isn’t likely to know “who” you are “when” you communicate. If you don’t know “where” your market is then you are not likely going to reach them. If social media isn’t working for you then you must ask the question “why“. The answer to this question may not have anything to do with social media. Rather it has everything to do with “how” well your people relate to the organization, your processes, products and technology.

Fixing your organization’s “connectivity” to your internal and external market requires

you to ask the same questions, but in a different context than social media. The answers to those questions will lead to why social media doesn’t work and why it does. Having the right social media directions is always a good thing; that is, if you really want to know "why."

If You Know “Why,” is Your Organization Ready?

Before jumping into social media,
organizations need to assess possible problems first. Why? Social media will only make the problems worse if you are not prepared.

Use of social media continues to cause problems for businesses. The initial problem is trying to control it. Then the next problem is a lack of knowledge of how to leverage it.

All problem situations, regardless of the specific kind of problem, have the same general structure. The three elements of this structure are:

1. the problem state
2. the solved state, and
3. the solution path.

The practical implications of the general problem, relative to use of social media, are usually ones of opposing force fields. On one side of the problem you have internal forces pushing an organization’s culture to do things the way management wants them done. On the opposing side you have the market forces desiring outcomes from the marketplace represented by the businesses who offer value to the market.

Internal forces of a business represent the collective interaction of people, processes, technology and communications. Collectively these forces should be managed for optimum outcomes that exceed any markets expectation. Doing so is an aim of neverending improvement that constantly and forever listens to the wants, needs and desires of the external forces, the market.

The Force Field of Social Media

Generally speaking, users of social media enjoy the freedom to communicate, which the technology enables for personal and professional objectives. Users are growing in influence and power, while the suppliers to the markets chase the user’s attention and attraction to their business propositions. The irony is that most businesses don’t realize that the market of conversations includes their internal resources, their suppliers, and they do indeed communicate.

The field between driving forces and constraining forces is where either conflict arises or opportunities are realized. Conflicts represent unmet expectations which are then communicated and either resolved or ignored. Opportunities are where issues that impact the organizations performance are
openly communicated and resolved.

Problems not resolved represent issues that

sooner or later get communicated into the

field, which lies between the two forces fueled

by communications.