Forget Social Media and Blogs for Business - Or Should You?
publication date: Aug 25, 2010
|
author/source: Neil Gillespie - Shamrock Growth Associates
Customers Ignoring Social Media?
Check Your Content and Your Marketing
When the compact disc (CD) was first introduced, nobody wanted it. What would it play on? Similarly, when the CD player was introduced, nobody knew they needed it and besides, you needed good CD content for anyone to want to buy the player. The only real difference between that example and social media for distributor B2B communications is that the music producers had plenty of music content that could be re-purposed to go on a CD. What have distributors got for YouTube, Blogs, FaceBook or Twitter? Not that I'm a real fan of FaceBook and Twitter for distributor B2B communications. But Blogs and YouTube with RSS feeds and email could be really effective.
Think about it. Why are your customers not using social media for business purposes? Could it be that there's not much content on social media to interest them on the job? Could it be that the same deficiencies that plague a lot of small business B2B marketing plague social media usage as well?
A survey I am running is reporting that over 80% of distributor customers are NOT using social media at all for any purpose, business or social. Of those that are using it, most of the usage is on Linked In, indicating they are using it for business networking. You can never be too sure of your job in THIS economy, right?
But really, you need to ask yourself these questions.
- Is there anything posted on these media to really interest them on the job?
- Don't people have to be prompted and given incentives to use a new media?
- Doesn't it take some time after you prompt people and give incentives to see results?
- Don't you need to offer something of value for using the media?
Email was a natural for taking off right away. People used it right away. But Social Media like YouTube and blogs could be extremely effective with customers IF YOU HAD ANY DECENT CONTENT TO GIVE THEM AND PROMOTED IT WELL.
Offer Decent Content
I am extremely enthused about the potential for video in promoting new products and services in the wholesale distribution industry. You could promote a video on a blog that was connected via and RSS feed (real simple syndication) just like this one is connected to the email you received.
Here's just a few ideas for using video blogs to promote your products and services to customers. There's no excuse for not making videos anymore. You can get in for a $3,000 investment in a Mac and a couple of cameras plus Screenflow and either iMovie or Final Cut Express.
- A video using screenflow or camtasia (takes a movie of you and your screen simultaneously with your video cam) of the key features of your web storefront
- A New products video page (get manufacturer co-op or extra marketing dollars to fund it)
- Individual new products video pages for each key manufacturer
- Individual product specialist video blogs
- A President's message page
- An events and news video blog
- A video page on your top value-added services with customer testimonials
The simple truth is this. To get people to do anything new, you need to do four major things:
- Make sure you build real value into it
- Tell them about it over and over and over again through different media in different ways
- Give them incentives to start using it
- Stay with your plan... if it doesn't work right away... stay with it, the usage curve on new things often rises like a hockey stick with the long end to the left and the business end sticking up to the right suddenly.
It's all up to you, the value you put into it and how you promote it to your customers.
If you can get customers to visit your blogs, sign up for email newsletters from your RSS blog feeds and view your product and service messages, it just might be the most effective form of communication besides direct sales contact ever.
But nobody uses it yet, right? You gotta put new wine in new skins. What comes first doesn't matter.
Think about that word: "Yet".
31 Comments Posted Leave a comment