Social Media…Can you REALLY Cash In?
Social media is what’s selling right now, especially how-to courses. Is it all a bunch of B.S.?
I think there are a few business applications for it – very few. However, like any advertising, unless it passes the basic sniff test, in my case, “does it put butts in ops?” or does it put MONEY in the bank, then why bother?
Some will argue it’s to “maintain” relationships.
Others argue that since it’s free, it’s a viable use of time invested. (Huh? Since when is “time” free?)
My contention: it’s a bullshit distraction that is keeping you from doing anything really productive…in most cases. It’s an “easy way out” of the hard work that marketing and advertising “are” by their very nature.
Look, if all it took was for you and I to send out “tweets” and post crap on Facebook and get rich, do you think I’d be sending out a fully printed newsletter, investing resources in maintaining relationships using “offline” methods and actually accepting and making phone calls, traveling on airplanes (given the fun travel is these days), and staying in hotels if I could just “tweet” and be done with it?
No. I’d sit on my arse and use my iphone and send cute pics of my kids doing goofy stuff. And, I’d let people know what I was eating, where, with whom, etc. (Like really, WHO CARES?) And, that OUGHT to be enough to sell something, right?
To be fair…All that aside, regardless of your opinion, you have to ask yourself for YOUR specific application: “Are the people that monitor, watch, use and participate in social media the customers I WANT?” Are they your ideal prospects? Will they spend money, enough to justify your time and interaction online?
Brian Tracy had this to say in an interview with my friend Lee Milteer, “I’m in the top – out of 36 million, I’m in the top thousand on retwits, people taking your message and re-sending them. I’m maxed out on Facebook. And there’s not a penny in income there. There’s no money (for us) in social media.”
You also have to ask yourself, “Where’s MySpace.com now?”
It’s an ancient memory, just like the H1N1 virus that was going to do us all in…
If you are going to use Social Media, make sure you have goals, an outcome in mind that can be MEASURED, and if your test results are nil, then get back to what DOES work. Pen. Ink. Paper. Ads in newspapers. Ads online (banner, Adwords, etc.). Postcards. Newsletters. Seminars. Speaking. Writing books. Publicity. Press Releases. Direct friggin’ mail. ASKING for referrals.
A recent, leading company in marketing and advertising education (via “information marketing”) invested several hundred man hours and thousands of dollars in lost opportunity to get their “social marketing” initiative moving forward. Their total sales after several weeks: a paltry $1480. It was so embarrassing, they didn’t even report the dollar figures, yet, because everyone wants social media to be the panacea and this company wants to sell what people want (smart in and of itself), they’re continuing to promote it as a viable use of energy, time and other resources to their customers.
You wouldn’t continue to mail a postcard if it wasn’t profitable. Why would you continue to post crap on Facebook and Twitter if it wasn’t producing a result?