June 2009

Social Media in 2009 = Websites in 1996

Think back to the mid-nineties. Everyone intuitively knew they needed a web presence, but monetization and justification were difficult calculations at best. As time would prove, laggards paid the price and were forced to play rapid catch up.

Fast-forward to the social media tsunami of 2009; seems like déjà vu, doesn’t it?

Business leaders must be committed to riding the crest of the social media wave, even though no one knows exactly how the endgame will look. Yes, we have doubts about Twitter clutter, payback analysis and the current limited crop of social media business offerings, but these challenges don't validate a passive, remain-on-the-sidelines strategy.

Earlier this week, we tweeted an article from Fuat Kircaali about the state of public relations. His insightful blog included:

"The PR firm of the future will employ professional bloggers who will use social media tools to get their message into the hands of their targeted audience."

Grow Sales is in the process of creating a PR/social media division. PR no longer is solely about garnering media attention. It’s about positioning yourself as a thought leader in your field by engaging in conversations directly with customers, prospects and business partners through varied communications platforms.

Kircaali acknowledges social media tools are rapidly evolving, yet have a long way to go. He hypothesizes the future killer social media PR application is neither Facebook, LinkedIn, nor Twitter. He makes this bold statement:

“Today's popular platforms will never pass the stage of mass spam tools; their non-existent effectiveness will be proven null before the end of this year."

We couldn’t agree with him more. Gobbling up followers on Twitter at random and throwing out tweet after tweet is not using social media wisely. Employing these non-strategic activities obscures the direct connection between Twitter participation and new business leads.

Our collective thoughts in the rapidly changing social media landscape are evolving daily. However, we’re pretty sure we’re on target in these three areas:

1. Content is king. To have your signal rise above the noise, your content must be strategic, targeted, differentiated, thought provoking, well written and properly positioned.

2. Every company needs at least one blog presence. The blog is the new press release, the new regional newspaper and a perfect compliment to highly useful trade magazine content. It's the base platform for announcing news and publishing thought-leadership content. Your blog should contain at least one new entry every other day, maybe more frequently depending on your industry, business size, relative influence/status, etc.

3. Employ shotgun-style tools such as Twitter to help drive traffic to those blogs. At some point soon, vertical market-specific platforms will come into play and that's where the big boys will play. Maybe those tools will exist for current platforms, but until then, we'll use the imperfect tools that exist today.

Shameless Twitter plug: Follow me at twitter.com/tjtedesco.

What Can Grow Sales, Inc., Do for You?

Charting a course for aggressive, intelligent growth can be difficult. Grow Sales, Inc., has been helping printing and other graphic arts companies with their strategic concerns and growth needs since 1996. Whether your company is in transition, the middle of an upswing or seeking help to get there, let us put our sales and marketing leadership to work for you.

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