Does the number of connections your company has on Facebook make a difference to your bottom line? Do more followers on Twitter translate to more money in your bank account?

 

To some degree the answer is, of course it matters. If people don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you or spread the word about how fabulous you are. When I attended a live interview with Guy Kawasaki via Skype, he said, “There are two kinds of people on Twitter. The ones who say they want more followers and liars.” My clients ask me all the time “How can I get more Facebook fans?” In some ways, yes, size matters.

 

How you interact with people matters more, because if your interactions are in line with your goals and strategy, your numbers will grow – or not, depending on what you are trying to do.

 

On July 26, on Entrepreneur.com there was an article titled “Five Lies About Social Media Marketing,” which has 136 comments as of now. The debate in those comments is lively, and a few days later, July 29, a rebuttal appeared, titled “Five Truths About Social Media Marketing.” The same five points are covered in both articles.

 

The point that both articles seem to miss is that everything depends on a multitude of factors, with the biggest one being what, exactly, you are trying to accomplish by making social media a part of your marketing plan in the first place.

 

What is it that you want from people when they connect with you? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to tell their friends about you? Are you simply trying to gain or retain their loyalty? What is your goal?

 

These are critical questions that you should answer before you ever try to increase your numbers of friends, connections or followers, and the answers to them will inform your marketing strategy. If you sell luxury items, scarcity may well be part of you marketing strategy. Exclusivity can be a powerful selling tool. However, if you sell $3 widgets and make a $1 profit on each one, you probably want to reach as many people as possible.

 

For just about any approach you can think of there is somebody out there using it successfully. Pretty much everything you read about social media talks about engagement. Then there are people like Seth Godin who, famously, does not engage. He does not allow comments on his blog, does not respond to comments on his Facebook page and doesn’t do much of anything at all with Twitter. Yet his books are best sellers.

 

Regardless of the approach that works best, one thing remains important: content. The information you provide, the tone of your communication, the status updates are all the ways your customers gauge whether or not they want to do business with you. Your content tells your story so make sure it fits into your strategy.

 

Have you found that increasing the number of social media connections you have makes a difference? Do you have a strategy for using any of the marketing tools you use? Do you find the tone of your content matters? 

 

 

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Are you taking care of the basics? The stuff you know you should be doing, and that only rookies or arrogant suckers fail to do?

 

If you aren’t, you are going to see a slow slide, followed by a painful THUMP. Then you are faced with the daunting task of climbing right back up.

 

I can tell you because I’m there. Rubbing my business bum and wondering how in the world I let this happen.

 

For months, I had a comfortable client list. Each of my clients was pleasant and the work was challenging, but not stressful. A few referral jobs here and there filled in any gaps in my schedule, and I had plenty of time for lunches with friends and working out and all sorts of other good things. So I left “marketing” on my to-do list week after week, and didn’t think too much about it. Yes, I’m hanging my head in shame. Such a common mistake! Who hasn’t read (or written!) a post about the importance of marketing even when things are going great?

 

Of course, even with the greatest client list on the planet, you are going to have some attrition. Things change, people move, businesses close and life generally happens. And such was the case for me – all at once, of course, because of some law written by some guy named Murphy.  Now, I’m scrambling with no one to blame but myself.

 

It was easy to let marketing go for several reasons. I didn’t really want to be too busy through the summer. I wanted to make sure my existing clients were well-served and happy. I wanted to see if it would be possible to work by referral only.

 

Excuses. Lame excuses.

 

If you are running a business that involves attracting customers (and what business doesn’t?) you have to keep on marketing. If your business is big and successful your marketing activities might take the form of networking, maintaining your brand, or simply responding to emails. For the rest of us, marketing is probably a much longer list of activities.

 

Over the weekend, I wrote a new plan. This one includes a heavy dose of daily marketing – but also a few “built-in” ways to market so that later, when my roster is full again, it will be easier to stay in the marketing habit.

 

It is difficult to publicly admit to such a silly mistake, but really, everyone messes up. Make me feel better: share your common business errors. Have you let your accounting go for too long? Stopped marketing and paid the price? Failed to respond to an inquiry? Surely I’m not the only one feeling the sting of embarrassment! 

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Yesterday I was pleased to attend an event hosted by the Social Media Club of Chattanooga.  It was at my favorite coffee house and lots of friends were there, so it would’ve been fun regardless of presenters or speakers or whatever. However, it would be hard to describe watching a “live” (by Skype) interview with someone like Guy Kawasaki as a bonus.

 

The interviewer was John Martin of the Small Business Round Table, and he conducted the interview for his Internet radio show SBR with John Martin. Each week, John interviews small business owners, successful entrepreneurs and others who have wisdom to share with those of us working to build profitable businesses. John asked Guy questions about failure, venture capital and much more as we all looked on, listened and learned.

 

Guy Kawasaki is successful and excellent at what he does. He also seems to be a genuinely nice person who is interested in helping people, sharing his knowledge and teaching others how to be…enchanting. I think, though, that some of the things he said during the interview should be put into perspective.

 

For example, John asked about the way that Guy uses Twitter. Now, Guy has been scolded many times for posting too often, using a team to post under his name and other practices that some people view as “bad” or “wrong.” The thing is, it’s working. For Guy.

 

Guy has two accounts on Twitter, and if you follow both of them, you are probably seeing his name pop up quite frequently in your stream. He says that he posts each link that he wants to share four times a day – twice on each account. Now, if I re-posted things four times a day, people would get irritated really quickly. But Guy has something like 400,000 followers between his two accounts, and they are all online at different times. Some might check things in the mornings, others in the evenings – and that’s not to mention time zones. So, if you have 400,000 followers it makes good sense to share the same thing four times a day.

 

But if you don’t have that many followers? If you only have a measly couple of thousand? You are probably alienating people by repeating yourself so frequently, particularly if you are posting links to your own stuff (Guy doesn’t do that, by the way). Most of us can get by with posting something twice, but that’s about it.

 

Guy does something else that probably wouldn’t work for the rest of us: he uses social media like a billboard. He broadcasts on Twitter, which is why he wants tons of followers. For him, a follower is a set of eyeballs that might click on a link and look at an ad – and might even click on the ad.

 

He almost never retweets anything, mostly because he says he pays no attention to his stream. He is not using Twitter to engage in conversations. This works for a man who is hanging out on the NY Times Best Seller List, owns a couple of companies and is a respected authority in his field.

 

It probably wouldn’t work for you, and it definitely wouldn’t work for me.

 

Small business owners need to be having conversations on Twitter and Facebook. We need to be talking to people, and participating in useful discussions. You know, being authentically ourselves and stuff. For the business owner with a small reach and even smaller budget, real conversations with real people who spend real money are the power of social media. We can talk to people, make them love us, find out exactly what they need then sell it to them.

 

I would never presume to say that someone like Guy Kawasaki is doing it wrong. I will say that most of us cannot hope to do it the way he is and be successful. Do you follow Guy on Twitter or like him on Facebook? How do you feel about his tactics? Would you ever try to replicate his success using his tactics?

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Last week, I wrote about a few of the things I hear when making cold calls. I also mentioned the fact that my cold calls aren’t exactly cold because I do a ton of research before I ever pick up the phone. Like most people, I hate cold calling. It can be so uncomfortable. In the process of procrastinating I figured out a few things that make it a bit easier.

 

First, I should tell you that I tried other methods of finding new business. Being a writer, I most especially wanted cold emailing to work. In my experience it does not work, at all. Out of maybe 100 cold emails, I will get at most two responses. It doesn’t matter how much research I do or how tailored the email is to the person receiving it. If you’ve had success with cold emailing, please, please share your secret!

 

In my last “real job” part of my responsibility was to find lists of companies that would be prospects for a group of third party recruiters to call. When I started my own business, I did the same for myself. It got depressing pretty fast. The rejections and blow-offs came thick and fast. It didn’t take long to start coming up with a list of things that would rule out a prospect before I called.

 

After a while, I began developing profile of my ideal customer, and using that profile as a guide has helped me become a much more successful cold-caller. There are a few other things that I do before calling that really help. Here is my basic process:

1. Look for companies that have an existing marketing budget. In other words, try to determine if they are spending any money on marketing currently. I do this by looking through the classifieds in various publications. If a company paid to run a classified ad, they probably have some money set aside for marketing, but not a whole marketing department.

2. Thoroughly investigate their current practices. In my case, I check to see if they have an inconsistently updated blog, whether there are errors in their site copy, if they have a Facebook Page and so on. I make notes about all of those things, including what could be better. I find at least a few things that look really good.

3. Figure out who to call. If I can’t find a name, it doesn’t automatically rule a company out, but it drops it to the bottom of my list because it’s just easier to call and ask for “Kim Smith” than it is to call and say “Can I please speak to whoever handles your marketing?” Your chances of getting screened out by a gatekeeper are lower when you have a name.

4. Make the call. If you don’t pick up the phone and make the call, you’ve wasted an awful lot of time with all that research. Even with the first three steps, I still end up leaving messages and doing a ton of follow up. However, when I do get the right person on the phone, we have something to talk about.

 

I only make about 10-20 calls a week, and end up getting some kind of new work from those calls an average of every  other week. As time goes on, those numbers are improving, probably because I’m getting better at deciding who to call. I don’t depend on cold calling for all of my business – some comes from referrals, some from social media and some from in-person networking – but it is an important source for me.

 

How do you generate new business? Do you have a process for gathering prospects and contacting them?

 

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A significant portion of my business is generated through cold calling. Well, I do quite a lot of research before

actually dialing a number so it isn’t exactly cold calling, but that’s a story for another day. Today’s post is about what people say when I finally do call them.

 

It is extremely rare that anyone is rude, but most of the time, people have reasons they won’t hire a writer. Sometimes, the reasons are valid but very often they are closer to being excuses. I wanted to share some of them with you, as well as why I call them excuses.

 

1. My niece’s husband does all of the writing for my company. All right. I’ll admit I’ve never heard that one, but I’ve heard just about every variation of it you can imagine. My mom writes our copy. My sister writes our copy. My brother-in-law writes everything we need. One of our employees takes care of all that.

Although I cannot tell the person offering me this excuse, when I make that call, I’ve already looked at their copy and found it wanting. Either it is poorly written or hasn’t been updated. Or perhaps they don’t have a blog but could really benefit from one, or an email newsletter would work well for their business.

What I do instead of insulting their mom/sister/brother-in-law/employee is start asking questions. Do they write professionally or is it a spare-time kind of thing? Have you ever considered a newsletter or blog? Is time an issue?

Most of the time, all those questions serve to get the person to at least think a little more about how a professional writer could help. Depending on their reaction, I either answer questions and talk specifically about my ideas for their business or politely thank them for their time and ask if I can email my contact information in case anything ever changes for them.

 

2. It would take just as long for me to tell you what to write as it would to write it. This one stymied me at first because I couldn’t figure out exactly what they meant. Do people imagine they would need to dictate things to me? Or do they think I couldn’t take a list of bullet points or random thoughts and turn it into a cohesive piece of writing?

As far as I can tell, people do think both of those things. The other thing people mean is that they will have to explain their industry, business or whatever to me in explicit detail so that I will understand it well enough to write about it. They have no idea that good writers are also excellent researchers.

My response in this situation is to offer to do a “test” article at a deeply discounted rate. I say, “Well, why don’t you let me write one article for you so that you have some idea of what I do and can make an informed decision?” I know that there is a huge debate about whether or not writers should discount their work for any reason, but this method has gotten me more work than any other.

The key to making it work is to put an enormous amount of effort into that discounted piece. It is meant to impress. To stun. I want the prospect to read it, say “Wow!” then hire me on retainer to totally revamp their copy or to write their blog posts each week or whatever.

If they aren’t interested in even a “test” article, I thank them for their time, ask if I can email them my contact information and hang up.

 

3. It’s a great idea and all but we just don’t have enough customers to justify it. When someone says this, either they don’t want more customers or don’t understand that good copy brings in more business. Sometimes explaining the whole idea of using content to get more business nudges them in the right direction, but I have yet to get a customer who starts out from this point.

Even if they don’t call it content marketing, most good business people understand the idea. Business owners who are not interested in staying in touch with their customers or who don’t see the value in offering high-quality information that is complementary to whatever they are selling probably won’t ever “have enough customers to justify it.” That may sound harsh, but it’s true. Relationships and good service are beyond important.

Of course, sometimes, this is code for “I really can’t afford any additional expense right now, even though I know it would help.” Either way, my response is a brief explanation of how my services could help them get more customers, followed by a request to email my contact information in case they ever change their mind.

 

4. Our customers aren’t really blog readers. The italics don’t come close to conveying the tone people use when they say “blog readers.” It’s almost like they are saying “the biggest nerds in the world.” Now, you know (obviously because YOU are reading a blog, right?) that blog readers aren’t necessarily nerds, and I know that, too, but you might be surprised by the number of people suffering under that illusion.

You might also be surprised at my response. Instead of trying to convince them that blogs are not exclusively for nerds, I suggest that perhaps an email newsletter would work better for their customers, or ask if they have considered submitting articles to industry print publications. If they become customers later, then I’ll return to the idea of blogging…

The conversation can go a couple of ways at this point: either they are intrigued and start asking questions or they begin to sound impatient. If they are intrigued, I proceed to sell my services and if they are impatient…well, by now you know, I ask if I can email my contact information, thank them, and hang up.

 

The key to making this work, as I mentioned at the very beginning is careful research. Look for the next post for more on that. For now, please share. Do you make cold calls in your business? Do you hear excuses? Have you developed a set of responses?

 

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