SERIES: Let’s Get Social!

As we move through this month and focus on Social Media, I’ve become aware that many people don’t understand something I thought was obvious to everyone: Social Media IS NOT ADVERTISING. So I thought I’d chime in along with our columnists this week and show you what I mean.

The invitation

Let’s imagine you invite a number of friends over for dinner. You’ve taken care to clean the house, prepare the meal, and be sure your home is comfortable. You sent out invitations and they all responded. Now the big night is here.

Your guests arrive in ones and twos and soon your living room is full. But before anyone can begin a conversation, you stand up and start to tell them about your dry cleaning business. They all know you are a dry cleaner, but you tell them anyway. You recite your business address and phone number several times. And then you really launch.

A list of your services is followed by a repeat of your address, the hours you are open, and all the great features of your company. You’re so into the presentation, you don’t notice their eyes glazing over, the squirming in their seats, and the quick glances at their watches as they plan an early exit.

Before the meal is even on the table, suddenly everyone has an emergency they need to take care of, or an appointment they forgot. With amazement, you look around at a completely empty room. Nobody even signed the guest book you put out so they could tell you how much they liked the evening!

Someone was Rude

Why the sudden exodus? Someone was rude, but it wasn’t your guests. You invited them to your home for what they thought would be a fun and interesting social evening. Instead, they got a sales pitch and no chance to get you to stop talking. Nobody learned anything about each other, or even about you — just your company. It was a completely unsatisfying experience all around, and everybody left hungry.

Now think about your Social Media efforts. The very fact that you are on Social Media implies that you are inviting people in to learn more about you and your company, but not in a hard-sell manner. You’ve invited them to a conversation, and that has certain rules.

Social Media Rules

The word Social carries an implicit promise of interaction among people, usually of an agreeable nature. Your dinner party was the opposite of that.

How’s your FaceBook page?

• You hand out cards or have links to your page everywhere, inviting people in.
• When they get there, do they see something agreeable?
• Are they battered with advertising that doesn’t take their needs into account?
• Do you repeat the information you want them to hear over and over?
• When they exit your page, have they actually learned anything about you?
• Have you learned anything about them?

Turn the tables on yourself! How long do you linger on a FaceBook page or in other Social Media when it is strictly promotional and one-sided? Do you ever leave a comment? Do you feel you’ve been heard, as well as shouted at?

It’s not a pretty picture

I spent several hours this week cruising around the Internet looking at FaceBook pages put up by dry cleaners. It was not pretty. For some, nothing had been posted in 2 years. Others were posting regularly, but it was the same material over and over (their hours, their location, the fact that they are the “best” in town) with slightly different images.

I was not surprised to see that some of the more promotional ones had zero Likes and zero Followers (the gold standard in Social Media.)

What had gone wrong? Obviously, somebody is out there gathering material and posting it to pages, hoping to fulfill the pressure to have a Social Media presence. But they’ve missed the mark.

Get it right or don’t bother

Over the next two weeks, we’ll be posting interviews with dry cleaners who have mastered the Social Media secret: Social Media is a conversation. It’s not advertising. It’s not even marketing, really. It’s a completely different way to share who you are with people who can use your services.

The role of Social Media is to make a positive impression on customers and potential customers, so when they have to select a place to handle their clothes, they’ll tilt toward you because they like you. That is an entirely different level than choosing you because you do a good job. It involves sharing information that goes beyond business. It involves personality and displaying your enthusiasm — your passion, if you will — for your work.

Here’s what the great ones have in common:

• They post frequently, and clean up spelling/grammar errors
• Their posts include videos, many of which include humor
• They zoom in on real needs of customers, not just a recitation of services
• They bring others into the conversation through videos and reviews
• They show their community involvement and invite others to join in
• They show their expertise in subtle but powerful ways
• They post things that can actually start a conversation with visitors to the page

Who will we be featuring? You’ll just have to come back and see. But you can learn a lot from those who have made Social Media something their customers actually want to engage with. They appear to be having fun with it. You can, too.

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