Biz Buzz

Social Media Policy Examples

57 examples of social media policies from Dave Fleet. Also you can download his 16 page free social media ppolicy e-book.

This site rocks. Thanks, Dave!

Sales 2.0 and Social Media

Here's an article by Tibor Shanto, Renbor Sales Solutions

When I was young(er) and just entering corporate life, I was lucky enough to meet someone who left a profound impression on me and my professional life since.  He told me, “When you first come in to business all you have is your reputation, and you spend the rest your career maintaining it.  If you lose that you have nothing at the end, not matter how much wealth you accumulate along the way”.
 
This was valid in the pre-web days, but this advice is that much more relevant today in the Web 2.0 days or for those of us in sales, Sales 2.0.  At a time when information truly moves at lightning speed, you can both enhance and ruin your reputation in an instance.
 
On the down side, your buyers are much more connected than ever, they are aware not only things you want them to know, and as much aware of things you always hoped they would never know.  Most sellers work hard at influencing their clients, creating an impression of their product, their company and themselves in the process, and while their good deeds are carried across the social waves, so are and indiscretions or simple faux pas, at time with much greater velocity.

Sellers need to be much more conscious and conscientious about their “social media footprint”.  Unlike what many want to believe, there is no separation between their personal and business related Web 2.0 or Sales 2.0 activities, it is all one stream.  We do not have the comfort of looking all very prim and proper on LinkedIn while “letting our hair down” (or other things) on Facebook.  It is no longer a novelty for companies to check out these and other sites when considering potential candidates for positions, or vendors and sellers when it comes to deciding on a purchase, it is SOP.

It goes a lot further than that, it does not take much to see what you Digg and how that jives with the image you are projecting with your buyer.  A disconnect there can only lead them to believe that you are disingenuous and may not be worthy of their business.  And they don’t even have to make much of an effort, there are companies that are happy to do it for them for a nominal fee.

Some may argue that this is not right, what you do in your personal time is your business and should not affect you as a seller, wrong Dorothy, it does.  This isn’t about the “business you” and the “private you”, especially if you are always preaching that people buy from people, yes they do, and now they have a way of seeing the “entire you”, not just the “9:00 to 5:00 you”.  This is also not about being right or wrong, as a friend of mine always asks me “do you want to be right, or do you want to be rich?”, in sales you want to go with rich.

It doesn’t take a lot to guard and be smart, you don’t have to “compromise” or “give in to the man”, you just need to be smart and prepared, which is a basic tenet in sales anyway, so just extend it to your “social media footprint”.  As we said up top, “Your Reputation Gets Around Even When You Don’t”, so make an effort to keep an eye on it.

That Gnarly Facebook Event Issue

A reader has asked this week:

In Facebook, you set up an acct and in order to create a fan page, you have to have a personal acct. But now when you set up the fan (organizational page) page, when you create an event and you say INVITE, it includes your personal friends. Any way around that?

A Facebook saavy friends says, "You create the event on the fan page, post to fan wall & send an " update " to fans- your personal contacts won't show that way."

There you go! Other issues?

Social Media - Can You Show Me How a Piano Sounds

OK. I lOVE this idea. This site makes the point, which I happen to agree with, that you really can't know if social media marketing is going to work for you  or not until you TRY IT. It's like me trying to explain to you how a piano sounds. I can't, really. Why not just play and decide for yourself?

They've started an initiative to get  you to do just that. Spend 20 minutes a day seeing for yourself. I l LOVE IT. You know you need to do this. I am going to, for sure. For more info, read on for text from their site. Better yet, just do it here and tell me how it goes.  

These suggestions from Social Media Academy are good, good, good.

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20 social minutes a day
Why? Don't guess Give your team maybe 20 'social minutes' a day to be socializing with customers, partners and other business friends. Stop wondering if social media is good or bad for your business - DECIDE based on your own experience and give your team a chance to be more successful. And if you are really skeptical, even 20 minutes a week will help you get a first hand experience. You heard enough The web is full of suggestions what you need to do. But is this really right for YOUR business? Nobody will ever be able to "tell" you how a piano sounds. You have to hear it for yourself. And that is no different in social media. Try it out - there is nothing to loose and no money to invest. Just 20 social minutes. 3 Things you can do in 20 Minutes Or see "10 Steps if you start from scratch" below. Preparation Take 50 of your customers (companies) and type in their names in LinkedIn. You will find the company's employees. Some you may know others you should know. Make a list of relevant people and their profile addresses. You may use a simple spreadsheet or a free tool like Xeesm.com. 1) Make 20 Visits a day Take your list of people and visit their sites in LinkedIn, Facebook or wherever they are. Read their status and comment if you have something to say. If not just move on to the next. 2) Find other places Look for other places where your key contacts may be present. Think of groups, communities, SlideShare YouTube. Flikr... Make notes and learn as much as possible about each person. BUT DON'T waste your time and scroll around for hours - make it a goal that you spend no more than a minute. 3) Connect and talk After you had at least 3 interactions, short conversations, comments etc. you know: a) this is a relevant contact for you b) It is OK to talk c) what is on top of their mind and how you can be most helpful Your chance to engage and have a phone conversation is much higher than leaving voicemail or sending mailshots. And over time you can make a concious decission how much time you want to spend and with whom. You will also experience that you will reach out to maore people, faster and more easily than in the past. If you are in sales, marketing, product management, HR, support - it's all about the relationships you develop. THAT's IT ... back to top 10 Steps if you start from scratch 1) Find your customers in the social web If your customers and more important, the influencer of your customers are not at least somewhat active in the social web, you can relax. But don't superficially look around and 'hope' nobody there and you leave. We can tell you right here they are there. How do you find out? 1) go to LinkedIn.com. If you donlt have an account create one for free. 2) Take 50 of your customers (companies) and type in their names - yes, one after the other. 3) If less than 50 % of those companies are not present or those companies are very small, use the contacts youy have instead. 4) Back to companies: You will see a list of names. See who you know. This may surprise you that you don't know most of them. Now think of it" These are active users and influence others. You will want to get to know some of them. 5) You may extend this first exercise and do the same for other sites like Facebook or Twitter. Here you can only look for names. 2) Get to know your clients The beauty of those sites is that you very quickly get an idea what your customers are busy with. In order to have a better relationship and faster access to market and influencer, Product Managers use You learn what's on top of their mind. You may even hear them speak about you, your product or service. Very quickly you know their hobby, you know about their families and much more than you ever imagined. Already in this second step, you will have ideas how you can treat them better. 3) Remember the profiles of your clients You may create a spreadsheet with all their locations and make notes when you visited them last time. Helping teams leverage each others contacts across an enterprise is the number one interest from executives A better way might be to use a tool like xeesm.com to keep track of the clients. It is basically your "Social Address Book". 4) Visiting your clients Now you can visit your top customers almost daily. Get to know them, leave a comment, be helpful. There is no other way to be so close to so many customers than here. Did we say efficiency? You may already envision how the relationship between you and your client develops with just a few nice notes. 5) Ask questions Most of those sites have groups where everybody can ask questions. You may want to know how others use social media. You may ask if anybody knows how farmers collaborate when they buy seeds for the next season. You may be interested how technology reseller service their customers. You may want to ask... You get the idea. Quick break Did you recognize, it's all about your customer and conversations. We didn't ask you to blog, We didn't suggest you go to Twitter and grow your followership. We haven't suggested you do a video clip or run a "campaign. We also didn't talk about SEO, RSS or any of the other wide spread social media chatter that has no real impact on your business at this point. Why? We want you to walk - before you run. Now let's keep moving 6) Take a moment to think By now you have a good idea about where you find your customers. Very similar to times where market places where created or advertising was invented. You also probably realized that blasting your promotion into those groups and networks is just not appropriate. So think a moment what you want to do with your experience. How about taking your customers conversations into two major buckets: Problems and Excitements. On the problem side you will find people who are just having an issue and want to find a solution all the way to those who are really attacking your brand, products or team. But at least by now you know. And then you have people telling other how they use your products or services and why they chose you over others - because we all have choices. Now work with those two groups. Be available and approachable to both groups. What you see is basically the representation of your end to end customer experience. 7) Solve Problems We all know that problem solving starts with listening. So you will want to let everybody know that you listen and are trying to fix the problems. We all know that nobody is perfect, even the most hostile customer. Most will calm down as soon as they know that you care. Now try to explore with those customers a solution. And also here an honest discussion where you tell them your limits is much better than promises that again end up in frustration. From now on you are off the hook of marketing BS - you are developing a social relationship. body can ask questions. You may want to know how others 8) Amplify Excitement OK - You may say there is no excitement. Of course, your customers wouldn't pitch your product like a sexy blond in a commercial. And if they would, it would be rather suspicious than helpful. If a customer tells a prospect "Well, this product is pretty good. It doesn't quite do what the add sais but here is why I decided to use it..." This answer has more power than any commercial in the world. All you have to do is amplify the conversation. This brings you to a point where you will want to do more than just exploring the space but hey - see how far you came! 9) Getting serious With what you learned so far you are probably at a point to make a well educated decision. GO or NO GO. If you decide NO GO - you do that based on all your experience not because you "felt" it is "probably" not of interest to engage. If you decide for a GO, you have at least quite a good base, you know more about your clients than you did before and get a much better picture when people talk about having a fan page or not listening into Twitter or not. At this stage you will probably engage your team - only 20 Minutes a day to meet and converse with your customers, partners, prospects anfd other player that are relevant to your business. With the technique we talked about, an experienced person can visit 50 clients in one hour - there is no other way to be so close to your market. 10) Join the Social Minutes Initiative Welcome to the club. You learned that you don't have to be a blogger or twitter rock star to turn social media into a powerful way to do business with your customers. You also probably recognized that you will rather encourage your team to use 20 minutes a day to be present in the web - rather than prevent them doing this because it is just a waste of time.

Good Reasons to Post on Facebook

At our recent seminar in Edmonton, we were discussing Facebook. 3 people wanted to have some ideas for what to post on Facebook. Here are some thoughts:

-Acknowledge volunteers - individuals or groups

-Post pictures of events

-Scanned old photos of staff and teachers from decades in the past with just a sentence or two of   who it is and what's being done in the photo (These are wildly popular.)

-Something interesting you did very recently--better yet, post from your cell phone as you are doing it

-A meeting you attended and what was done by whom---brief references

-Insider news:  for example, my friend XYZ, who is ABC over at 123 Company says...

-Client success

-Birthdays from people who like to have them acknowledged

-Mention of corporate sponsorship

-Mention of corporate donation

-Mention of corporate partnership

-Thanks to a committee

-Thanks to a focus group

-Thanks to a customer

-Thanks to a volunteer

-Audio or video clip explaining something (use cell or digital camera)

-Seasonal posts

-Sports posts

-Suggestions from clients or students

-News about someone on leave or in a training

-Damage (eg:  Ice broke our water fountain today)

-Mentioning skills of a certain consultant or teacher

-Campus special events or holidays

-Links of all kings eg: articles, white papers, videos

-Personal posts eg: I passed my certification today

-"We're excited about the re-write on XYX curriculum"

-Graduations

-Special guests

-Your school in the news

-Content-related news eg: manufacturing news

-Name dropping eg: lunched with XYZ today

-Latest book you're reading

Other ideas?

Sales 2.0 - SPOLIER ALERT!! Shhhhh!!!!

Don't spread this around. Here's the text of the article I just wrote on Sales 2.0 for the upcoming LERN magazine. It's pre-publication--just for Bizz Buzz readers.

Sales 2.0

It’s an exciting time in Contract Training. The old way of selling is evaporating and the new wave is about to hit–Sales 2.0 is at your door. It’s going to look a little different in our industry than it does in some others, but we’ll still benefit from the biggest revolution to hit sales since the 50's.

What is Sales 2.0?

Sales 2.0 utilizes customer-focused selling methods and electronic tools to transform both sales activity and sales results. Following in the footsteps of savvy companies like Amazon, most salespeople in our industry will do a scaled down version of Sales 2.0 and still manage to radically increase contracts and other opportunities to serve. Even in a downturn economy, those who make the shift will profit. Time is of the essence.

What’s wrong with Sales 1.0?

The way most institutions are selling is working to some degree, but the increased use of technology will shorten cycle time to closing sales and will completely revolutionize "cold-calling" and other methods of lead generation. By using better tools, the increased ability to track effectiveness in contacting the customer will mean that over time, we will refine our processes until we’re only doing what works.

In many institutions, marketing is often on one track and sales on another, and though they could easily work hand-in-hand, they don’t. In Sales 2.0 marketing and sales will become a more seamless unit as we implement our understanding that our customers’ purchasing habits have changed.

Building networks of committed customers

Our success in contract training has always depended on our ability to build networks and to create relationships. Valuable information and opportunities are exchanged between sales people and their potential customers. Sales 2.0 takes this time-honored way of doing business to a whole new level.

In Sales 2.0, we’ll use social networking tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, websites and more to create meaningful, mutually beneficial connections among colleagues, clients, teachers, consultants and other partners. We’ll create an environment where collaboration is rewarded with opportunity.

Today, your customer may be shopping for training or other services on a weekday, weekend, or in the middle of the night. You will succeed if you are ready when they are–and by getting your customers the information they need, when they need it. If a customer wants a class description, a client list or a few examples of testimonials, you want them to have it, pronto!

In addition, customers will make special efforts to buy from people they know and trust–or from people that come recommended by friends. Using social networking tools, you can create a "community" of colleagues who trade information, conversation and resources and when it’s time to buy, they’ll look your way.

In Sales 2.0, you’ll be creating opportunities for your customers to converse. And most important, you’ll be in more frequent contact, earning a reputation as a source of valuable information. When this works, customers will come to depend on you for answers, trends, and help. With that in place, you become the logical "go-to" person for training, consulting and other key services. The end result is a high-loyalty relationship that not only nets you contracts, but one that gets you referrals as well. You’ll switch from selling to helping your clients buy.

How does it work?

When your Contract training unit has an online tool to offer articles for download; webinars; podcasts, blog posts and online question and answers, you’ll slowly amass a group of people who get to know you because you offer value. People will offer their email and contact info because they want what you’re offering to share. How many times have you given your contact information to a site that offers a free PDF or e-book in return for your information? If you haven’t yet, you need to begin to explore the new online world of vendors who are giving their expertise away to earn the privilege of getting your business.

These days you can’t reliably reach a customer on the phone (count on 10 cold calls to get a person on the other line, what to say of an actual prospect) and most face-to-face calls should be reserved for those who have expressed a need for them. This means that we need another way–a better, cheaper, faster way–to meet our next client. We need to be more visible, in less time, for less money, than ever before. Electronic media are perfect for this!

Let’s say, for example, that you have a Facebook page and that this week you let your customers know that you did 4 trainings, two consults and that you have an open house on Tuesday of next week. Maybe you also posted links to a good article about social media marketing, two testimonials (one written and one 30 second video clip); one best practice you gleaned from a customer comment and a 2 minute YouTube video of one of your hot-shot instructors explaining a key point. Add a live customer chat window (ridiculously cheap and easy to use) and you are a Sales 2.0 hot shot.

You’ve successfully delivered several things of value, and your customers are clear that a) you’re busy; b) your other clients like your work; c) you’re cutting edge; d) you’re interested in the same things they’re interested in, and that you care about their needs and more.

If all this leaves you feeling like, "How can I manage this? I barely have time to order books for classes?" you’re probably just not yet familiar enough with how easy social networking tools are and quick you can get things up and working for you. I am committed in 2010 to helping you understand the new Sales 2.0 environment and to helping you take whatever steps forward are appropriate for your organization. Watch this blog for more information and dialog.

Are you taking steps to investigate or to use Sales 2.0? How can we help each other?

6 Types of Twitter Users

Thinking of using Twitter to tweet your CT biz?

Check out Guy Kawasaki's (yeah, Apple and then some) recent article on the 6 kind of users on Twitter and how to reach each one.

Corporate Trends in Social Media Marketing - free e-book and podcasts

Wanna build an empire from a shoebox?

Download this free e-book on corporate trends in social media marketing. Connect the dots. Are you using social media? Are your clients? Do you offer classes and consulting on it?

"Recently, Chris Brogan, President, New Marketing Labs, sent out a survey asking those involved in social media a few questions about their current corporate social media marketing initiatives. Over 600 people participated, and along with the help of Mike Lewis, VP of Marketing at Awareness, Inc. an eBook was created from the survey results as well as from interviews of some key companies successfully utilizing social media." See Awareness Networks other free resources. Also download awesome podcasts on social media marketing.

Free is good.