Why Social Network Marketing Will Not Work

The cynical attempt of the Dutch to cheat and bully, bordering on assault, their way to football World Cup glory killed the spectacle of the final, tarnished the reputation of football and, all-too-quickly, snuffed out World Cup fever. However, after the magnificent festival of football hosted by South Africa, everyone is now a football expert. The world understands football and that you need to have a complete squad full of high performing individuals contributing as a team to be successful. I work with small businesses, they differ from large businesses in one very significant way, the team is incomplete and the players, often of star quality, play out of position most of the time. The smallest businesses only have a striker (sales) and a part-time goal keeper (accounts).

Out of position strikers, AKA small business owners, try things they barely understand and if they do not work in an unfair trail assume they cannot work and abandon them. This applies particularly to most forms of marketing. Social network marketing is a case in point. The logic goes, I tried it and it failed to deliver therefore it does not work. Excuse me, if an untrained person from the street is given access to a jet fighter plane and the opportunity to fly it, are they likely to get off the ground? No, so why should an untrained person attempting to use social network marketing either untrained or via a novice expect to experience success?

This behaviour, which feels ok in business is like trying to score from defence without your boots on. The fact is that social network marketing is, when applied properly, one of the easiest, lowest cost, and most effective ways to get noticed to drive interested people towards your business and convert them to customers who really engage and bond with your business. It should be a 'money making machine' but done badly it can damage your business.

Twitter use has exploded increasing tenfold in the past two years. Facebook has grown for 100 million active users in the middle of 2008 to 400 million active users early in 2010 already rising through 500 million uses. If Facebook were a nation it would be the third largest in the world. It has 1.6 million business pages that attract 5.3 billion fan visits. Online video use is exploding YouTube viewing has grown from 1 billion to 2 billion views per DAY in the last half year with the average daily viewing at 30 million hours. It is not a fad, is not going away and has become an essential business tool, those who fail at this might also find they fail at business.

It is perhaps not surprising, but helpful none-the-less, Facebook and Twitter users actually spend more than twice the average internet user online. Over 80% of social media users, that's 4 out of 5, have received and acted on advice over which products to buy. Social media is more powerful than advertising in deciding what to buy because the message comes from a trusted person. Far from not working, or not appropriate for your business, it is possible to make a lot of money from social network marketing. But, you do have to do it in the right way. A good question is, how is it done? Because, many have failed and most of those concluded it to be a waste of time, however, 35% of all businesses trying had some success attracting new business and 52% have made more money than they invested with it. So 1 out of 2 businesses that have tried, regardless of their expertise, makes some money from social network marketing.

Prominent success stories include Dell, who gained 6.5m customers using twitter, an Airline promotion that generated 5,000 bookings (and crashed their website with demand) 85% of which came from facebook & twitter, HP who revitalised failed launch using blogging for a competition to get 85% sales increase. Sole trader examples include a £150,000 business generated in 2 years using only social media to create demand, an online business that grew from 0 - 60,000 customers in six weeks, a small legal firm gained a 2700% increase in website traffic in just 1 year, a dating agency generated £3.5 million of fees in six months.

I conclude that when applied intelligently social network marketing delivers extraordinary moneymaking results. So just what are the key points to success? The most important understanding is to know that there are two types of social network activities, those that make friends, and, those that make money.

Business is not about social trivia, people who impress in business are not necessarily the life and soul of parties. It is the same on the social networks. It is vital that you separate you social and business presence, and that you treat them very differently.

On your business presence you need to present yourself in a way that builds trust and confidence by sharing knowledge being helpful and appreciated as the best source of knowledge and advice in your field of expertise. Provide top quality information generate tips and articles provide access to resources and give problem solving advice. Business visitors really have no interest in your social life, your kitten or your kids. By all means show interest in the social lives of your visitors but keep your own to yourself.

You do not have to be boring or dull, do add a little personality occasionally but focus on being an expert and avoid trivia. Once social media marketers have understood the difference between 'business' and 'social' the next most important learning is to give people what they want. They use the internet to research, understand and gain confidence before making decisions. So you should provide advice be reassuring and helpful. Avoid selling, offering and badgering, all of those things drive people away from you unless they are ready, when they are ready they will ask.

Good social network marketers provide information to sales messages in a balanced ratio of 50:1 betters ones have resisted and moved the ratio out to 100:1.

Deciding what to say takes just a little thought? The best place to start is to understand who the audience is and what they will be interested to know. If you focus your material you will generate a smaller audience likely to eventually buy from you rather than a larger audience that will never buy. Just measuring visitor count is largely irrelevant, for success you want to provide that sequence of information that make followers aware of you, grabs their interest, keeps you front of mind using additional interesting information and sets you apart as an expert.

The good news is that with only 15 minutes investment per day you can make £000's per hour. To be efficient at social media marketing you should be both focused and organised. I recommend prepare a worksheet, write down who you want to attract, what they will want to know, your number 1 topic and a list of related topics. The list makes your posts easier to generate. Next, keep a score of your posts, each post on topic is a successful pass, each sales pitch concedes the ball if you get 50 passes before you lose the ball you score a goal, if you get 100 passes before you lose the ball you'll win the game. The Spanish discovered that it takes a lot of passes and 7 games to win the World Cup. Congratulations, well deserved.