Social Media is what CEO groups and big corporates pay me to talk about. They are already scared enough. Telling them the whole up front would just scare the punters!

Now it is much easier to make B2B networking, such as on LinkedIn, pay if you have a strategy and follow a plan. But it’s still a lot of work. Ongoing work as you need to drop a lot of breadcrumbs out there for people to notice you.

Most importantly, knowing where to focus your efforts is a big challenge for most businesses. There are so many shiny new toys to play with.

All of them offer you the world: getting my clients and audiences to choose is not easy. You cannot have it all with networking, how could you? What about the other 7 billion people out there. Will each of them also have it all?

Ridiculous.

Nothing of value is ever easily gained.

Or so it seems. What was their old motto? Do no evil or some such new age stuff. Never quite believed it, but guess it sounded good.

Now it might be: Need to beat Facebook first, then we’ll do no evil.

Or perhaps: What is good for Google is not evil.

Am joking, sort of. But believe that they are threatening what they have built the empire on. Relevance.

By pushing their own social networking platform to the top of search results they have created a huge credibility gap about their independence. Their impartiality in their delivery of the most useful and relevant results.

Threaten relevance, and many of us will start looking at the alternative. And eventually a new engine will appear that decides that is the only word that matters, and deliver it.

Like Henry Ford and the Model T: rode the wave of the ‘people’s car’. Crashed when he refused to give them what they wanted later, variety.

Google’s invincibility could be die from a self inflicted wound.

Tim Ferriss, in his book The Four-Hour Work Week, talks about “mini-retirements.” Now I liked Ferriss’s book, there are a number of great ideas inside. Except one thing – what I see as the Big Con at the centre of it. It is the same con that is sold at the ‘Internet Secrets, 2 Day workshops where you will learn how to make a million dollars a year while you sleep’. And yes, a few years ago, I was hoodwinked by one (or two) of these.

The con? That you too can find a niche for an online business that will make you money while you sleep. And only takes 4 hours a week.

All you have to do is follow Ferriss’s formula (or Mal Emery’s or Daryl Grant’s or Dan Kennedy’s).

It reminds me of the betting systems that people sell: if it is that good and that easy, why aren’t they betting themselves? Or in Ferriss’s case, creating lots more easy businesses – and then hiring someone not quite so smart to administer say 8 of them as a full time job and give them 10% of the profits (that’s what we’ve started to do – though we give them more than 10%).

Those of us working with clients to sell services and books know it can be done. But it’s hard work.

As it always has been. There is no quick and easy way to make money. And the funny thing is, when you get to know the promoters of the Get rich quick seminar and coaching schemes, how honest they are about this.

And about how they get rich from the flow of mug punters. Just like BNI, but that’s another story.

What’s your view?

Cheers,
Toby

Same problem with industry and professional associations. Another ‘dad’s army’ of small inefficient enterprises. As with charities they are past their use by date as online Social Networks can deliver most of what they do for free.

Should we care? It’s at least a billion of useless overheads. The bigger waste is what they ‘deliver’: duplication, lack of service integration plus a lack of knowledge of the real needs. Billions waiting a better use.

There are too many well meaning snouts blocking the inevitable change, many with ‘founder’s syndrome’. Which combines with association and charity administrators being oblivious to the power of new media. Most dismiss it citing the fatuousness of celebrities on Twitter or drunken young on Facebook. Correct, but completely missing the point.

Their demise and the emergence of larger communities with huge economies of scale is inevitable. Large communities with hundreds of sub-communities delivering on a small scale. It should be happening now. Communities delivering so much too so many by so few.

For more on why Industry Associations are heading the way of the Dinosours.

All 10 are fundamental to B2B, and most apply to B2C but not always in the same way. Some need more explanation to justify – there are other posts on this site or on my company site: B2B Marketing Home.

So, what’s missing? Which of the 10 do you disagree with? Cheers, Toby

Selling: Attempting to convince someone they need your service even though they may not. The purchaser often leaves the transaction with buyer’s remorse. Was I oversold? Did I do enough research to compare suppliers?

Buying starts with them picking up the phone. When they do, who has the power? And who starts the relationship as a trusted advisor. Even possibly as the expert they need to talk to.

With cold calling you are handing power over to your prospect. Totally. You have given the person you have called the power to decide whether you succeed or fail. Incredible power.

And once you have handed it over, you often need to resort to “I’ll do anything to get your business”. So price is now on the table and inevitably comes down. Calls on weekends to your mobile. Extra product tossed in!

And all because you handed over your most valuable possession: your power. Your positioning. And their belief that you could ‘walk away’ and not want to deal with them probably never existed. And if it did, it has vanished.

Keep your power, and you will shorten your sales cycle.

You want buyers. You don’t want to be a seller!

“Sales is marketing”.

No! It’s sales.

Sales always involve people talking to potential customers. Marketing, (particularly on social media) on the other hand, brings people into your ‘funnel’ so you can later sell to them. Ideally after you are positioned as the expert.

Misconception 2:

“The kind of marketing done by corporates is the same as what SMEs need.”

Complete rubbish, but believing it will just waste your hard earned money. Almost equivalent to buying a yacht—just a hole that you pour money into which quickly vanishes. Something I know from personal experience!

For a large company, their advertising and marketing focuses on building a brand and broadcasting that image into the marketplace. They do this because:

1. It builds the profile and recall of their brand so people will more likely choose their products or services

2. It pleases the board of directors and senior management who like most people know little about marketing. But they sure have strong opinions and have clout to get their way.

3. It wins awards for advertising which makes management feel good

4. And at a distant fourth spot in the line, because they want to sell something!

The marketing departments in big companies have a real battle on their hands if they want to create marketing that is effective. Now, if it’s hard for them, it’s impossible for an SME. Brand marketing is very expensive which just makes it ridiculous for small businesses who don’t have big budgets to blow on hit and miss campaigns.

Or the money to spend on something as vague as ‘raising ones profile’.

Pictures help break up large amounts of text and make a piece more visually appealing and effective. If you use in your copy, make sure they’re the best pictures you can find to suit your content. Beware of the stories that pictures tell all by themselves regardless of what your copy is saying. Be careful they don’t undermine your message—easy to do in social media marketing where images are everywhere.

Here are the 8 keys to using pictures effectively:

1. Don’t use photos from ‘politically correct central casting’. You know the ones—sharply dressed, late 20’s, sitting in a high tech office; one black, one white, one brown! Tragic.
2. The picture needs to suit the pitch, your message.
3. Use a picture to tell a story, not just because you like it
4. Use specific captions for all of your pictures
5. If a picture is unsuitable for whatever reason, just don’t use it
6. If you want to encourage trust, have a picture of someone with their family, their kids or with their dog—family values encourage trust
7. As to where to place pictures on the page, look at where everyone else is placing them and do the opposite. You’ll stand out
8. Have someone who is not involved in your work have a look at the copy and the picture together. Ask them if the picture completely suits the copy, or if it undermines it in any way. If they say it does, listen to them! Don’t just use it because you like it

Finally and most importantly: If the picture is on a website, put and alt tag in using your keywords.

Yes, they tell a thousand stories. Be sure you tell the right one.

Enough experience to be able to put the constant new stuff into context, into perspective. To see the flaws in the flood of books from the instant experts on Social Networking. To see the impracticalities.

It’s 45 years since I started my first business when I was 14. And I’ve since worked in 6 different countries. And analysed and advised well over 800 companies in that time.

But, in today’s world of technical wizardry and globalisation, you need the other half of the equation ….

The smart young people who grew up with technology and constant change. Who love it. Who automatically challenge everything and constantly ask questions. Who constantly follow links and ideas to see it where it takes them. We have over 20 of them – it is a critical part of staying ahead of the game.

The combination of grey and spiky is exhilarating. A lot of fun. And incredibly fruitful for our clients.

In the large boardroom of a large Corporate presenting to their senior management team. On all the ways they could transform their marketing and save a million or so by not burning their dollars on ‘Random Media’ (i.e. mass media – newspapers, radio, etc).

And one of them was looking a bit unhappy. And when I asked for questions, she said: “OK, can now see this Social Media stuff could work for us, but we just don’t have the time to implement it. To get any meaningful results will mean us giving up a chunk of our day jobs!”

And that’s what sparked this article. I realised that she was used to marketers standing up and presenting lots of ideas. “Re-position the company” “Run advertisements” “Grow ‘awareness’ using Random Media”. All the old stuff that the ‘Tell and Sell’ school still do.

But, following the boardroom presentation, she realised that Social Networking means engaging. That real people have to get involved online to talk to prospects and clients. Real people who are smart, who know the business. Particularly important in BtoB where you are talking to other business people.

We realised 3 years ago when we launched Lead Creation that marketing on Social Media was very time consuming. And that if we were going to change how companies did their marketing we had to be different. We couldn’t just tell people what to do and then send them a large bill. Or pretend that Social Networking just means putting up a profile. And building a list of fake followers as the ‘Tell and Sellers’ so often recommend.

We had to implement it. And that needed a number of things including a large team of very smart, very talented young marketers.

But Social Media is so very time consuming to do it well. So we needed to develop a new labour force: a regular supply of the smartest interns from around the globe. From the best universities, and who stay with us full time for at least 4 months, and sometimes 12 months.

Who work for free. So our clients can afford to do social media. And lots of it, and so realise how effective it is and cancel the last of the Random Media ads.

Very pleased that that was their only objection. Easy to overcome given our business model!