5 Signs Your Business Needs Help With A Social Media Strategy

What is your business’ social media strategy? You do have a strategy don’t you?

Sadly many businesses are in social media, but are not IN social media – if you can see the difference. Let's see if this blog post can help.

You may need outside help on your social media strategy and tactics if you:

1. Don’t have a clear social media strategy: Why be in social media if it doesn’t support your business goals? Investing time in social media simply because it’s popular or because you heard it can be an effective marketing tool doesn’t earn you a single dollar. Your social media strategy doesn’t need to be elaborate, but you need one. The consultant can thoroughly assess your goals and needs and help frame a plan that will help your business.

2. Have too many different social media platforms: Or worse, have too many platforms without clear goals for each. If social media is to be an effective marketing tool for your business you need to focus your efforts for each platform and regularly audit the number of those platforms you’re on. An outsider can offer you a dispassionate assessment of how many (or how few) platforms you should really be on and what value they bring you.

3. Don’t aggressively manage your community: If you aren’t evaluating the quality of your network how do you know whether you’re wasting your time or not? Do you know who among your followers, fans and friends are likely customers, business partners or collaborators? The consultant can help you decide which community members are helpful and what is being said about you and your business.

4. Don’t measure your results from social media: Yes, there is something to be said for not measuring social media success by traditional metrics and demographics. But the bottom line is the bottom line: If you’re spending time and money on social media and not measuring whether it’s working you’re likely wasting both time and money. An outsider can help you focus on what will help the business.

5. Don't have search engine optimization (SEO) as part of your strategy: Rising in natural search is the big bonus in social media. If you plan your social media carefully, your efforts will help all of your web presences rise in search engine rankings. Again, an outsider can quickly identify the steps you’ll need to take to get there.

So how did you do? If you saw yourself or your company’s social media strategy approach in any of the points above it may be time to ask for outside help.

Possibly related posts:How to Sniff Out Social Media Snake Oil
10 Tips for Better Business Tweeting

How to Sniff Out Social Media Snake Oil

In my recent post Social Media Snake Oil I touched on some simple clues that your potential social media services provider is a snake oil salesman. Now I’d like to show you how you can confirm any suspicions.

Step 1: You need a list of questions for the “expert.” I’m a big fan of Ian Lurie’s Conversation Marketing blog and his 10 Questions to Evaluate a Social Media ‘Expert’. Between the original list and the great comments left by others there’s a ton of great fodder for questions.

Step 2: You will want to discover all their social media names so you can do research on them. Google and Yahoo searches should turn up most, if not all, of them. If a search on their name or their company name does not reveal very many social presences, run the other way.

Step 3: Try to visit their pages on the most-popular social platforms – in no particular order: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Fickr. Also find their blog (they do have a blog don’t they?). To do this go to one of these sites and enter their name and use the “refine search” function to narrow your search: Google blog search or Technorati blog search (at the top of the page).

Step 4: Based on what you see on all of these pages and social media sites you will want to look for:

• Frequency of posting and engaging with others


• The tone of their conversations


• How they use these tools: Do they share valuable content and help people or … well, that’s what they should be doing


• The numbers of people who follow, friend or connect with them (while not the most-important measure, it is part of what counts)

If anything in your research here just doesn’t seem like the work of an expert – run the other way.

Step 5: Use specific tools to assess their social media standing. For example on Twitter you can use Klout where you should pay attention to the True Reach. Influencer Of and overall score numbers. Other influence tools on Twitter can be found in my previous blog post 7 Tools to Find Who’s Big on Twitter.

And just for a laugh (and this video is not for the easily offended) you should watch The Social Media Guru – and if your potential vendor starts talking like this guy – you guessed it: Run the other way!

So what other tools would you recommend for digging into a “social media expert’s” credentials?

Related Post:
Social Media Snake Oil

Social Media Snake Oil

Social media is a bit like the Wild West in many ways. One of the less-than-desirable ways is that it has its share of snake oil salesmen (there are a few women, but most of the unscrupulous characters are men).

Get-rich-quick offers and wild claims of expertise abound. So if you’re new to social media, or just looking at new opportunities in this fast-moving environment, how can you tell who’s selling snake oil and who has real expertise? Can you tell, just by looking at someone’s social media messages, status updates or tweets that they’re probably pitching snake oil? Maybe. Here are a few signs that may mean snake oil is the lubricant your “expert” prefers:

1. Makes claims that clearly over-promise: For example, a recent tweet on Twitter (of the type you’ll see hourly): “Wow! Whatever online business your (sic) in: Learn how to get positioned to at least semi-retire in 8-12 months."

2. Capitalized words in their messages: In Instant Messaging (IM) and email capitalized words represent shouting. The same is true in social media messages. And if they’re “shouting” it’s likely they’re selling to anyone who will listen. For example, from a Facebook status update: “WOW! This Is Addictive!! My Sites Are On PAGE ONE Of Google In 20 Minutes For FREE!!

3. Claims that seem too good to be true: This is where that old saying about instincts comes into play: “Your instinct is your accumulated life experiences trying to tell you something.” Would you click through using the link in this LinkedIn update? “This SHOCKING Underground Method That Generated $25956 In 1 Day After Just Seven Days Using The Secrets - http://www.xxxxxxxxxx.”

4. Constant talk of “selling,” “pushing” or “marketing”: Think about the way most people use social media – to be social. Now contrast that to this sales pitch on Twitter: “It has never been easier to get customers into your sales funnel. Check out my website for THE ANSWERS: http://www.xxxxxx”

5. They talk about social media as the new best way to make money: They’ll often reference a well-known platform and make a statement that links it to increased profitability (without a clear explanation of how the two things are related). This is from a site offering social media training for sales people: “Facebook offers you the opportunity to build and develop a following and have your followers engage in conversations to increase sales.”

6. Anyone who says social media is easy: Once you check out some of the websites of these trainers and service providers you are likely to find reassurances that all this social media stuff really doesn't take a lot of actual time and commitment. For example, from the website of someone offering social media as a “sales solution”: “We will share some ‘secrets’ to make your social media updates easy. (15 minutes a week)”

7. Anyone who says Social Media is mandatory: Yes, two-thirds of the world’s Internet users visit a social media site weekly (according to the 2009 – the most-recent – Nielsen report Global Faces-Networked Places report), but that number is still dwarfed by the numbers of people using traditional media, texting on their cell phones or seeing messages on billboards, buses and trains. Should social media be a part of your marketing mix? Most likely, yes. But put all your eggs in the social media basket? Probably not.

8. Only providing well-known (and tired) national examples of social media success and not being able to show examples of their own success: Anyone can talk about the successes of online shoe retailer Zappos or Dell or JetBlue. But it’s unlikely you represent a comparably sized company. What has the individual achieved on their own?

9. Someone who won’t share references: You’d check references with any other service provider, so why not in social media? If they do good work and have happy clients they should be happy to refer you to this clients for a reference. Be sure to check the legitimacy of the references too: Are they people or companies you know or have heard of?

10. Someone who talks a lot/plans a lot without asking a lot of questions: For social media to work it has to fit into your overall goals and that likely won’t happen if you hire someone who doesn’t ask a lot of questions about your goals and other plans. Be wary if they simply want to ”teach” you some social media tricks before quickly saddling up and riding away before any results, good or otherwise, show up.

11. Someone whose own social media presences are underwhelming: If the supposed expert has relatively few friends on Facebook and does not interact there very much, that’s a warning sign. Another: The person who promises to teach you the ”Insider Secrets of Twitter Power!”—but who has barely been on Twitter except for the two weeks leading up to his training session.

12. Someone whose social media presences seem to be on autopilot. This can be a little harder to detect, but easier to check up on. Send the “expert” a message via a social media platform they’re on and see how long it takes for them to respond.

So now you have a few ways to detect snake-oil. What other signs tip you off to someone selling social media snake oil?

My next post will offer more comprehensive tips and tools to assess your “social media expert” before you spend a lot of money with them.

Possibly related posts
Social Media Expertise is Hard to Find
Twitter ‘Twit’ or Twitter ‘Expert’?

- With special thanks to Mark Frisk for his help on this topic.