Many times I have had conversations with companies whose services fall into the B2B category about using Social Media to establish relationships and open up dialogues with propsective clients. The questions abound about how to do that, and inevitably there is the fallback position, "I'm not selling to consumers directly and why do I need to tell someone my minute by minute thoughts on Twitter anyway?". The thought process revolves around the idea that prospective client companies are not starting conversations with other companies, and Twitter is just a bunch of people talking about the fact that they are currently "Eating potato chips and watching Private Practice" or other inconsequentials that can fit within the 140 character limit.
When contemplating whether or not to dive into social media strategies and management, and whether or not it's even important to do so consider one important thought: The businesses you are trying to sell to are made up of individual PEOPLE. Increasingly the odds are that those individuals DO have Twitter accounts, they do subscribe to Facebook fan pages, and they do post and watch thousands and thousands of YouTube videos everyday. Here at work we have a team member that has coined a phrase, and I don't know if he is the first to say it but he is the first person I have heard express it this way, "Word-of-finger".
It used to be that Word-Of-Mouth was a great way for your company's message to spread in a community both positively AND negatively. Happy clients may talk to a few people about their experience with you and unhappy ones will tell everybody they see! In today's world the megaphone has gotten MUCH larger through social media, not by their mouth but by typing fingers. An individual's sphere of influence is now literally global, and can touch an infinitely greater group of people through "Word-Of-Finger". Let's be generous and say that a very popular person in your community is unhappy with the way your company treated his business, and he gets out his rolodex and starts actively calling 250 people to tell them that you failed him. That could be pretty devestating, right? Now what if, through social media, that same person used his fingers, and a little creativity, and was able to reach 8,643,797 people with the message that you failed them? How embarrassing would that be? How potentially catastrophic could that become?
Why did I choose that number? Because that is the count as of 10:23am (CST) this morning that have viewed Dave Carroll's YouTube video bringing to light what he felt was an injustice to he and his band by United Airlines. You can watch this amazingly effective gripe here: http://tinyurl.com/np2ddl
I'll let Dave, in his own words from his YouTube channel, tell you what happened:
In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs.
Those three songs are now all up for public viewing and racking up comments of support by the day, there were over 26,000 to this first song alone! The pressure became enough to the point that United did indeed offer to finally compensate Dave for the damage to his guitar, according to his video follow up here: http://tinyurl.com/lsk2oz
What is the lesson here? No matter who you are, what your business is, or who your services are aimed at, ultimately you are selling to PEOPLE and people increasingly have a powerful voice through social medias online. You can choose to be proactive, or you can be reactive when it finally comes home to roost through your current and prospective clients. One way or another it will end up touching your business world!
Get a strategy for social media and execute with excellence, make it work for you, and let Xapsis help you where we can. We'd love to hear from you!
From where you are to where you want to be,
Doug
