Social Marketing Requires Real Conversation

Social Media is the place where so many people go to ask their friends, family and acquaintances questions. We are starting to go to our social networks before going to Google to ask the fundamental questions about what we should be buying, or to find solutions to our problems. Hence, the admonition “Let me Google that for you.” is becoming a less effective come-back as people prefer to trust their friends and connections for information rather than Google.

The obvious social networks are Facebook and Twitter. But LinkedIn Answers is a functionality within LinkedIn specifically designed for this. And Quora was created solely for this purpose. The beauty of the explosive growth of social media is the proliferation of social listening tools.

Google Alerts was one of the earlier entrants into this space. While not really a social listening tool, it provided us the ability to “listen” to blog posts, web pages, and tweets according to pre-determined keywords you wish to track.

Then tools such as Hootsuite, TweetDeck and many others appeared. They let you to monitor, in near real-time, conversations on Twitter, and then expanded to the most common social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Google Plus. By setting up alerts for keywords or questions related to your industry or product category, you could find out what is on your target audience’s mind. The mistake companies make, however, is when they answer questions with an invitation to come “try us out.” That’s just a sales solicitation to prospective customers, and will get you blocked.

It has been generally stated now how important blogging is in generating leads or web marketing. But the question is, why bring them on to your blog if you’re already doing such a great job of answering their questions on social media?

Because in this new world of ubiquitous content marketing, your customers want to find out as much as they can about the topics that are interesting to them.

Answering questions on Twitter or Facebook is limited, because the nature of social networks is transitory. We log on to Facebook or visit our Twitter stream because we want to quickly see what our friends are saying and doing. It’s not the place to provide detailed, in-depth answers to your questions.

But if your prospects want comprehensive information that answers all the questions they have about a topic they’re interested in, they will go to your website or landing page. Gently ask your prospects to visit your blog to learn more.

And please, don’t invite them to visit your product sales page. Your prospects are still in question mode. They are looking for information. They want to start a conversation about their problems and goals, not about your product or service.

Once you’ve answered your customers’ questions, don’t push it. Don’t try to sell to them, don’t push your product down their throat. But do provide them with an opportunity to find out more. Lead readers to your blog, but your blog should be an in-depth, information-rich resource that helps answers your customers’ questions. And don’t use your blog to push your products. Use it to start your conversation. When you approach your customers with the value mindset, everything else will fall into place.