I mean, there are a lot of people who built Facebook pages that have never returned once they were published.
There is said to be approximately a 60% turnover of Twitter users. And a lot of people are even abandoning the thought of starting their own blog.
And for all the people that have Facebook pages laying dead in cyber space, and the 60% of Twitter users that never come back, and those that never start their own blog, unfortunately have a grim outlook on winning in their market.
Sure businesses can be successful if:
a) they’re lucky
b) they have near unlimited resources
c) they are grandfathered in to someone else’s brand
The bad news is that these circumstance are not the norm – hardly anyone who’s starting a business, or trying to grow a business, or trying to increase sales, become a leader in their industry, etc… experiences a, b, or c.
In today’s Google crazed, instantly tweet’d world, there has never been a better opportunity to get people talking about you! But in order for people to start talking about you, you have to give them something to talk about.
No, I’m not saying that you absolutely “HAVE TO” have a Facebook Page, Twitter profile, or blog – but what I am saying is that these platforms now
provide you with a platform to build your brand, build your reputation, get other’s talking about, and in turn increase sales, build your business, and become a leader in your market.
And most importantly – above all else – THESE TOOLS ARE FREE!
Building a Facebook Page costs you nothing unless you spend a little bit to have someone customize it for you. Launching a Twitter profile is absolutely free. And starting a blog doesn’t have to cost you dime.
In the TV era / industrial age, businesses spent hundreds of millions of dollars to advertise to you in a “let me interrupt you” fashion.
Meaning, they knew you would be sitting and watching the latest episode of whatever, so they spent money to advertise to you hoping you’d come into WalMart and select their brand over all the other 10 million options you have to chose from.
The problem today is that instead of watching TV, people are more likely to spend their time online, watching YouTube, interacting on Facebook, sending text messages over their mobile phones, etc…
That’s why traditional marketing methods such as TV advertising and newspapers are dying quickly – because everybody is online.
From the newspaper perspective – why would I spend “X” amount of dollars each month to read news in a paper that when it showed up at my door, all the news in it I actually read online yesterday?
So my point here is this – if you want to win in your business, be the leader in your market, be the #1 sales person in your office, you have to understand that the dynamics of marketing and business are changing.
Instead of following the “sales funnel” process which says, fill up the top with as many prospects as possible, and then out the bottom will fall the few people that actually convert into sales, you need to have a new paradigm of thinking that actually, as Seth Godin puts it, flips the sales funnel onto it’s side so that it’s now a megaphone.
Getting other people to talk about you, spreading the word about your business, product, or service, is what drives in “WARM LEADS” – which are people that are now actually giving you permission to talk them about what you offer.
How do you flip the “sales funnel” onto it’s side so that it’s now a megaphone that other people use? Simple – again as Seth Godin states, the megaphone lives online and offline.
The megaphone is leveraged when you get online and start talking telling your story about yourself, your business, your product, your service.
Through channels such as Twitter, Facebook Pages, a blog, and other online platforms, your message is now out there to be found by people who are searching for what you offer, who are interested in the content and subject matter that you are talking about, who suddenly relate to your story.
As you connect to the people who find you, relate to you, and best of all who heard about you from someone else or remembers seeing your content before online, these people are now willingly to give you permission to speak to them – and now as a business, you’ve just started the process of building a group of people, a tribe if you will, that will act as the megaphone for your business.
* Twitter followers – people who chose to follow you
* Facebook Page Fans – people who decided to become a fan
* Email subscribers – people who subscribed to your bog
* Newsletter subscribers – people who actually look forward to your next newsletter
So if you want to “win” in your business, start today by getting online and sharing your story, sharing content, and building a tribe of fans that act as a megaphone to you and your business.
This process ultimately will set you apart from your competitors and will bring the success you desire from your marketing efforts.
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I think One of the major holdups for the financial industry in engaging social media is the heavy legal liabilities that can be associated with sharing information to prospective clients. If you tell someone the wrong thing, it could turn into a huge liability lawsuit. And it’s because of these liabilities, and the lack of understanding on how to maneuver around them, that has been the major road block for the financial industry to engage in social media on a large scale.