Surviving The Social Media Conspiracy

Guest Blog Post by Jerry Fletcher, 1/8/12

Do you feel like you are “behind the curve” on social media? Every professional I know is concerned that they may not be able to maintain their position.

Each day there is more in printed media and on-line assuring us that we are quickly getting passed by if we’re not up on the latest changes. The dire warnings continue on and on.

Did you get used to the internet and go back to “business as usual”?

You got a website for your business even if you had to hire your nephew to do it. Things were pretty good for a while. You had an internet presence you could brag about. But then things started to change again.

My guess is that video and texting and smart phones is where it is headed but who knows what wondrous devices or “apps” are lurking in the technology woods?

We tackle this social media thing head on and wind up trying to find out what a “hash tag” is and why we should care. Regardless of what happens the press and the pundits will continue to tell us we have to keep up if we want to maintain our businesses. They will use arguments like, “If you don’t get savvy now…if you wait too long…the learning curve will be too steep.” They could be right,,, if you buy into their viewpoint.

Social media applications are engineering answers to instinctive human urges to network.

Every human being feels the need to connect with others. Some are shy about it. Some are forward. All feel the need to a greater or lesser degree. There are some basic facts being overlooked by the perpetrators of these arms-length attempts to substitute quantity for quality. For me, Social Media looks like an awful lot of work without a lot of connection with real people.

Be a survivor. Step back from the social media onslaught.

Stop listening to the hullabaloo. Take a deep breathe and look at reality. All professional businesses need a steady flow of work. Small businesses need an ongoing revenue stream. The successful ones do it by satisfying a slowly expanding group of customers with whom they have a personal relationship. Even large businesses need a stable base that they add to over time.

In other words, each successful business needs a personal network of satisfied customers, a core of clients or customers that trust you. They need to trust you at least enough to keep coming back to you for your product or service. A few of them, never more than a select few, will refer you. Their trust will be transferred to a new customer.

The core of trust is at the heart of building a business.

Initially, that core of trust is you. If you operate solo it will always be. With a partner or an ensemble or partners you all have to subscribe to the same central beliefs. In a larger organization each person needs to be driven by the same values.

You can’t fool customers for long. They see your company from the outside in. They rely on how your decisions impact them to make judgments about you and your firm. If you are true to them, they will be true to you.

Jerry Fletcher is an international keynoter speaking on Trust-based Marketing, Networking and Customer Relationship Management.