The explosion of social media into mainstream consciousness has seemingly come from nowhere. Though it may be new to you, the social media groundswell has been building for some time, and it’s fair to say that the buzz right now is deafening.

While there is a growing familiarity with tools like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube, here are 5 questions being asked in companies large and small about the business reasons for using social media:

1. Why should we care?
2. Where do we start?
3. What technology should we be using?
4. How do we manage the information?
5. How will we measure effectiveness?

As with any new business undertaking, questions like these (and more) definitely need to be answered. Here are the reasons that I believe it is important to pay attention.

Why You Should Care

These days your prospects are surfing the net, reading blogs, participating in forums and group discussions, asking for product and services referrals from their social networks and joining on-line communities.

Even if you wanted to “opt out”, choosing instead to use outdated approaches to sales and marketing, your potential customers – and your savvy competitors – are most definitely going to be online.

Your prospects are tuned in to what they want, what’s available, where to purchase and how much to spend. The bigger the sale, the more educated they will be.

With 66% of the 38 million LinkedIn users deemed “key decision maker”,175+ million people on Facebook (31% over the age of 35), and millions more conversing over Twitter, you can’t ignore the opportunity. The name of the game then is visibility. If you aren’t participating online, you are missing huge opportunities to reach an audience you would otherwise not be able to connect with in an easy and cost effective way.

How to Get Started

If you are just getting your feet wet with regard to social media, you are most likely approaching it backwards, as most do. Companies are typically approaching the social computing world by looking first at the nifty, whiz bang technologies available. Could be a tweet here, a blog there, a LinkedIn profile, a Facebook fan page or a few YouTube video’s thrown up on the website- to achieve their sales and marketing goal. That is a mistake! People, purpose and plan first – technology last -should be the mantra of every business interested in succeeding with social media.

Technology

As with any hot trend, people are clamoring to get on board the social media gravy train. Yet as many have already discovered, having an online profile doesn’t mean you are using social media effectively to market your business or increase your sales. People are floundering in the online space for many of the same reasons they probably flounder around with their current sales and networking approach. They don’t have a plan!

Your plan starts with “narrowing” and “clearly defining” your target audience. Here’s a hint…your audience is NOT everyone with a pulse. Though it seems counterintuitive to some, the more you narrow your market, the faster you gain traction, which then leads to more sales of your products and services.

The key with choosing the right technology is making sure you know EXACTLY what results you want to achieve. You certainly need to understand what tools are available, but that’s the last thing you really need to focus your attention on. Once you know who your audience is, where they live online and what you want to happen once you get in front of them, you are then well positioned to use an online tool best suited for your purpose.

Managing the Flow

I’m known for saying that it is up to “you” to manage technology, not the other way around. Dashboard tools like Digsby help you watch your email, Facebook page, Twitter account, LinkedIn profile and more without having to web surf the individual sites. TweetDeck gives you the ability to keep on top of all that is happening in your Twitter world. And tools like Ping and HelloText let you create a post once that updates multiple sites of your choosing all at the same time. The point is that you shouldn’t let the “fear” of too much information stop you from getting on board. There are lots of great tools to help with the information management flow.

Measuring the ROI

Like anything else in business, you need to be sure that you are measuring effectiveness and results to ensure that you get the greatest return on your effort. In the March 23^rd edition of Information Week, TransUnion reported as estimated $2.5 million in savings in less than five months. Did I mention that you first need a plan? In TransUnion’s case, their cost savings showed up in a reduction of software services purchases. Using an internal social networking platform, employees were able to brainstorm ways to more effectively utilize what they already had, thus reducing the need to buy more.

Companies of all sizes will benefit from having clearly defined objectives that you can then track your progress against. If one of your goals is to increase product sales on your website, you will want to track HOW people find you. Was it the blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, a Facebook ad, or that amazing sales article your sales manager just wrote? You can use tools like Google Analytics to help you track how many visitors visit your website, as well as give you clues as to what they focused on they got there.

Summary

Remember that social media and the world of social networking are here to stay. See it as a threat or an opportunity. It’s your choice!

We are living in an age of what many innovation experts are calling “disruption”. What a perfect word to describe what’s happening at this very moment.

This much needed disruption is shaking us out of our comfort zones forcing us to fundamentally re-think what we know about business – or thought we did. Similar to when we moved from an agrarian society to an industrial one, we are faced with a transition unlike anything we’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, some people and businesses are going to struggle with this disruption more than others.

Business owners and sales people must consider how this disruption changes the way they approach the sales process and devise strategies for addressing it. How you get attention with your potential customers when they are so overwhelmed with choices will all start with creating “value” in a virtual world with people you may never actually meet. Creating online relationships that will lead to closing sales is going to require that 3 things happen:

• You have a plan and a purpose for what you are doing.
• You choose the right tool(s) to support your sales goals.
• You LEARN and USE the tools consistently day in and day out.

As you begin to join in on group and online community discussions like you’ll find on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, you will have to understand that you don’t “sell” while joining in on the conversation. Instead of talking about what you or your product does; you will be demonstrating your expertise and industry knowledge as you share your tips, advice, information and helpful hints with others without expecting anything in return.

How sales people will uncover opportunities, research trends, keep on top of their competition and network completely changes the way the game is played. And they must also be realistic in their expectations, because social media is not a “quick fix” nor does it bring you sales overnight. Like great offline selling, it takes time to build the relationships that lead to closing business.

While you won’t get rich overnight as you embark down the social media path, you can’t afford not to get started right now. The train has already left the station, so you need to get moving to catch up!

As I consult with business owners to help them them integrate social media strategies into their approach to building their business, one question continues to emerge. Aren’t I bothering people online that I don’t even know when I use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook? And OMG, what if people start to stalk me. Good grief! Please get over that now!

Hey, let me ask you a few questions.

• If I met you at a networking event and then subsequently followed up with you over email or the phone – do you consider that stalking or intrusive?
• Are you afraid to call more than once or twice for fear that you’ll be perceived as too aggressive?
• Is this the same reason you think you should only send your newsletter out once a quarter?

If you said yes to any of these questions then I’d like to suggest you give up as an entrepreneur right now. There. I said it. How can you possibly build relationships that lead to people buying your products or services if this is your mindset? The answer is…you can’t.

And why in the world are so many of you worried about the proverbial stalker coming after you? If you think that someone can’t find you in the local white pages, you are just fooling yourself. What I love about the online world is that if someone does start bugging you – guess what? You can block them. Easy as pie.

Here’s the deal…when you go online – similar to when you go to a networking function (if you do it right that is) – you are looking for commonality.

Take Twitter as an example. If you have signed up to use Twitter and don’t know how to get started, you can simply search for people who have similar interests to yours. For example, I love great wine, so I might search out other wine lovers to follow and in turn might want them to follow me. Gary Vaynerchuk is just such a person. You can check him out on tv.winelibrary.com

As you start following people with similar interests, join in the conversations taking place, you begin to build a relationship with them. In other words, the first step is to say “hello” – to shake hands. This is no different than meeting someone at a networking event and realizing that both of you have an affinity for fine dining and great wine.

People seem “scared” about who might follow them. I say the more the merrier. There is also fear about sharing “too much personal” information, but the idea online just like off line is that you want to let people get to know you – that’s why it’s called social networking. If somebody goes overboard or gets on your nerves, cut them off!

As I said, I think Gary is a pretty hip guy in addition to knowing his wines, so I want to share a video of his from YouTube that speaks to this very topic. Pretty much says it all. Thanks Gary!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfKph3UXcz0

As I consult with business owners to help them them integrate social media strategies into their approach to building their business, one question continues to emerge. Aren’t I bothering people online that I don’t even know when I use tools like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook? And OMG, what if people start to stalk me. Good grief! Please get over that now!

Hey, let me ask you a few questions.

• If I met you at a networking event and then subsequently followed up with you over email or the phone – do you consider that stalking or intrusive?
• Are you afraid to call more than once or twice for fear that you’ll be perceived as too aggressive?
• Is this the same reason you think you should only send your newsletter out once a quarter?

If you said yes to any of these questions then I’d like to suggest you give up as an entrepreneur right now. There. I said it. How can you possibly build relationships that lead to people buying your products or services if this is your mindset? The answer is…you can’t.

And why in the world are so many of you worried about the proverbial stalker coming after you? If you think that someone can’t find you in the local white pages, you are just fooling yourself. What I love about the online world is that if someone does start bugging you – guess what? You can block them. Easy as pie.

Here’s the deal…when you go online – similar to when you go to a networking function (if you do it right that is) – you are looking for commonality.

Take Twitter as an example. If you have signed up to use Twitter and don’t know how to get started, you can simply search for people who have similar interests to yours. For example, I love great wine, so I might search out other wine lovers to follow and in turn might want them to follow me. Gary Vaynerchuk is just such a person. You can check him out on tv.winelibrary.com

As you start following people with similar interests, join in the conversations taking place, you begin to build a relationship with them. In other words, the first step is to say “hello” – to shake hands. This is no different than meeting someone at a networking event and realizing that both of you have an affinity for fine dining and great wine.

People seem “scared” about who might follow them. I say the more the merrier. There is also fear about sharing “too much personal” information, but the idea online just like off line is that you want to let people get to know you – that’s why it’s called social networking. If somebody goes overboard or gets on your nerves, cut them off!

As I said, I think Gary is a pretty hip guy in addition to knowing his wines, so I want to share a video of his from YouTube that speaks to this very topic. Pretty much says it all. Thanks Gary!

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfKph3UXcz0