Personally I believe that Twitter is one of the key social media tools for business but that all depends on how you use it and whom you follow; So in this blog I am going to focus on how to use Twitter strategically and well basically how to Tweet for business. The key marketing role of Twitter in a firms social media mix will be as a first point of contact with a larger number of “weaker connections” in the business community whom you can then move up the engagement ladder into valuable contacts by promoting blogs, Flickr and video content and most importantly by having conversations. Getting started

1. Read the PDF How to use Twitter for Business – A Beginner’s Guide. Hubspot is a great resource for basic beginner guide like this and it covers the basics including the language very well
2. Make sure you complete your Twitter profile including location, website and upload a photograph of yourself – “no photo no follow” is a rule for a lot of people (including me)
3. If you are Tweeting on behalf of a brand put your logo up as the profile picture and the name of the account manager in brackets after the company profile e.g. (Tweets by Gordon)
4. At first when you have no followers posting tweets to no-one will be frustrating but don’t worry you are building up a library of tweets (tweet stream) that will show people what you tweet about and will help them decide to follow you – so always tweet as if a 1000 followers were reading your very tweet
5. Connect your LinkedIn profile to your Twitter account so that people can decide to follow you if they see your LinkedIn profile but don’t set it up so that every update goes to your LinkedIn contacts as this is one of the big mistakes made by new people. Tweets and LinkedIn updates have different audiences with different information needs
6. Do a search on LinkedIn for the keyword Twitter, this will locate all contacts that have a Twitter account that you can follow
7. Use a Twitter client as the Twitter website is hard to use when you have more than a handful of followers – either Tweetdeck or Hootsuite, I recommend Tweetdeck
8. Link to your Twitter account from your website so that people can see you are looking to engage but also as a link will help it show up on search results
9. Post news and links to your firms blog but also “pay it forward” share interesting online articles
10. Look at the lists of the people that follow you and follow the relevant lists then make answering others questions and responding to their tweets should be a prominent content theme
11. Follow bloggers who write about your industry or things that interest you and Re-Tweet the blog posts that you think will be interesting to your followers
12. Re-Tweet often it’s a big compliment and genuine compliments build community
13. Funny is good sometimes, just not inappropriate humour you are posting on behalf of a brand
14. Remember a tweet is like a tattoo it can be removed but it always leaves a trace – think about what you tweet
15. Don’t just advertise: no one wants to follow a tweet stream that just says “buy my product”, it weakens your relationships, people will tune out and stop following you
16. Promote your blogs two or three times in the week that you post them but don’t just dump the blog link – preview it “I am writing a blog on winning council contracts will be posted this afternoon”
17. Say thanks when someone re-tweets you and when people engage you in conversation but you don’t have to thank people for a mention, that can look a bit sad especially if you have answered their mention / question
18. Comment on others tweets and ideas conversation build community
19. Talk to people find out what they are interested in don’t just sell – be human
20. Ask questions start a conversation – did I say that conversation builds community?
21. If you start a conversation give it a hashtag eg: #twittertips so that others only seeing half of your conversation can do a search on the # and see all the responses. It isn’t a open conversation unless you help people access it.
22. Follow people that you think may be potential customers – what better way to get to know them? Want to know more about #s read my Glasgowfilms# blog
23. Use re-follow to identify the followers of companies that target similar markets to the specific accounts. http://refollow.com/refollow/index.html
24. Don’t underestimate the people who follow you – profiles don’t always tell you the full picture
25. You also don’t have to follow everyone back that follows you but its good practice to do so most of the time – you are not a celeb and if you don’t follow back people won’t be able to Direct Message (DM) you
26. Block and report spammers and don’t leave them sitting in your follower list to boost the numbers – aim for quality not quantity
27. Use Twitter to show a genuine interest in your followers – your next best business contact is one of them – you just don’t know which one yet
28. If you want to broadcast make a TV ad – TV is for broadcasting Twitter is for conversation.
29. Use Twitter grader to analyse your Twitter account and aim to get above 80% by month two. http://twitter.grader.com/ My account @theintelligiser scores 100 /100
30. Don’t try to read everything – Let the tweet stream flow past and dip in when you have a minute – trying to read every Tweet will make you go blind once you follow more then a few hundred people
31. Watch your mentions and DM’s respond to them within 24 hours
32. Keep a search loaded in your Twitter client for your brand name so that you see when people are talking about you and your competitors
33. Don’t get involved in arguments – no one ever truly wins an argument but with only 140 characters on Twitter no-one ever really understands what you are arguing about
34. In Twitter arguments frustration with the medium leads to nastiness every quickly
35. Read your own tweet stream as if you were a potential client – would you want to follow you – would you find your tweets interesting – do they add value?
36. Don’t be tempted to auto direct message (DM) new followers and especially don’t push links at them you don’t have that good a relationship yet
37. Times in the day? – this is a frequently asked question but most people don’t plan tweets to this level but if I was going to plan it out I would say – 9.30am / 11am / 2.15pm / 3pm / 4.15pm would give you a good working day spread and promoting a blog again in the evening can give some followers more time to comment
38. If your brand wants to attract an international following (consulting) then think about time zones and tweet appropriately
39. Don’t get too hung up on frequency – it is ok to take a day or a half day off – I have gone on holiday tweeted twice in a week and come back to 50 new followers!
40. How schedule? – If you have an event coming up you can schedule the tweets that promote it via Hootsuite or Tweetdeck and that way if you have a busy day the essential messages get sent
41. How often? – as often as you have something to say that people want to hear
42. How often is too much? – a dozen a day is as much as I will ever do unless I get involved in a conversation and then a dozen in an hour is acceptable – people can just tune out if they don’t want to follow the conversation

And finally (42.5 if you like) – If you are from Scotland you can follow my Scottish Business Tweeters list on the @theintelligiser site to get started. Click to follow the individuals on the list who seem interesting to you, follow them individually as you are not following the person till you do this just the list.

I am sure that I must have missed something pretty obvious so If you can think of any additional tips to help people – hit the comment button and share – or alternatively just let me know what you think.

Take for instance the Socialnomics video on You-Tube which famously told us that “if Facebook was a country it would be the third largest in the world” Ok but if email use was a country or mobile phone ownership was a country? Come on what does that mean?  To be fair there is some good stuff in the video but the statistics relate to American usage of social media 80% of UK businesses are not using LinkedIn as their main recruitment tool!

So what do we tell UK business people whom I assume are still mostly at the early stages of adoption (or are they?) we need interesting accurate and usable information that can guide strategy and investment decisions.

I have discovered that I am not alone in wanting to shed some light on the state of social media marketing in business in the UK which is just as well as I realised I was going to need some help.  I had previously found a couple of UK surveys one of which suggested 86% of UK businesses used Twitter but that didn’t sound right to me.  For clarity I asked how the survey was distributed and you guessed it 100% on Twitter – not the most scientific of distribution methodologies!

Sometimes when you want a job done you actually are better to do it yourself so I have designed my own survey using Survey Gizmo and distributed it through several channels, first of all Scottish Telecoms company Commsworld distributed it to the attendee list of their Flexible Working Practices seminars that I was speaking at, secondly the CBI put it out to their mailing list for the CBI Business Summit that I was also addressing and I distributed it in a limited way through Twitter, on LinkedIn and now this through this blog.  Subscribers to The Drum magazine will also get the link to the survey by email.

What’s in it for you?

Well first of all everyone who fills in the survey will get a summary of the results by email (don’t forget to give us your email).  Secondly all completed surveys will be offered a free three month subscription to The Drum magazine which will be mailed to you biweekly.  Thirdly when we repeat the survey in 2011 you will be notified and you will be able to see the shift in attitudes in UK business.

And finally – if you can get to the New Media Breakfast club on July 30^th in Glasgow or August 12^th in Edinburgh I will be using the results as part of my talk on how to increase sales and profit through social media marketing.

OK so what do you need to do?

It takes about 7 to 10 minutes to fill out the survey and just a few seconds to Re-Tweet this blog or email out the link to some of your contacts.  So give us 10 minutes of your time to fill it out and pass it on.

Oh and join the conversation by commenting on this blog especially if you have any suggestions to improve the survey or distribute it more widely or just want to share your opinion on the state of social media marketing in the UK – we want to hear from you.

Here is the link – http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/281378/Intelligise-Social-Media-Marketing-Attitudes-Survey Go on you know you want to!

Thanks in advance

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise – Be Brilliant

So let me be the first to say “the King of social media isn’t wearing the most remarkable suit of clothes I have ever seen.  The King is actually in the all together but all together, it’s all together the very least a King has ever worn!”

Five Fatal Flaws that will kill Facebook!

1)      Facebook technology is fundamentally underwhelming

Design wise Facebook is as ugly as it is big and with very limited personalisation the only brand consistency you get is Facebook’s!  The set up stage is clumsy and navigation is poor, confusing and inconsistent throughout the site leading to usability issues.  And finally in a marketing context I am not to see adverts for a credit cards offering “fast approval and high credit limit for people with a poor credit rating” beside my clients brands.

2) Facebook can be a Marketing and ORM liability

Online Reputation Management is a growing concern for businesses big and small.  If you are a big faceless corporation then “being social” is probably not in your DNA, you hire PR firms not to engage with the press but to control them and you are on Facebook because you felt you had to be.  Now if you are Innocent Drinks then your brand ethos and ethical business stance may well support more open social engagement with consumers but if you are Nestle, British Airways or Craft be very careful you might just be opening a direct channel to your customers for complainers or campaign groups .

Watch this BBC3 video that makes this point very clearly and will give you a laugh into the bargain.

3) Facebook facilitates low value interaction

Facebook can be high maintenance if you don’t continually post to your wall it very quickly looks out of date and you spend a lot of time ignoring updates, irrelevant friend requests and application updates.  Also do you really need to know who is playing the Farmville or Mafia Wars games?  Ever had an update telling you that one of your friends has just bought a new pig?  Or do you think sending Facebook “pokes” or “gifts” is high value?

4) Privacy is a Very Big Issue

When you create a global communications giant with a business model based on exploiting the personal data of anyone over the age of 13  you had better have an ethical and rock solid privacy policy.  Well the phrase “Facebook Privacy Policy” is a bit of an oxymoron, it is long complicated and contradictory; here is what a conversation with their privacy department might sound like:

You: Hi Facebook can you delete my account please? Facebook: If you want to stop using your account you may deactivate it or delete it. When you deactivate an account, no user will be able to see it, but it will not be deleted. We save your profile information (friends, photos, interests, etc.)

You: Well at least it won’t be seen by others anymore? Facebook: There are limitations on removal. Even after you remove information from your profile or delete your account, copies of that information may remain viewable elsewhere to the extent it has been shared with others, it was otherwise distributed pursuant to your privacy settings, or it was copied or stored by other users.

You: So only my friends could see my personal date and postings? Facebook: We cannot control the actions of other users with whom you share your information. We cannot guarantee that only authorized persons will view your information. We cannot ensure that information you share on Facebook will not become publicly available.

You: If I keep my account can you stop sending me all those spammy update emails? Facebook: You may opt out of all communications except those we deem to be essential updates on your account notifications page.  We may include content you see on Facebook in the emails we send to you.

You: So basically opting out doesn’t mean opting out isn’t there a law against that? Facebook: By using Facebook, you are consenting to have your personal data transferred to and processed in the United States and it will be processed and managed in accordance with the privacy laws of the United States…

You: Oh in that case I am deliriously happy!

5)      Facebook is already failing

How could it fail it’s so big and if Facebook were a country…?”  Remember Compuserve, E-groups, Friends Reunited, Geocities and soon Bebo?  All were once dominant in the online community / social media space and all now either dead or dead men walking.

The life cycle of communication technology platforms has changed the speed of adoption of the social media platforms has been phenomenal but it will be matched by the speed of redundancy. What goes up must come down.  Newsprint had more than a hundred years, radio, television and fixed line telecoms all had a good long innings but they are all now at varying stages of redundancy. Facebook doesn’t have an edge other than size and everything it does someone else does better Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress etc – if there is a reason to use it is because your customers use it – so what happens if they leave?

Facebook would have to innovate at a speed unheard of for a social networking platform just to stay even remotely relevant. If size alone protected companies we wouldn’t be in the process of recovering from a global banking crises.

Conclusion

In my opinion it is a completely underwhelming piece of communication technology and its days are all together numbered. In the future we will look at Facebook in the way we now look at video recorders we all had one but not anymore.

Agree? Disagree? Want to prove me wrong?  Join the conversation by hitting the comment button below and let me know what you think.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise-Be Brilliant

Ten years on from dot-com we see evidence of a paradigm shift in communication, a shift in the way that people want to be engaged by businesses, how we define business relationships and even friendships. The rise of social media is not the shift itself but simply a symptom of it.

The socialisation of business relationships began on-line, actually probably with mass access to email at work, was given impetus by the dot-com revolution and is gaining momentum by the day with the adoption of social media tools. I believe that although this change started on-line it’s not going to stop on-line, it won’t stop until the process of socialisation it has penetrated every aspect our businesses operations. We can see the impact of social media on sales and marketing but has it changed the way you recruit, the way you innovate, hold meetings, communicate internally, manage change and mange people? No- Well just because you Tweet and have a good LinkedIn profile don’t think you are almost there – you are just about to get started with this social thing.

I use the term social media marketing a lot, mainly because its what my prospective clients expect to hear but I very quickly drop the “media” bit and just talk about social marketing.

The key question I like to get my clients asking themselves is not what social media tools can we use but rather how can we socialise all of our businesses processes? Sometimes the answer involves the use of social media tools but often the biggest results come from off-line socialisation. Showing a genuine interest in others beyond the social media tools is key. A lot of my clients were getting good at social media marketing and attracting inquiries but then the reality of actually dealing with the company was a big disappointment.

In every business I work with it becomes more and more evident that there are opportunities to socialise key business processes. I will post a couple of detailed case studies next month but a good example would be the work I am doing with a couple of my retail clients who are very good at social media marketing but when you enter their stores you get an old fashioned retail experience! The question I asked them is “how do we socialise the retail experience and bring all that on-line energy engagement and excitement into the stores?”

The answers don’t involve the use of social media but have resulted in some of the most exciting and interesting marketing projects I have been involved with and the return on investment for the clients could be game changing.

What question can you ask that changes customer centricity, engagement and socialisation from buzzwords to the driving force in placing your business at the forefront of the paradigm shift in customer engagement? Hit the comment button and let me know what you think / challenge me with questions.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp Intelligise – Be Brilliant

(This Blog first appeared on www.thedrum.co.uk where Gordon is a regular contributor, and again as an article in the Drum Magazine.

You must have seen those hideously expensive adverts on TV for www.direct.gov.uk with the big celebs like, well you know, her that used to advertise the sky digital box with Bruce Forsythe and well you know other celebs!

Well the website of the UK government has had a big budget, a big launch and a big campaign aimed at getting people to visit the site but they have also made a huge cock-up (oh maybe that’s an unfortunate choice of words).

The site even has a kids section http://kids.direct.gov.uk and to make it more kiddie friendly they have called it “Busters World” complete with an image of a friendly dog (presumably called Buster) who is wearing a sheriffs badge (nice bit of trust imagery).  The site describes itself “DirectgovKids helps you find out about the world around you. We have loads of fun games, exciting videos and cartoons and much more!” Have a look:

OK what is so wrong about that – well let me tell you it is very, very, very wrong!  In a spectacular piece of poor brand naming strategy which must have included no research whatsoever Busters World is also the name of a fetish gay porn site (I am not making this up honestly).

Imagine this, little Johnny learns about the site at school under the supervision of his teacher and comes home and tells mommy all about the fun new website Busters World and asks if he can go on it. Of course he can, now Johnny can’t remember the domain name and types Busters World into Google and the first site listed is probably not what he expected but there is a big balloon on the front page so it’s obviously for kids right?

When you click on the “I agree to these terms” button (which I only did for research purposes) you land at a very friendly welcome page where men with fashionable facial hair are having fun with balloons (and what child doesn’t like balloons?).

The Power of Twitter – I found out less than an hour ago via twitter, Falkirk based @More4Mums the online discount maternity clothing store http://www.more4mums.co.uk who tweeted.

“My 6yr old tells me she was on Busters World at school – Googled to have a look OMG !!! Real link here http://ow.ly/13TrB” And then later “How can someone be so stupid as to name the kids portal on directgov “Buster’s world”??? Internet safety anyone??  A few direct messages later and I have to say I share her indignation.

Ok lets pause for a few minutes … have you stopped laughing?  It took me a while but when the initial madness of this situation sinks in you will realise that the organisation ultimately responsible for child safety legislation in the UK has made a web, branding and child safety blunder of epic proportions.  Little Johnny will be damaged for life and may even end up becoming a politician!

The site NEEDS to be renamed now and given that the Drum community includes some of the leading branding experts from around the world lets be proactive and come up with some suggestions for a new name.  A packet of Smarties for each of the best three suggestions and we will pass it on to DirectGov.

So leave a comment and let me know what you think of this terrible situation (hint) and what your suggestion for the new name for the site.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise – Be Brilliant

It’s time to kill off the term “social media”.  It’s boring – it’s last years “big idea”.  Whilst we are at it it’s time to kill off the self appointed social media gurus, Twitter kings, Linked-in gods and Facebook queens, (although admittedly not all Facebook queens are selling social media consultancy!)  As far as I am concerned the word Guru denotes a level of expertise that you just can’t claim to have in an emerging field.

Every few years there is a small improvement in communications technology and someone with an eye for the main chance coins a term and tags the word “revolution” on the end and we have a bona-fide craze on our hands.  This time round the consultants, without any trading history or track record, have come out of the woodwork chanting “social media, social media, you gotta have social media”. Normally serious business people started uploading silly pictures on their Twitter pages and Tweeting inane updates like “oops put 2 much milk in my #morningtea LOL #fail, Please Retweet” and “@duncanbannantyne please ask your followers to follow me”.  Then to cap it all you get a linked-in invitation from someone you met at a conference in Birmingham ten years ago asking you to be one of his valued contacts.

Don’t get me wrong I love Twitter, Linked-in and my blog they are ALL indispensible to my marketing efforts.  What we need to do is clear away the social media BS that’s blinding people to the obvious truth that social media tools are just a new way to manage conversations to engage clients – its not rocket science – its for everybody.

We have seen this sort unhelpful hysteria before: remember the dot.com boom?  I spent the late 90s and early noughties evangelising about online community and facilitating discussion groups and online B2B networking, we called it “online conversation” or “online community” (if only I had known about the revolution thing).  As Shirley Bassey once said “it’s all just a little piece of history repeating”.

People are busy predicting a video revolution, a geo-location revolution, a mobile commuting revolution but if there is one thing you can say for certain about communication technology it is that next week there will be something new – its evolution and not revolution!

Why does the nomenclature matter?  Well revolution is a scary word and add to that lots of consultants claiming Guru status and people think that the tools are complex and difficult to use when they are not.  Most social media training seems to delve no deeper than how to set up a Facebook page or a Twitter account (the stuff that you can learn by reading the PDF guides available from thousands of web sites) and this is counter productive.  The gurus are trying to build a social media silo with access granted to those capable of over excitable hyperbole but its not rocket science – its just a new set of conversation tools.

Most of the people who read Drum blogs work in Marketing, Design, PR and Digital Marketing agencies etc and if the cocktail of social media tools are to become universally useful to businesses then you are the people who can make it happen.  If this latest communication evolution is indeed to generate revolutionary results for business (sorry hyperbolic slip) we have to destroy the silos by doing the hard work of strategically blending the benefits of the new social media engagement tools with each of our specialist marketing offerings.  Only when we have done this can sociability become the default behaviour setting and client engagement can take its rightful place in the marketing tool box alongside PR, advertising, sales, design and brand management et al.

I have just set up a new company and I struggled for a long time with the decision as to whether to start a separate social media consultancy or to keep my social media advice as part of my business development practice, you won’t be surprised that I decided on the latter.  On this blog I want to start a conversation about practical social media marketing and networking, not a load of “hyperbolic guru speak” but plenty of down and dirty, sleeves rolled up ways to use the emerging online conversation toolset to generate return on engagement for ourselves and our clients.

Maybe one day we will be able to say “Social Media BS is dead – long live Social Media Conversation.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise – Be Brilliant

Collect followers for vanity – collect relationships for value – share something of value and build your relationships!

To me social media is a set of great networking tools, that you can use to enhance your networking and NOT a replacement for networking.  I use this WordPress blog, Twitter and Linked-in not to collect followers, friends, and connections but to enhance the relationships I have with people within my network.

I accept it is hard not to get caught up in the social media game of “who has the most followers” on Twitter, “the most contacts” on Linked-in or “friends” on Facebook, especially when you see a competitor has a few thousand more than you.  However for professionals it is not the number of contacts you have but the value of your relationships with your contacts that is your key performance indicator (KPI).

How I use my three main Social Media Channels.

1. Linked-in – www.linkedin.com/in/GordonMacIntyreKemp Like most people, I asked my best contacts to connect on Linked-in and the key word is “connect”!  So many people build a list of 200+ connections on Linked-in and think that is their network built, its not, it is your social networking database populated with targets.

• By regularly changing my updates I make sure that my contacts know what I am doing and I read their updates and send congratulations and comments as appropriate.
• Most importantly though I regularly make time to network and see my contacts face to face.  Every month I select a group of about 25 of my contacts whom I think would like to meet one another and I invite them to meet me for a speakeasy.  On average 16-20 attend and people say they are the best networking events they get invited to.  No speakers, no presentations just me in a bar mixing up my contacts and engaging them on a deeper level.
• Because I am social people reciprocate and when I get invited to someone’s networking event I ask “is there room for me to bring along one of my clients?” This way my contact gets a new high value contact at their event and my client gets a free seminar and well everyone is happy.  Its not clever its just networking!

1. Blog – I like to share my insights on selling, networking and social media every week and every blog is promoted via my Linked-in updates, on the Linked-in profile itself and via Twitter.  Every client I have read my blog before becoming a client and this is working so well for me that next month I am investing in a major new (best practice) blogging platform that will host not only this blogs but those of my best practice partners and guest bloggers as well.

• As a result of the cross referencing a lot of people who view my Linked-in profile also read my blog and this willingness to share my expertise has changed the dynamic of all of my recent sales presentations from being “asked to pitch” to being “asked to help”.
• If you are selling expertise (legal, financial, consulting or other professional services) then blogs are a vital tool in terms of building trust in your ability to deliver.  Sales techniques don’t close deals nowadays, trust closes deals and the higher the trust the higher the price you can charge for your expertise.
• A willingness to share shows how genuine you are and social media is changing the nature of knowledge in sales- if you are not the first to share your knowledge you may as well have never known it.

1. Twitter – http://twitter.com/theintelligiser My first two Twitter accounts were personal (I don’t use them anymore) and admittedly at first I didn’t see a business use but now where as Linked-in is where I manage my valuable relationships Twitter is where I grow and invest in my weaker relationships.

• There really is no better tool for finding and engaging interesting people you don’t yet know.  With my business account I set out deliberately to follow as many interesting people and business people that I could identify as being from Scotland (where I do most of my business).  Most of them followed me back and I shared my thoughts, observations and links to my blogs and I got some great feedback.
• The best thing for me about following people on Twitter is that you get a real insight into people’s personalities and the things that motivate them from their tweets.  This means I now have a list of really interesting people I want to meet so I invite them to my speakeasy events, introduce them to my most valuable contacts and assuming all goes well we connect on Linked-in. Several have become high value networking contacts (friends in reality) and two have become clients.
• You can’t advertise on Twitter but you can sell, anyone who says you can’t just does not know how!  Selling isn’t selling anymore it is Engagement Marketing; people want to do business with people they trust and people they know.  I find the best way to sell is to be the sort of person people want to do business with.

To sum up.

The new golden rules of networking; Use social media but don’t forget to be social, collect followers for vanity – Collect relationships for value – share something of value and build your relationships. Oh and one final point – if your goal is to sell it wont work your goal has to be to genuinely help the people you are networking with or they just wont engage you!

Next Steps – Why not share?

1. Leave a comment
2. Email the link to this blog to your valuable contacts
3. Retweet it – share something of value & build your relationships.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise, Be Brilliant

Social media is changing the way companies communicate with customers and contacts and this has led to a plethora of social media consultancies (usually referring to themselves as gurus or experts) advising business people to set up Linked-in profiles and get as many contacts as possible.  One such agency even charges by the contact they deliver for you.  This sort of low level thinking has contributed to a lot of people getting to a 100 contacts and thinking right job done. You can almost hear the sighs of relief now that they have reached the point where they don’t need to work live a slave to look credible.

The problem is that it’s not job done its job started, to get the biggest return on investment from social media you actually have to be social!  A strange concept I know but in business contacts are nothing, relationships are everything.

In the near future people begin to look at numbers of connections, friends, followers etc in the same way as we now look at “hits” as a way of measuring a web business. Yet then as now an internet based technology has had a huge impact on business but with the wrong Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).  The amount of connections you have isn’t a KPI but the relationship value of those connections is.  The problem is that using all the social media tools in the world won’t help your business, you have to engage your clients on a deeper level than your competition or you won’t be able to compete.

Six keys to improving the relationship value of your Linked-in contacts

1. Quality not quality – First and foremost don’t ask people to link-in unless you know them and want to manage your relationships with them more effectively. Just keep telling yourself it’s a relationship game not a numbers game. At a networking event recently overheard someone say we should link-in to a man he had just met only to have the other person respond “I think we linked-in after the last chamber event”. In my view you should only Link-in to people you have worked with, done business with or know really well.

2. Update regularly – The is a twitteresk feature on Linked in called update and it asks you to post in 140 characters what you are working on – use it and use it every working day. People who visit your profile page will see that you are putting in some effort to your Linked-in page and they will respect that. Your contacts will also usually get an update email of what you are doing every week and this keeps you in touch with your most important contacts for the investment of five minutes per day.

3. Share – Using Linked-in along isn’t a social networking strategy its just one of the tools you will need. If your client’s perception of your credibility and knowledge is key to your success lawyers, accountants architects, IT sales etc then you should blog some useful tips and ideas and share it with your contacts via the update function and by via email.

4. Linked-in messages –When one of your contacts posts an update don’t just read it and think “that was interesting” drop them an email via the system and offer advice or tips, encouragement or a well done as appropriate again a few minutes a day can pay dividends.

5. Network – The most powerful thing you can do with your contacts is bring them together. Ok so some will be in different countries but 80% will be in your local area so BE SOCIAL. In the last two weeks I have held two speakeasy networking events where I have pointed at a bar and invited a dozen of my Linked-in contacts to meet me for a beer and a catch up.  As they all arrived at the same time I introduced them and there are two join ventures in the offer and five very warm sales pitches taking place next week – not only that I received several emails from people saying they were the best networking events they had ever attended.

6. Ask – this is what its all about, Linking-in to people you don’t really know, who don’t really trust you and then failing to engage them means that you have a dead list and a dead list can’t connect you to anyone.  I will bet if most people did a people search for their number one target client in their city they would find several of their connections know them but they wouldn’t have the depth of relationships that would allow them to ask for an introduction.  I am one step away from my top 20 target clients and in 80% of the cases it is one of my Linked-in recommenders that knows them.  It took me a year and I have turned down more offers to connect than I have accepted but my list of contacts is alive and kicking and every time I have asked for an introduction I get it.  Obviously no-ones profile or contact list can ever be perfect but by following the tips above you can improve the value of your Linked-in contacts significantly.

This blog is part two of my series on getting the most from Linked-in you can find part one here http://bit.ly/7JtgEV I hope it helps.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise – Be Brilliant

www.intelligise.co.uk

Linked-in is the best social media platform for doing business but it is widely misunderstood.  Linked-in isn’t an online rolodex it’s a relationship and reputation management tool.

Are you one of those people with a bunch of contacts you don’t really know and an update that’s two months out of date?  Then you are actually damaging your relationships and your reputation.  You may as well go to networking events with a sign round your neck that says “I am not interested in you, I’m only here to get business”.

There are four ways to generate the levels of trust required to be successful in business nowadays and one of those is Reputation Management (RM).  In this blog I am going to focus on how to use Linked-in to build trust via reputation management.  RM is vitally important to business people where personal trust is core to doing business, sales people obviously but also for professionals like accountants, lawyers and architects.  In these professions your reputation is everything and yet these professionals are the worst at using social media to build relationships and trust

Five tips to building trust through your Linked-in profile

1. Have a goal in mind for your Linked-in profile.  If your goal is to improve your expert positioning then focus on your qualifications, past customer recommendations and your passion for your field of work.
2. Don’t forget the profile picture and make sure it looks like you do now.  Ideally the photo should be of you in a business situation / business dress.  Note this is different for Linked-in than Twitter or Facebook where you can be less formal and broadcast more of your personally.
3. Know your connections; don’t accept invites from people you don’t really know.  If you were to build a contact base of 500 people how many would your really see a benefit from engaging – 150 maybe 200 at most?
4. Update every working day of the week – how long will it take you to post 140 charter description of what you are doing today?  Look at it this way if you are a lawyer and you post an update saying that you are writing a talk on “new distance selling regulations” then you are sending a highly focussed message to your most valuable contacts that you have this expertise.  This builds trust, knowledge, referrals and don’t rule out the possibility that your phone will ring directly as a result of the update.  Here is what my profile said this morning: “Gordon is writing a blog on how to engage your Linked-in contacts – watch this space for a link this afternoon”.   Guess what it will say this afternoon?
5. Get recommended, this is the key action that will unlock all of the trust benefits of Linked-in, but there is a problem; if your contacts don’t see that you are serious about Linked-in why should they go to the bother of writing a recommendation?  If you haven’t carried out steps 1-4 people just won’t put in the effort.

Keys to a good recommendation strategy.

Don’t wait to be asked, if you have based your contacts strategy on quality and not quantity then there should be lots of people you could recommend – be proactive.

Don’t ever offer a recommendation on the basis that they give one back just give and see what happens.

Send a request after every successfully completed piece of work and you will build up a portfolio of relevant recommendations.  “He is a good guy” isn’t worth the pixels it’s written on – recommendations need to tie into your overall goal for your linked-in profile.

Dear god, don’t tell your staff to recommend you – how sad is that! – I hate seeing a list of recommendations with no clients but lots of staff saying “he is a great boss”. My rule is 20% max from current staff and none till you have at least ten focussed ones from clients and partners.

And finally – be the sort of person that people want to recommend  - Clue – you have to be someone that people can trust

Conclusion

For professionals but especially for accountants and lawyers trying to win business without first establishing trust is like eating steak without chewing.  As social media becomes more pervasive “online reputation management” will grow as a vital source of personal trust.  So if your Linked-in profile isn’t optimised, then you are probably already loosing business and until you read this I will bet you didn’t know why.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise – Be Brilliant

Check out my Linked-in profile www.linkedin.com/in/GordonMacIntyreKemp and give me a call or drop me an email if I can be of assistance Gordon@intelligise.co.uk

When we talk about questions I tell my delegates that the most important question for the sales person is “how is the buying decision going to be made”.  Almost 50% of sales presentations and over 80% of sales emails and cold calls are made to the wrong person and by that I mean someone who does not have the authority to say yes to the sale.

The most important question for the business however is to devise your own version of the most important question ever asked in business and that is “Do you want fries with that”?  Yup unless you are a five stone, vegan health freak you have said yes to that question.  Globally “Do you want fries with that”? is worth tens of millions in sales for MacDonald’s every year.  It got to the point that people didn’t wait to be asked they just ordered fries and MacDonald’s had to come up with another question “Would you like to supersize that”?

I am serious, I am not being flippant or funny, 99% of all sales presentations are designed from the viewpoint of the selling company, they are talking at people and hardly any sales pitches are based around asking questions of the buyer.

Let me by totally clear – Old style features and benefits presentations (especially on PowerPoint) are to sales what steam engines are to a Bullet Train!

The world has changed – as it always does – a new generation of buyers are in charge and they react badly to old style sales pitches. No one wants to be sold to any more they want help to buy!  The key to helping people to buy is to ask questions, to uncover their often hidden needs, wants and desires in a way that drives trust, which creates openness that leads to the sale.

But

When the sale is made the biggest opportunity in business is often missed.  The way to land the opportunity it is to ask the most important question in business – No not “do you want fries with that”? You need to ask your own personal version of that question.  As a sales recruiter the most important question I ever asked was “would you like training with that” and now my business model is based around only recruiting when I get to train the new sales guys and that means I can now offer a guarantee. In fact in recruitment the question that led to more sales during my entire recruitment career than calling and fixing appointments was “what other positions does your company need to fill”?

What is your version of the question?

• Training – Would you like ongoing coaching with that?
• Technology – Would you like technical support with that?
• Flooring or roofing company – would you like us to maintain it and offer a guarantee?
• Phone systems – would you like broadband and mobile phones with that?

OK I get that you wouldn’t always ask the question in such a simple way as MacDonalds but the principle remains the same.  Millions of pounds of sales are probably being missed by your business right now as either you haven’t figured out what your version of the question is – or because your people are not bothering to ask it.

On average the companies I work with get 25% more sales from existing customers and increase the value of new sales by 15% – but the question they invariably ask me to begin with is how they can find new customers!

Two Caveats

1. In larger companies the reason the question doesn’t get asked is often because the benefit from any additional sale will go to a colleague in another team. Good sales management requires that where cross selling involved, sufficient benefit must go to the questioner.
2. If your sales team are cold calling old fashioned closers, when they ask the question the answer will be NO even if the client really needs the additional service – think about it!

Engage your customers on a deeper level – ask searching questions, stop selling and start helping people to buy, become the type of company people want to buy from and remember that the most important question often comes after the sale is made.

Action – Please leave a comment and give me a call if you want to grow your business.

Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp

Intelligise-Be Brilliant

www.intelligise.co.uk