Watch the video below to learn why this tool is so important.

CLICK HERE to read more about Patric’s tips for Twitter search.

I am positive that we have all had an experience where a pushy salesperson completely turned us off to a potential purchase. Those situations typically involve the offending party not taking the time to understand your particular needs and just attempting to “push” you toward the purchase they have pre-determined is best for you. Irritating, isn’t it? When you use social media to have a one-way conversation by continually pushing information without bothering to listen, you are being that pushy salesperson we all try to avoid.

So, if we all agree that behavior is undesirable, how should we use social media? Well, it is referred to as “social” media for a reason. There should be dialog occurring between your company and the community you are trying to serve. Spend time listening to the conversations on forums, Linked In groups, Facebook pages, etc. Understand the needs, concerns and interests of that community. Then, and only then, are you prepared to begin a dialog.

That being said, don’t just barge into every conversation that is relevant to your product announcing that you have the solution. Is that how you would act at a cocktail party or backyard BBQ? Do you walk in and immediately start handing business cards to everyone in the room? I hope the answer to that is no. Typically, you introduce yourself, and begin conversing about any number of topics that may be relevant. You talk about the weather, kids, politics, the news, etc. Over the course of a normal introductory conversation, the question of what you do for a living inevitably comes up. Once you share what you do, if there is additional interest, the other party “pulls” the additional information from you. At that point you may go more in depth and a potential business opportunity may arise.

That is how people conduct themselves every day in the “real” world. This behavior would be courteous and expected if you hope to forge any lasting relationships. So, why do so many completely lose their manners and become “pushy” tyrants when they operate in the social media world? The rules you would follow at the cocktail party are the same rules that apply online.
So, before you write that next blog, post that next update, create that next tweet, think about whether you are engaging your community with something that interests them or merely pushing your sales approach down their throat. Create content that makes people want to continue the conversation with you. People are pretty savvy these days. If they are listening to you, they already know what services/products you offer. If they are interested, they will ask or “pull” more information from you. Focus on building your relationship with the community and the sales will follow.

Your page is set-up. It’s looking good and you have asked all your connections to “like” your new page. Now, how do you get your customers to “like” your page and expose all of their friends to your business as well? To begin with, start promoting your new page by having the page info displayed in your shop, on your invoices, in your advertisements, etc. This serves two purposes. First, it gives them another place where they can learn more about your company and see examples of your work. Second, it adds credibility and relevance to your business with younger consumers. This segment of your customer base views a nice Facebook page in the same way many viewed a strong yellow page ad 10-15 years ago. Just as not being in the yellow pages said something about your business 15 years ago, not having a Facebook page says something about you now.

Next, I want you to begin asking your customers if they mind you taking pictures of their job to profile on your Facebook page. Whether it is a home or auto, if they are pleased with the work that you have done, you will find most people receptive to this and many will enjoy the attention. The profile is simply taking some great pictures of their car or the interior shots of the home and posting it on your Facebook page with a brief description of the work done. Most of us are now carrying phones capable of taking decent pictures, so doing this is easy and only takes a few minutes per profile.

Also, I think a nice touch is to thank them for allowing the profile by offering a free film care kit consisting of a can of window film safe glass cleaner and a microfiber cloth. This care kit might cost you $3-$5, but it is well worth it. Someone that has their home or auto profiled on your Facebook page will definitely check out the profile, likely decide to “like” your page and probably “like” the post profiling their job.

So, what was accomplished through all of this? Using the data I gave you in my last blog, the person deciding to “like” your page and the profile of their job resulted in 130 people (average Facebook user’s # of friends) being exposed to you company twice (once for the page “like” and once for the profile “like”) by someone that they consider a friend. If you get permission to do 5-10 profiles per week, you are potentially talking about 2 impressions to 1300 individuals, or 2600 new impressions per week. Over the course of a year, that could result in a total of 135,200 unique consumer impressions. Most important, these impressions would have been forwarded to them by someone they consider a friend. Best of all, the cost of these impressions was nothing more than about an hour of your time per week. That’s a pretty good return on your time investment if you ask me.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php?ref_type=sitefooter

Now that all of you have a Facebook page for your business, how do you use it and why is it important to get people to “like” you? The first thing that you should do is suggest the page to all of your friends. This first step is important as it will get a number of people following your page very quickly. You might say, “So what? These people all know about my business anyway.” Regarding that, you are correct, but what about all of the people that those people are connected with? When someone decides to “like” your page, that information is posted for all of their Facebook friends to see, many of whom may not know about your business. In that moment, two things just occurred. That person became aware of your business and your business was endorsed by someone they are friends with.

We all know that word of mouth endorsements carry more weight than almost any other form of advertising. A Facebook “like” is like word of mouth on steroids. Let’s do a little math to prove my point. You ask your friends to “like” your page and 100 of them decide to do so. According to Facebook statistics, the average Facebook user has 130 friends. If we assume that some of these friends would be mutual, we can still easily assume that 75 of the friends would be unique to each of the 100 people that decided to “like” your page. So, that means 7,500 individual people were exposed to your business via a “word of mouth” endorsement of a friend. That is a pretty powerful marketing campaign that cost you nothing but about 90 minutes of time.

The example above does not even begin to take into account what can happen when customers begin to “like” your page and some of the things you can do to increase the effectiveness when that occurs. In next month’s blog, we will discuss some of the strategies to attract more people to “like” your business, ways to get the most benefit from those followers and some examples of businesses that are using Facebook properly. Until then, I hope you are off to a fast start to this summer selling season.

Can GROUPON be used effectively in the window film industry? This video explores how one might use this tool to grow their business. Check out how you can get started with GROUPON at http://www.grouponworks.com/.

There is no doubt that people by the millions are becoming social media fanatics. Even my mother is very active on Facebook now and she is in her 70’s. With that kind of shift in the way that people are interacting with each other, a huge opportunity exists to interact with potential customers at this level in a way that resonates with them. However, most people still interact with traditional media outlets on a regular basis as well. We still read the newspaper, subscribe to magazines, watch television, etc. The one exception to this might be the yellow pages. Not to pick on this group, but who looks in the yellow pages to find information any longer? The only reason to still buy an ad is to get the online listing in my opinion.

Back to the point, with people today consuming their media in both traditional ways and over the internet, I feel that a sound marketing plan should ideally combine both of these elements as well. Traditional media is not dead, but it needs to be complimented with a strong strategy to reach people in their social graph. This is the reason that you are seeing more newspaper and magazine ads include a smart tag (or Quick Reader- check out Window Film magazine’s sister publication doing a demo).  These direct someone to a particular spot on the web where they can continue the story started in the ad. This is why you are starting to see television commercials that have a storyline that ends abruptly with a “see the rest of the story at…” What these retailers know, and you should too, is that moving forward the best strategy will integrate traditional media with web 2.0 to reach and engage potential customers in a way that was impossible several years ago.

So, is traditional marketing dead? Absolutely not! Is a social media presence and strategy a necessity? Frankly, no it is not. However, the smart business will look for ways to integrate these two together to create a marketing program that is superior in every way to one that solely uses one or the other.

First, create an account … go ahead, do it. Go to http://www.twitter.com and take the time to build an informative page about you and/or your company. Consider it the first impression a potential customer on Twitter may have of you and your organization, so make it a positive one. Next, listen in on the conversation using a helpful tool called Twitter Search. This option allows you to catch anyone who’s tweeted about you, your company, your industry, your products, etc. Once you narrow down some relevant tweets you can start a conversation, and respond directly to other tweets.

This can be used to build two things: how far your business is reaching as well as customer service. As far as building your business, if someone were to tweet, “I just bought a new car,” you can congratulate them and tell them if they decide to get some tinting done that you are ready, willing and waiting.

The other thing that you can do is monitor the Twitter search for any negative reviews about your business. If you find any of these, you have an opportunity to engage the customer to try and rectify the situation and turn a negative into a positive. You can even link your Twitter feed onto your website so that potential customers can see the good things people say about your business and the negatives and how you responded.

A bit of caution, if you do open a Twitter account and begin to engage, you really should continue. There is nothing that turns people in your industry away more than a stale account that is not being updated. However, if you are willing to make the commitment, this tool does give you a unique way to engage your potential clients on a real time basis.