Social Media as a Negotiating Tool
Social media has blown onto the scene the last couple of years with the popular websites of Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and many others. Nobody can tell for sure what social media will look like five years from now, but what everyone can agree upon is that the concept of using the internet to socially communicate is not going away.
For salespeople, an important question is, “Can social media help in negotiating?”
My answer is, “Yes, it can.” I’m not saying you should directly negotiate with another person by way of a social media (although I suppose there might be exceptions where this is possible). What I am saying is that social media is a perfect tool that someone can use to help frame a situation or build their on-line reputation before the negotiations even begin.
Optin Methods for Brand Management
A big aid to the success of any online business is those customers paying attention to the site and its messages, including e-mail and newsletters. People who are following your progress on a regular basis are receiving more exposure to your product, and are more likely in the end to purchase the services or item you’re selling than someone who just chances across your site. Thus, one of the many metrics set by businesses is a high number of followers they can reach via such contact methods.
As is often the case however, the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. Simply buying a list of e-mail contacts and sending them a message every three days does not count as having a large audience. That’s just spam, and the opinion of spam on the web is rather well known.
Social Media Marketing Agencies
Experts exist for a reason. For example, there are many tasks the average car owner can perform on their own with a little practice; they maybe can change the oil, replace brake pads, tune a few elements. But in many cases it’s far more efficient and effective to let an expert dig into the heart of the machine to make it really purr.
Marketing has its own experts, for every conceivable aspect. Entire businesses are founded on the effort to market a product to a client, and there are people who are very, very good at what they do. Almost as soon as there was radio, there were commercials. Television followed suit, and advertising on the Web has begun to follow the same trend.
Promoting Your Website Using Facebook
Are you using Facebook to promote your business; if you’re not you’re missing out on a potential gold mine? As of 2012 Facebook has grown to 845 million monthly active users making 100 billion connections on the web; that’s a lot of potential customers.
Facebook users upload 250 million photos daily to their pages and Like 2.7 billion times each day. There are 37 million pages with 10 Likes or more with an average time per visit of 20 minutes per page. How can you get some of those users to your website?
There is a two-step approach to using Facebook to promote your website. The first step is to get as many Fans as possible to visit your Like page and give it a “Like.” Second, as the number of Likes builds, you start sending as many of those Fans as you can to your website. This whole process requires you to have a Facebook Like page. There are several articles on this topic so I won’t be discussing it here.
Four Ways to Kill Your Brand
There are no guarantees of success when developing a modern brand. There is no switch that will pour out money, there are no stunts that will automatically create attention, and there is no how-to manual that, if assiduously followed, will assure your brand’s place in the annals of the great Internet legends. Brands are driven as much by the customer as they are by the originator, and the customer doesn’t always want what’s being sold.
That said there are certain behaviors and practices that are guaranteed to kill a brand, virtually without fail. There are always exceptions to the rule, but by and large you can at least count on these ‘do nots’ as fairly ironclad rules. What follows are four ways you can miss the point, and some advice for avoiding them.
