Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media
Marketing via Facebook, Twitter Yields Results for Some, Others Say It’s Overrated; ‘Hype Right Now Exceeds the Reality’
Last year, Jackie Siddall described in a blog post how a message she received on Twitter prompted her to buy a folding kayak for around $1,900.
The vessel was one of about just 600 sold in 2009 by Folbot Inc., a small retailer in Charleston, S.C. “You can’t buy that exposure,” says the firm’s co-owner, David AvRutick, who claims the incident speaks to the value of using social media for marketing.
But Mr. AvRutick’s experience may be the exception, rather than the norm. In its short lifetime, social media—services like Facebook and Twitter—have become popular marketing tools for small firms due to the low cost and easy-to-use format. Some entrepreneurs say they’re highly effective, but new evidence suggests otherwise.
“The hype right now exceeds the reality,” says Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.
Last year, social-media adoption by businesses with fewer than 100 employees doubled to 24% from 12%, says a survey released in January of 2,000 U.S. entrepreneurs from the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and Network Solutions LLC, a Web-services provider in Herndon, Va.
Meanwhile, a separate survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.
“It could harm you if you end up inadvertently saying something stupid, offensive or even grammatically incorrect,” says Mr. Chiagouris.
A business owner’s time and energy spent on social-media marketing—Folbot’s Mr. AvRutick says he dedicates about an hour a day—could also go to waste. Fifty percent of the latter survey’s respondents say it requires more effort than expected.
To gain positive results, entrepreneurs need to regularly interact with consumers through these sites and not simply create static profiles, says Jacob Morgan, co-owner of Chess Media Group Corp., a consulting firm in San Francisco that specializes in social media.
Some small businesses opt to hire outside firms to handle their social-media marketing or advise them on the best ways to use it, but such services can cost hundreds of dollars a month.
For Chris Lindland, owner of Cordarounds.com, an online clothing retailer in San Francisco, converting consumers into customers using social media has required a “patient investment.”
“My business has been visited millions of times, but I haven’t made millions of sales,” says Mr. Lindland, whose four-person staff spends up to 90 minutes a day managing Cordarounds’s accounts on Twitter and Facebook. “People have told me they finally got around to buying from my business after reading about it on social media two years ago.”
Some entrepreneurs say they’ve found early indicators that their social-media efforts are paying off.
“The people coming from social media have been buying,” says Stephen Bailey, who oversees social-media and other marketing initiatives for John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., a footwear and accessories retailer in Vancouver with about 100 employees.
As evidence, Mr. Bailey points to a 40% increase in online sales in 2009—the first full year the company engaged consistently in social-media marketing—compared with 2008 when it was just getting started. He says he can draw a correlation between those figures and social media by looking at traffic to the company’s Web site from Twitter using Hootsuite, a free Twitter-management service from Invoke Media Inc. Other free services that track Web traffic from social-media sites include Google Analytics, CoTweet and Lodgy.
“The second we started using social media, it became one of the biggest drivers of traffic outside of search engines,” says Mr. Bailey, adding that his research shows these visitors spend as much time on Fluevog.com as those who come from other online destinations. The company doesn’t invest in paid advertising on social media, he adds.
Other business owners are soliciting customer feedback and monitoring what’s being said about their firms to determine the impact of sites like Facebook and Twitter on consumers’ buying decisions.
Mr. AvRutick says he regularly searches Twitter for tweets that mention kayaking and then sends messages to the people who wrote them. He connected with Ms. Siddall, the blogger who credited Twitter for exposing her to Folbot, after she posted a tweet that mentioned she wanted a kayak.
Ms. Siddall, a 37-year-old senior designer for Idea Couture Inc., a creative-marketing agency in Toronto, says she was unaware that folding kayaks even existed until she heard from Mr. AvRutick. She spent the next few months researching different brands, which included perusing a networking forum on Folbot’s Web site about kayaking.
Ms. Siddall says she later asked Mr. AvRutick via Twitter if he would send her some photos of her folding kayak being made, and he provided about 20. After it arrived, she says she decided to write a blog post about the whole experience.
“I didn’t find the same level of information or communication online from the other brands,” she says.
Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com
Are you the victim?
Are you a victor or victim? I’m against being a victim cause victims sound weak. Sales can make anyone turn into a victim easily because sales people to overcome a lot crap. Victims are avoided after a while. Victims are seldom listened to because the have lost their credibility. Victims are never respected. And in general, nobody wants to hang around with victims. Well, except for other victims, of course, because like attracts like.
Just think for a moment about what you say when something doesn’t go your way or rather the way you act it. Review the last experience when you a big sale. Think for a moment about how and what you said to yourself, the body language you used and your tonality. If any of those reactions or responses contain victim like attitude, like whining, put downs, – stop it or you’ll become a victim.
You see the your goal is for you to become a victorious sales person whether or not you close the sale. Victors don’t whine. Victors learn, they overcome, they master themselves. It’s easy to up beat when life is going your way, but guess what the BIG profits are in the problems.
The Single Most Important Rule of Business
This might possibly be the single most important rule of business or sales. If they LIKE you, BELIEVE you, have CONFIDENCE in you and TRUST you, then they may be they will do business with you or buy from you. Now of these four things LIKE, BELIEF, CONFIDENCE AND TRUST, which one do YOU think is the most influential? Raise your hand if you thinking it BELIEF c’mon raise your hand? Raise your hand if you thinking it’s CONFIDENCE? Who thinks TRUST raise your hand? Raise your hand if you thinking it’s LIKE?
If you were thinking TRUST you’re almost right. If you were thinking LIKE you’re right. Can I give you guys and an example? Pretend you’re a single woman of the opposite sex, you go out on a date with some guy. You come back and now you’re talking about the date with mom or girlfriend or whoever, “You know Betty, I really trusted this guy, but I didn’t like him!” Oh Betty I like him a lot and I hope we go out – what? Again. I hope we go out again Liking leads to trusting. Trusting leads to confidence and confidence leads belief. Are you with me on this?
See if you’re not likable the best thing for you to do is get out of people business. Get a job on the bomb squad or as secret government assassin where not being likeable is ok.
Now everyone will tell you to do what? Become a trusted advisor. However the only way that you can become a trusted advisor is to first become a friend. The only way that you can become a friend is to be liked – cool?
Time Management real or a hoax? Why Time Management doesn’t Work
Hey guys, Bert Martinez here. Time management tools are really useful, right? Or are they? They show you how to organize your things. The problem is, that these systems are only as good as you FEEL. I’ve always said how you feel is more important than what you. How you feel determines your follow through or follow up – your success.
Consider this. Have you been using time management techniques but still, you feel overwhelmed, unfocused, like you’re not accomplishing some major things? If so, your lack of emotional management may be the reason why your time management approaches may not have worked so well for you.
Stephen Covey, he summed it up best when he said time management is a misnomer. The real challenge is to manage ourselves. So take a pause for a moment. How well do you manage your self?
Let me give you three examples. Let’s say you have an exciting message and you really want to get it out to the media. So you schedule a block of time from 3:00 to 4:00 this afternoon. This is a typical time management technique. But here’s what might take place. Three o’clock rolls around, you sit down at your desk and you start thinking to your self, “What if I send this out and nobody responds? I’m really going to feel dumb,” or, “Oh worst, what if they think this is a stupid idea?” or, “Who am I to write about this subject. I should do some research before I send the message.” Four o’clock rolls around. What do you think is going to determine whether you send that email or not? Was it whether you scheduled it in your calendar or how you feel about you?
Example #2. Let’s say that you decided to lose weight. So you schedule yourself in the gym 3 times a week at 6 am. But what if on the first day it’s really cold and raining. Okay. What’s your reaction? Do you go back to bed? Your level of commitment (feelings) will now take over and decide your actions.
Example #3. Here’s another example. Let’s say that you had an interaction one morning with your spouse and it ended on a pretty tense note. Okay. So as you’re going throughout your day, you’re kind of thinking about it. It’s nawing at you in the back of your mind. Later that day you scheduled planning meeting. Again that’s an excellent time management technique, right? Making time for the things that are most important to you, being proactive. But during that meeting, what do you do? You obsess and you replay what happened that morning. What is that interaction going to mean for my our future?
You’ve scheduled your time for meeting. But were you really present? And also, did you schedule in the time you probably lost thinking about it? Real “time management” is a two-part process. It’s how you schedule your time on the outside but it’s also about how you manage your emotions, the self on the inside. And one without the other is not going to get you the results that you need.
So consider this, instead of focusing on managing your time, start by managing how you feel, developing emotional skills like determination and confidence. Emotional skills will serve your time and your life better.
To summed it up “How You Feel is more Important that What You Know.”
Sales Training Can Show You Ways to Increase Sales
There are many advantages to engaging in sales training. An experienced sales trainer can teach you techniques on how to prospect customers, sell the customer, and maintain fruitful relationships with customers, which will lead to additional sales. Just being in the presence of a sales coach can greatly improve your own awareness. What are some examples? Read on to alert yourself of five ways to increase sales this year.
- Study your competitors closely. How do your products and services look in comparison to what your competition offers? Look for ways to distinguish yourself from them as well as ways to angle your products and services in a better way.
- Good salespeople know their products and services very well. Beyond this, sales training will teach you to begin to learn how to read people well and how to predict their actions as well as general trends they partake in. Knowing your products and services is only the half of it; you must realize how your customers can relate and benefit from what you have to offer.
- Increase your reputation in your field. Focus on becoming a recognized ‘expert’ in your industry. This is part of building your name and your company’s brand name. Customers will learn to keep your name and that of your company in mind next time they are in need of services.
- Make your business a presence on the Web. Many shoppers now rely on the internet to find desired goods and services. Maintain a company Web site and look for ways to promote it within search engine results. Purchasing ad space on the search engines such as Google and Yahoo as well as devoting time to SEO (search engine optimization) strategies are two ways to increase your company’s online visibility.
- A sales coach will help you understand the potential of word-of-mouth marketing. Many companies devote large sums of money each month towards advertising and marketing. You can decrease the amount of money needed to spend on such things by searching for ways to spread the word about your company. Asking current clients to refer you to others in compensation of some kind of reward is just one way to facilitate the process.
