Today on the Atlanta Small Business Show we are joined once again by Mike Gomez, the founder, and president of Allegro Consulting, headquartered right here in Atlanta. Mike is a speaker and writer on business strategy and sales process with over 12 years of sales experience.
Last time Mike joined ASBN he stated that not all businesses should necessarily have social media outlets and we received some backlash on that. He is here again to set the record straight and explain exactly what he meant by that.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Welcome to The Atlanta Small Business Show. I’m Jim Fitzpatrick. We have with us today Mike Gomez, the founder and president of Allegro Consulting, headquartered right here in Atlanta. Mike is a speaker and writer on business strategy and sales process with over 12 years of sales experience. Mike, thanks so much for joining us on The Atlanta Small Business Show.
Good to be back.
Yeah, yeah. In fact, the last time that you were here, we had a lot of great comments on the show and had some comments about some of the things that you said. You had mentioned on your last visit that not all businesses should necessarily have social media outlets and we got some backlash on that.
Okay.
Talk to us about exactly what you meant on that and the way that you see that for small businesses.
I have been brought into engagements with small business clients and they go well Mike, we spent a lot of money when we created our Facebook page and our Twitter account and our Pinterest account and our LinkedIn account, and it just goes on and on. I said well yes, I took a look at them and the last time you sent out a tweet was 2011 and the last update on your Facebook page was 2014. So, I’m asking you the question why are you doing this? I’m sure some marketing person convinced you that social media was very important, but social media has a role. It plays a role in an overall marketing strategy. Again, reminder, my definition of what marketing is is attracting qualified prospects. What role does social media play? What role does your Twitter account play in that job? What role does your Facebook account? If you are going to do social media, then you better be consistent and be purposeful. Otherwise, the whole purpose of social media is engaging with your user community, engaging with prospects.
Sure, it’s to be social, right?
Yes. You don’t have a conversation in the cocktail room with person, say hi, and then go I’ll see you back in another couple years.
Right, right.
No. That was what I meant. So, depends on what kind of company you are and, in your overall marketing strategy, what role that you’ve designated for social media and which social media outlets work best for the purpose of attracting qualified prospects.
Should it only be used for attracting qualified prospects and not as much to just to communicate with your current clients as well? Because some companies do that too. After they take delivery of a car and say now follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook and you’ll get tips on how to run your car better or keep your tires in check or things like that.
Those things are all to enhance your brand, your customer service identity. That is marketing.
Yeah, it is.
That is marketing.
Right.
So, you can’t-
Because, really, what that dealership then wants is the future business. Right.
… Yeah. They want followers and they want to have potential new customers reading that dialogue between you and your thing.
That’s a good point, right.
So it does serve an overall marketing role. I can’t emphasize enough the importance that an overall marketing strategy has in your company’s growth strategy. Social media is a very powerful tool in that arsenal, but it’s just as powerful sometimes as television, writing articles, giving speeches, or paid ads on a radio program. They all serve a role, but you better have a strategy that says what role do each of these different channels serve for us?
And understand them. And then, it sounds like from what you just said, you’ve got a responsibility to that social outlet to maintain it on a daily basis or a weekly basis and not just leave it out there for two years, unattended.
Right.
Where people connect with it and go well, there’s nothing on here.
Right.
Why would I connect?
No, and let me hit on a couple other points in the way of social media. There are a lot of people who “outsource”-
Yes, that’s right.
… their social media activity.
That’s a big business, isn’t it?
Yeah. So, they have someone else writing their Facebook updates. They have someone else putting out their tweets. They have someone else putting out their social activity, their Instagram, and I’m going you’re not being sincere. It’s like sending a representative to a cocktail party. Okay, he’s gonna go on behalf of Mike Gomez.
That doesn’t work.
No. Again, I understand we have limited resources with small business. Figure out what you can do. You don’t have to do it all.
Right. And social media, for the by and large, is free. It’s one of the greatest programs out there because it doesn’t cost that small business owner anything.
It’s free to use, but it’s not free to service.
Right.
Again, someone has to play the role in your company to updating the Facebook page, to doing the tweets.
Who’s the best person at a company, in your opinion, to do that? Is it not the company owner? Could it be someone else in the company?
It could be your salesperson, it could be your marketing person, if you have those roles. It could be your operations person. But, make certain that they’re using it and they’re broadcasting things that are consistent with the strategy that was set aside for that particular social media outlet.
Yeah, that’s very important. We had one business owner that we interviewed not too long ago and they said that they turned their social media efforts over to their newest associate, who happened to come right out of college. College graduate, she was 23 years old. She had a different language and a different mindset about social media than what this commercial real estate company wanted to put out there, and the owner didn’t realize it because he didn’t stay on top of his own social media outlets and such. Once somebody in the company told him hey, do you really want this quote out there, from this teenage idol rocker? What are you doing? Obviously, they hit the panic button and said oh my God, we gotta stop this because we can’t have somebody that’s 23 years old that hasn’t ever really been taught our culture, our structure, and putting it out there on our behalf. Do you find that to be the case?
I wrote an article called The Hand-off Between a CEO and Their Salesperson. You don’t just hire a salesperson and give them a bunch of darts and say go out there and find a customer. You’re now in sales, congratulations. Welcome to our team. Now, here’s a bunch of darts. Go out and find a customer. There is an obligation on the part of the CEO or the president or the owner of a company to understand A, who we’re going after, how do we wanna communicate with that person, what can we expect in the way of competition, what can we expect in the way of resistance to what we’re selling? And, to equip that person with the tools to be successful. The same holds true with marketing. There’s an obligation that you the owner have for defining what the role is and the criteria within which you must stay in. This is considered acceptable and outside of this, you’re gonna feel my size 10 boot. That role is important, that hand-off. Just hiring a 23 year old to handle your social media and saying I’ve done my job and walking away, and not equipping that marketing person that you’ve just hired with the tools to be successful, it’s not a reflection of the 23 year old, it’s a reflection of you, the business owner.
That’s right.
You didn’t do your job.
That’s right.
