Social Media: Waste of Time or Next Revolution?

Almost every day there is a buzz in the media regarding social media and its effect on our pop culture. Weird names like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook continue to be shuffled in front of us and it’s sometimes hard to make heads or tails of it all.

As a non-techy type of guy, I can relate to the confusion. However, I have been an avid user of social media for the past year and it has dramatically altered my life and business for the better. For many newcomers, it’s important to take the first step and learn the basics in order to understand its relevance to you.

In order to effectively utilize social media, it is important to recognize what you want social media to do. Are you looking to increase sales, develop a cult following, or brand your product or service? If you can answer that question first, it will be much easier to begin and not waste valuable time using an ineffective social media forum.

There are literally hundreds of choices out there and it can be very confusing to know which way to go. Let’s start with the two best: LinkedIn and Twitter.

Let’s say for example that you are interested in developing more sales. The first place to start would be with LinkedIn. Next to the advent of the cell phone, I have never been witness to a stronger sales tool than LinkedIn.

In a nutshell, LinkedIn allows you to link together with your connections, thereby creating a virtual universe of your best business advocates which allows you to develop quality introductions through these connections. This is the circus equivalent of a mind reader looking into a crystal ball.

Imagine being able to look at your client’s list of friends and associates prior to asking for a referral. In addition, you can search through LinkedIn’s 40 million users to find inside connections which are generated through your connections in the system. Powerful!

To make this simple, there are three keys to being effective on LinkedIn; create a complete profile, develop your LinkedIn universe, and move forward to create the best connections. If you have no idea where to begin, try finding a local LinkedIn seminar or online Webinar that can get you started. My firm regularly runs events called, “Tekworking” which assists many beginners to effectively utilize these tools. Lastly, there are tutorials directly on the site that might be helpful.

Another name that may have been driving you crazy lately is Twitter. You hear people talking about tweeting and twittering and think to yourself, “Are you kidding me?” Believe it or not, there is a silver lining in the gray cloudy mass called Twitter.

As you may or may not know, marketing and branding is about how you control the message to your prospective clients or audience. Today, your company or personal brand may actually be controlled by the millions of people chatting on Facebook and Twitter every day. If you’re not there to defend and drive your brand, it is very possible that others will. And they may not be so kind.

In addition, many people are using Twitter to drive their brand and get “famous” in their field. A close friend of mine used this strategy on Twitter and became known as the foremost expert in his field. By routinely chatting on Twitter and intelligently answering questions for people in his industry, he developed a cult-like following. Less than one year after building his own personal brand, he was aggressively sought after for his expertise and experience in his field.

Whether you are looking for a new job, attempting to drive your brand, or want to find people that share the same affinities as you, Twitter is a fantastic social media tool.

Once you learn the basics of social media, you will soon find how easy and effective these new business platforms are to use. Invest some time to educate yourself on what’s out there and decide which will produce the best return for your investment of time.

Steve Fretzin is the founder and president of Sales Results, Inc., a sales training institution in Deerfield, IL.