spot on!

Completely agree which is why it’s always good to Google them, find out where they’ve worked, what sales skills they have and if they are ‘working’ to build a credible social media platform. Do not just go by their website. Try if you can to find them on LinkedIn, the profiles on LinkedIn are more detail as to where they have worked in the past.

Mel x

have a read of my free advice blogs first, see if you can do it all yourself. Remember to say hello in a tweet @melaniehetfield and that you are form this blog, each tweet received will receive a reply which will help you along the way.
Mel x

funny that you can read an article over and over ant it makes sense, same with the comment from every one. interesting reading.

oops sorry that was a bit long 😀
x

Daily I have so called social media experts contact me in direct messages, fantastic websites; small social media sites, which speaks volumes when it comes to being an expert. The reason they private message me, is they want to know how I managed to get so many followers, picking brains to support they lack of knowledge in the business where they are calling themselves social media experts.

I don’t like the term expert, there are too many of them, from the start of my Tweeting career I’ve called myself a Professional Tweeter and Social Media Manager as that is what I do I manage Company Social Media accounts as if I was the company, giving the human touch and drawing in sales for the companies.

Your comment ‘I’m personally in favor of making the people happy who pay me money’ is what it should all be about, supporting the customer and using social media to draw people into where the sales take place and being there for answering customer queries.

There are 3 things that I have always worked by which works across all social networks:

Chat
Interact with sharing other people’s messages
Follow back

Things that make social networks fail:
Spamming
Focus only on what you want to give
Watching for keywords then when you see them, send them a spam message

I disagree with all these highly priced Social Media Conferences, some tickets in London costing over £1000, to be told by ‘large companies’ how they are making social media work for them; they invest lots of money in TV and Radio advertising. For the little companies struggling to make ends meet at the end of each month, you do not need these big seminars. There is advice out there from genuine bloggers that are using social media without the cost of big conferences.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and many of the social media websites are free and should be used in self promotion. Self promotion isn’t just about talking about yourself, it’s about building a credibility about you, your business and the services you provide. Just lots of adverts isn’t building credibility, the customers you build via your social media want to know that you are there for them that of they have a query, you’re going to interact.

There is also the human side, something companies teach their sales team in trainings. I’ve worked to British Gas (Energy Center) as it was some years back, British Telecom in sales, billing and customer complaints, with each training session that was given ‘the human side’ of the trainings were always encouraged. What is the human side? It’s the saying hello, asking a random question or comment to let the person you are trying to sell to know that you are taking an interest in them. This same ‘human touch’ should be in your social media to build up your credibility as a trusted company who is there to answer queries, with a human touch!

I hear ones say ‘But I don’t have time to be social on my social media website, I just want sales and people to come to my website’. …. the point of credibility has been missed! If you don’t take just half an hour of your time a day to support your social media, it won’t work for you. If you are a big enough company and already have a team working for you, then include the social bit just half an hour into their daily routine. It can make the difference to your social media.

There is an account that is on my bronze package, where I just find keyword follows, they only ever send out their adverts. I started their account from zero not long after I started mine, however because they don’t take the time to interact, they have only just reached 20k followers on Twitter in 3 years, a similar package on another clients account who do interact, chat, retweet and more have nearly caught up with them in just 1 year. My account as you will see has exceeded that. @MelanieHetfield and @hetfieldservice

I don’t buy followers, a simple process of follow first using keyword searches will build a good social media platform where you will have a growing number of clients is you apply my 3 rules, chat, interact (retweet people, they could use your help too!) and followback!

Accounts that don’t follow back but have thousands of followers but don’t follow back are in some way paying for their following, you see them on program’s such as Twiends, youlikehits and many others that sell followers, but are they real followers or just want to get more followers for themselves by taking the points that others are paying for? Does it make you look more important to have lots of followers and only follow a handful of who you want? I would say no, it shows that they are only interesting in getting people to listen to what they have to say.

Wikinomics is a way forward for small businesses, back to the old times when you had support of others in the community. Use your social media in this way and you will succeed not only in your social media, but also your businesses will grow.

Free tips and advice on Tweeting and Social Media are on my wordpress blog hetfieldservices. Don’t pay unless you really haven’t got the time, if you use a social media company check them out first. Google search them make sure they are what they say they are!

To your Success!

Mel x

Many ‘experts’ concentrate of mass followings, but when looking at the results, the followings do not add value. You’ll mainly find they’ve been paying for followers and 5 posts a day and nothing else, which is not advantageous.

Keyword searches, the human interaction, Customer Service and rotational marketing adverts are some of the ways that make Social Media work for you, if you don’t have the time to do this yourself, whether because you are developing other sides of your business or your business is nice and big that you’re down the golf course, then a Social Media Management program would be a good idea. Social Media isn’t going to go away, so long term use is a must.

Image it like a spiders web, you are the spider and you build no web… you catch no flies, you go hungry! You learn and you build a web in the corner, but you’ve kept it small because you think it’s just enough to catch ‘a fly’, but you’ve forgotten what you are going to eat tomorrow. The web needs to grow, which is what must happen with your Social Media not only for ‘today’s sales’ but for future sales also. You must think long term! Many who start in Social Media stop within the first year as they don’t see the results, or is it that they haven’t built that bigger web?

A question I ask all my new clients, are you global yet? Social Media gives you that platform to go Global, it’s a ‘big web’ and best of all if you manage it yourself, it’s only costing you a small amount of time a day.

Ways that have benefited my clients accounts and my own can be found ‘free’ on my blog. http://hetfieldservices.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/twitter-advertising/