Pop Quiz: Are You Doing Social Media Marketing Right? [Podcast]

Last week, Ralph, Teddie and I had the pleasure of being invited onto the Social Media Unscrambled podcast which is hosted by marketers extraordinaire David Deutsch of SynergiSocial and Chris Curran of Fractal Recording.

In addition to talking Smurfs, Ninjas and jughandles (welcome to New Jersey), we had some smart social media marketing conversation.

Listen To The Podcast

If you want the full gist, listen in – you’ll have fun and learn a few things, too.

But before you do, I have a quick quiz to prep you for some of the things you’ll hear. This isn’t the kind of quiz you can study for and the answers don’t come out of a textbook. But if you want to succeed with your social marketing then these are a few things you’ll want to tuck under your hat and understand.

Ready?

True Or False: Branding Is A Good Reason To Use Social Media For Your Business.

True(ish).

Branding is nice. Leads are better.

We’ve talked about having goals for social media and brand recognition is a valid goal. The problem is that social media marketing takes time, money, effort, consistency… and let’s face it, we’re not Coca Cola or American Express. We’re small businesses and chances are we could “brand” all day and still get little recognition.

If we want the most bang for our marketing buck, we’d be wise to focus on leads. So… are your social efforts yielding leads? If not, why not? And if you’re running around all day curating and posting and curating some more, what does that translate into in terms of hard dollars for your business? Not a textbook answer for sure.

Only you can determine what the results of your efforts are. Just be sure you think about it and know how to answer that question.

True Or False: You Should Promote Your Business 20% Of The Time And Be A “Resource” By Curating Or Providing Other Information 80% Of The Time.

Big fat false.

That’s a coopting of the 80/20 rule by marketers who needed a sound bite. The original 80/20 rule has exactly zero to do with how much of the time you should spend promoting yourself.

Do you know how much time you should really spend promoting yourself?

Me either. Because there is no rule.

The “rule” of social media, if there can be one, is simple: be social.

We’ve been led to believe that if you want to use social media you have two options: create your own content to promote or promote the content of others.

Sad is the day that we start to see things in such stark black and white. There is a whole lot of middle ground between, let’s say, writing a 2,000-word blog post and finding a link to someone else’s 2,000-word blog post.

You can promote your business without promoting yourself at all. You can talk about your customers, too. I know someone who posts photos on his Facebook page of every single customer he works with. Happy, smiling people who have loved his service.

You can also do something entirely different and talk with your customers. That’s right, you can spend exactly zero time creating or curating content and spend 100% of the time engaging your audience. Building relationships. You know, being social.

True Or False: You Should Know The Ins And Outs Of Social Media Before You Jump Into Marketing.

True and false.

While it’s true that you should never try something without knowing what you’re doing or why, it’s not true that the burden of knowing all that falls on you.

You’re busy. You’re running your business. It’s not your job to know everything there is to know about social media. But it is your job to hire someone who can teach you, help you and do things for you when the need arises.

You don’t need to know everything. You just need to know enough to make smart decisions. I don’t know how to fix a flat tire (these days it’s a half-day $500 job… I know this from recent experience). But I do know enough to call in qualified help when I’m driving on rims.

So it goes with marketing. Be smart. Be aware. But don’t think that you have to know it all.

True Or False: If You Hate Facebook Then You Shouldn’t Use It For Your Marketing.

False.

At some point or another everyone hates Facebook, the same way we hate our computers and our cars and the ringing of the phone. But Facebook is neither inherently good nor inherently evil. It’s a tool.

Some people refuse to use it for personal reasons and that’s perfectly fine. But your personal reasons and your business reasons are not the same thing. Your business reasons are to market, to generate leads, to make sales and ultimately to make money. You don’t need to have a love affair with Facebook in order to use it as a tool to effectively market your business and make money doing it.

Substitute Google Plus or Twitter or any tool or platform and you can take your personal feelings out of the equation. All you need to know is that you’re getting measurable results.

Conversely, it doesn’t matter how much you love a tool or platform. If it’s not yielding results, get rid of it.

True Or False: You Should Listen To This Podcast.

The most true thing of all!

And subscribe while you’re at it. These guys are funny and smart and you’ll enjoy the banter as much as the learning.

The points I touched on here are just a few of the things we all talked about. I didn’t want to give away all the fun so you’ll have to listen for the rest. Afterwards, how about giving it a rating on iTunes? And let me know if you agree or disagree with any of our points!