Forget “social media”….you need a SOCIAL CORE

Social media is associated with some really stupid people selling some really stupid advice.  They’ll be back to bar tending in no time….they are of no concern to us.

What is of concern is how to use the social TOOLS to enhance our businesses.   I reject the term “social media” because I think it encourages everything that is wrong with the way people typically approach it.

You see, it’s NOT about “brand building”.  It’s not about using twitter or using facebook to gain attention for your company.  At this point, you’re pretty much just spamming if you’re looking at things that way.   Those typical “social media” methods are really just communication tactics of an old strategy book.  Instead of a PR, blog it and twitter it.  Someone complains about your company on twitter, monitor it and respond just like everyone used to do with magazine articles, letters to the editor, etc.  It’s just that now there are more people doing it and more ways to do it….big deal.  Social media is cool and useful, but NOT transformative.

A SOCIAL CORE, on the other hand, is transformative.

This isn’t about “getting your message out.”   I mean holy hell….we’re all ignoring more messages than ever already!   This is about empowering your fans and your clients to be more effective at building your business on your behalf.

This isn’t about connecting people to your brand, this is about connecting your target demographic TO EACH OTHER.

This isn’t about inventing new “social” revenue streams, this is about leveraging existing revenue streams.

There are four questions that will help you form a good “social core”:

1. Does your business benefit when your customers talk to non-customers about you?  If so, implement social tools that make it easy and valuable for them to do that at every step of the way.  (external marketing)
2. Does your business benefit when your customers talk to each other?  If so, implement social tools that make it easy and valuable for them to do that.  (support/internal marketing/transaction generation)
3. Does your business benefit from being seen as the “expert leader” in a niche?  If so, start thinking about a strategy to host your customers’ discussions, and invite your customers’ problems to you, so that you can publicly solve them.  (marketing/support/PR)

And then…the big one.  The holy grail of “socializing” your business:

4.  Can you implement tools/features that make your product increase in value as more people use it?

Forming a SOCIAL CORE is aligning your customer’s interest with your own. It’s not gimmicky.  It’s not spammy.  It’s not desperate.  When a customer sees that their life will improve by getting someone else to use your product as well….you win.  Big.

This is what made mytrade such a winner.  Because option spreads are complicated and intimidating, they can be very difficult to share with other people.  So we developed thinkShare, which revolutionized options trading for a lot of people.  Now all of a sudden, it is more valuable to have your friends or people you trust trading at thinkorswim along with you.   You actually CARE where your friend has their brokerage account, because you want to be able to share and copy each others’ complex trades very easily.

This could apply to tons of industries that haven’t figured it out yet…..even yours.  A CPA could “socialize” his business by tying the books of suppliers, laborers and contractors together so that they all benefit from having that 3rd party verifying the transactions between each other in real time.   I would try to come up with other examples, but if accounting can be “socialized”, it’s apparent that anything can, right dad?

The bottom line

When you’re deciding on a “social strategy”, make the common stuff a footnote.  Monitoring, announcing, “brand building”….all of that is neat but not necessary AT ALL.  What will really transform your business are creating core differentiators to your product, service, support and marketing.

Beware of ANYONE trying to sell you a “slap on” social media strategy.  The returns will be dismal, I can guarantee you.

Instead, focus like a laser on determining what core changes you can make to align your customers’ interests with your own.

Create a SOCIAL CORE.

Win.