There are countless services out there that promise to “take your social media to the next level.” DemandForce comes to mind, so does the company that so badly screwed up Chrylers Twitter stream. More on that at a later date (or maybe I’ll save it for the book).
I hope we don’t make such claims. What we want to do is take you to the next level. Okay, what does that ambiguous-as-all-get-out statement mean? It means:
We wont charge you 99 cents per email to link your existing client list to your Facebook profile. You can do that yourself – for free. (I’ll post on that Monday)
We wont charge you to submit your blog/website to search engines – that’s a waste of time. Search engines don’t work that way anymore, plus if that’s something you really want to do, you can do it yourself – for free.
We wont charge you to “manage” your reputation across the Internet. Your reputation on the Internet depends on your product. You “manage” it by being awesome. Not free, but something you should do anyway. Paying someone to “manage” your reputation is like flushing money away. Why? Two major reasons. First, it’s impossible. There are too many disperate sources of reviews and 99% of them dont allow moderation, they are unmanageable. Second, the ones that are manageable are concentrated. You don’t need to check 40 sites a day to manage your “online reputation,” you need to check one or two a week at most. And that should be just to make sure you’re trending in the right direction– getting more good reviews than bad. Yes, “brand assassination” happens. People get mad and post reviews out of vengeance, competitors post fake horrible reviews, people mistake a different company for yours. But, consumers are smart, they can pick out reviews that seem fishy. You are smart, you can respond to reviews, good, bad, fake and real, on your own.
What we will do:
We will help you understand how to build an organic following online by using tools you already have and some new (free) ones that are available to you.
We will help you understand how social media works and how to work it. Once you understand social media you can integrate it throughout your organization, aligning your company’s goals and positioning with your social media goals and positioning. Social Media is then something that your organization does because it makes sense for the organization; not something it outsources because it thinks it needs Facebook Likes.
We will build a solid foundation of understanding. With that, you you can take advantage of social media now and in the future. As long as you understand the workings behind social media, you can effectively market with it and your marketing schema can grow with the technology.
Best of all, if you already have a solid understanding of the basics, you can do all of this just by following the free articles we post here. If you need to brush up on some of the basics navigate over to the section about our book and pick up a copy. The book will cost you less than it would cost to convert 45 e-mails into a mailing list using some of the 3rd party services out there. After reading it you’ll be able to do everything on your own – for free.
