Despite the appearance of a down economy, some businesses are surviving, and even thriving more than they ever could have imagined! It’s no coincidence that many thriving businesses are also aggressively marketing whether they can afford it or not. Though marketing in a shifting economy to sustain and even grow your business isn’t a new concept, the social media revolution is creating a new paradigm in the marketing equation: Organizational Buy-In.

Organizational Buy-In is the absolute faith in/and voluntary adoption of an organizations vision, mission, and policy with the genuine intention of improving and growing that organization by any reasonable means. In other words, you have an organization filled with employees who believe in what you’re doing and are willing to do what it takes to make that happen even if the if the end result means your business will become so efficient their job will no longer exist.

Employees taking pride in their profession and figurative ownership in their company isn’t a new concept either, but until now, marketing has mostly been up to business owners, sales people and in larger companies, the marketing department. The introduction of social media as a business tool adds a new twist to what businesses consider marketing and how they use word of mouth through social media to generate brand awareness and revenue.

Now more than ever, businesses rely on more intelligent, harder working, and loyal employees to stay afloat. Employees that meet this criteria are great for maintaining and even growing a business but inside those people is an untapped wealth of potential: they are your new marketing committee.

When was the last time a ‘behind the desk’ employee actively marketed for your business? Is that even possible? Marketing is hard work, and employees are working hard enough as it is to keep their jobs. Why would they go out of their way to get involved in marketing?

First of all, lets talk about loyalty:

Loyal employees tend to be loyal because of relationships they develop with ownership and/or management. Believe it or not, your employees like you, believe in what you’re doing, and want to help you do it better.

So your employees actually like you! Who knew? But saying they like you enough to start marketing; That’s a pretty big leap. Now before you building a bridge to nowhere STOP! Believe it or not, this is going to be a lot easier than you think! Most of your employees are already using the major social networks like Facebook and Twitter, so getting them to use it isn’t step one, and many of them are already talking about their jobs so that isn’t a major hurdle either. The trick is getting your employees to say and do the right things.  With the right education and company policy, your employees can become your main source of new and recurring business and a constant marketing committee.

I know that you’re excited about educating your new marketing committee and turning them loose on the masses, but before you do, consider this: Organizational Buy-In creates a relationship between the employee and the business that forces a win-win that if left unchecked could have a negative effect on your brand.  Once your employees start talking about your business and how awesome it is, they become an active component on the face of your business.  If you’re afraid of this, its too late, they already are. Their friends family and neighbors already know where they work, but now they are actively posting information that will entice people to your business without selling.  For your employees, this new tool can also be used as a weapon. If you treat them badly, they can use this those same methods of marketing to attempt to damage your brand.   So the win for the business is expanded marketing with proven effectiveness and the win for the employee is the necessity for a better work environment driven by ethics, and fairness and an environment that acknowledges the importance of every team member.  This is refresher of an old principle: treat your people right!

I know this concept sounds scary but the business of today is about internal and external collaboration.  Marketing for small and mid-sized businesses especially, will rely more on the efforts of everyone in the organization.  Start thinking about how your team players fit into your marketing model and how they can be maximized in getting the word out about your business.

So the news came down today that Google is going to limit/deny Facebook users’ ability to import contacts directly from GMail until Facebook allows Google users to reciprocate.  Though I see Google’s position this still has to be one of the dumbest and most immature moves ever seen on the interwebs!

For those who missed it, in March of this year (2010), Facebook surpassed Google as the most popular site on the internet.  Google gets over 2 BILLION searches every day, and yes, Facebook is even more popular than that.  With that being said, this move is Google’s way of saying, you beat us so play nice or we are going to make it harder for your users to import contacts.

What is this, Prohibition??  This is a penalty on Facebook USERS not on Facebook.  People aren’t addicted to Google, Facebook however is a different story.  Google helps people find things.  Facebook helps people connect to the world.  You do the math.  So if anything, this could hurt Google and cause them to lose users.  I recommend GMail to many of my clients simply for the importability to social networks.  If they lose that capability, I will be forced to stop recommending it.

Secondly, any GMail user with 0.37 seconds on their hands can search Google and find a fairly simple way to export their contacts from Gmail so they can upload them to Facebook, or just click here.  :)

Google, you can’t win.  People will still love you as long as you don’t mess with their Facebook addiction.  Take your ball and go home.

Have you ever gotten a friend request from someone you didn’t know?  Social Networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are all about making ‘friends.’  But what is a friend really?  In recent time’s it has translated into a status symbol for popularity.

First of all, Facebook has a “Friends List,” and in my book, this list is a catalog of people who have raise their hand and said “YES, i would like to interact with you,”  It is not necessarily a list of your friends.

The simple Psychology behind ‘Friending’

We all have a natural desire to make friends.  When someone says “will you be my friend,” its hard to say no.  It appears rude in person.  On Facebook we don’t have eye contact but psychologically, we have a similar feeling.  We don’t want to say no and this allows Friend Farmers to use you as a number.

What is a Friend Farmer?

A Friend Farmer is a person who seeks to add as many friends as possible with no intention of engaging them on a personal level.  In most cases, the intent is to generate a list of people to blast messages via posts or messages or  send repeated friend, fan/like page, and event requests.

So what are some types of friend farmers?

“So and so has so many friends, they must be popular“

I always get a kick out of it when I see I have mutual friends with someone so I say, “how do you know ‘so and so’?” And the response is “I don’t, they just added me on Facebook.”  Friend Farmer’s rely on the kindness of humanity and request people to be their friend with no real desire to engage or interact with anyone.

“I’m an Expert: I have (this many) Facebook Friends“

In the social media realm, there are a lot of  ’experts’ around and they are staking their expertise on the fact that they have an account with a lot of friends.  How nice.  Question: If you walked in a room could you recognize most of them?  The answer is usually no, and the reason is that many experts are simply adding friends for numbers to appear more popular.

How to Spot a Friend Farmer

If the purpose of becoming friends online is to engage and interact the the easiest way to recognize a friend farmer is by how engaging they are.

First, when they update their status or post something, how many of their friends actually engage them?  My personal goal is 1 – 2%.  If I have 1000 friends, I would expect 10 to 20 interactions on my postings.  (This is in no way an industry standard, but a good indicator for me of how engaged my friends are).

Second, how often do they engage others?  For every one post, how much time does the person with tons of friends spend engaging (or commenting) on the posts of others?  If you look at someone’s page and all you see is them posting updates and they never comment, in my opinion that’s the equivalent of giving a speech or talking to yourself.

Contrary to popular belief, social networking isn’t about the you.  Its about your connections and how well you engage them.  If your intention is to grow your sphere of influence, be engaging.  Send a personal message with your request, and engage your new friends by commenting on and/or liking what they post.

If your intention is to gain as many friends as possible, remember the popular guy in high school?  Where is he now?

Touching Base With Your Social Media Sphere

So you have all your Social Media sites and marketing methods up and running and you are doing everything by the books to try to get your business up and running.  You got the media and content down pact but don’t forget the “Social” part of your methods.

I often see alot of marketers out there that just focus on building their content up and neglecting other aspects of the Social Media marketing method.  Like our good buddy Seth Godin says “No One Cares About You” that means let go of the vanity issues of your site and blog just for a second and try to get your connections and engagement fresh.

The same method and guideline in keeping your content and backlinks fresh and added daily, the same effort you have to supply in your social engagement within your Social Media Sphere.

What is your Social Media Sphere?

Your Social Media Sphere includes:

• Blogs - Comment on other bloggers in your niche, develop that rapport in your community so you can count on them on commenting your stuff.  Thus ultimately building your exposure and authoritative presence.  Another Simple tip is to try to thank and respond to users commenting on your blog, it makes your readers feel appreciative in commenting more often.

• Social Networks (Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIN, Twitter etc) – This is very important to keep your updates fresh and engagement in tact.  Nobody likes a non-social nomad on these sites.  If you are trying to engage users on these sites and you see nothing but selfish vanity updates that is a sure sign that you will be removed or ignored on these social networks.  Try engaging with people even if its to say thank you, or how are you? People will respond if you engage them and thus making people take more notice to you, get the hint?

• Video Marketing – Make sure your Video community like youtube you constantly try to engage on their as well for your subscribers and commenters.  Again nobody likes a big shot who doesn’t acknowledge fans or subscribers unless your a celebrity.  Reach out and try to comment on other Video Directors in your niche, more than likely they will look you up just from commenting.

These are all simple and common sense tips but lots of marketers don’t take these into action surprisingly.  So go out there and Engage!!

Writer Profile

Justin Williams

Justin Williams is the owner of Social Media Vision and is an avid Tech, Social Media, & Marketing enthusiast.  He is also a fully specialized financial mortgage consultant during the day.  He has been a successful event coordinator for REBarcamp Virginia Beach and loves being a geek at heart.  Justin can be found at http://card.ly/JustinWilliams

Are you using social media to grow your business? I get a lot of questions from business owners and other busy professionals about how to develop strategies for business growth using social media. My goal has always been try to simplify the social networking equation, and through my calculations I have determined that social media can be simply describe down to a three step process that when implemented properly can explode your business online and in person.

Having a well developed social media profile on a website like LinkedIn or Facebook is the first step toward growing your online presence. Before you can attempt to share a single product or service online, you must first be able to sell yourself (branding if you will). Branding yourself as a person first and not a sales robot instantly creates a unimposing medium for your friends and potential customers to become aware of who you are and hopefully what you do.

Blogging is simply a medium for relevant material. And what is relevant is relative to the viewer. First you have to find out what is relevant to your target audience, then you use your blog to convert that material into a format that is attractive to them. The more relevant material you provide, the more your expertise becomes apparent and your popularity grows.

Cycle of Social Media

Finally, you need the website you probably already have. What you don’t know is that unless you have something and/or someone pointing to your website, you’re probably wasting valuable time and money that you put into it. Blogging and social media outlets do the pointing for you. On the surface, they give people a reason to want to know more about you. Beneath, they are a free way to lead the google spiders right to your website.

The key is constantly having your social media trifecta pointing at something of relevance. Your blogs and profiles should always be pointing at your website and vice versa. Constantly be looking for relevant links, events, and other info you can share with your target audience. When they see value in what you have to share, they will also see value in and want to do business with you.

One of the primary methods of referral generation in the sales industry has been word of mouth advertising and the perfect example of how to maximize the  potential of this powerful yet simple exposure tool is exhibited by companies that grow via network marketing.

Though often stereotyped as pyramid schemes or scams, Network Marketing or Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is actually the ultimate example of large companies actually spreading the wealth around. MLM companies actually allow the sales force to generate the majority of the income; income that unlike most forms of income is residual, meaning it recurring as long as the account is open, and/or the customer is paying for the product. The way the sales force is recruited is though word of mouth advertising. Many people find interest in the products or services, and some see the opportunity to generate income while sharing what they have found with others.

The reality however is that the landscape of sales has changed drastically, and direct selling is becoming more and more taboo as consumers are becoming more aware of the power of options and therefore choice in every marketplace. As a result, even the best MLM-ers are turning to social media as a method of connecting with their friends, and potential clients and business partners.

Social Media provides you with a relaxed atmosphere where you can share your life, but also share what you do, because what you do is also a part of who you are. Having a strong social media portfolio is key to establishing an MLM-er as a real person that friends and potential clients can relate to, not a pushy salesperson only concerned with making a sale.  That makes you someone they can connect with by name, face, and profession.  A powerful trifecta of connections!

If you couldn’t tell, Social Media is hot right now! A lot of people are now connected to others via some social media outlet these days. Be it a Social Networking Profile like Twitter or Facebook, a Blog, or even a YouTube Video channel, people are loving this easy and effective way to communicate.

One of the things that makes social media so darned attractive is the fact that it’s usually completely free to use.   Anyone with a little time and patience can set up a Facebook page or a Twitter and immediately start engaging people and sharing info and as a result something amazing is happening: Accelerated evolution!

Free information is making it so easy for people to share ideas, learn, and grow, personally and professionally at such a high rate! Creativity and success are thriving in the social media realm and it can be directly linked to the ability to share information freely and easily!

Recently, Justin Williams and I did a presentation at one of the most well known Social Media Events in Real Estate REBar Camp.  Justin focused on the 80/20 rule of social media which says 80% of your updates should be personal, 20% should be business.  This rule also applies to free information. If your 20% business is filled with rich free information, you will reap the benefit of the 80% personal connection in business!   I can say from experience that the law of reciprocity is in full effect. The more you give away freely the more that will come back to you!   I cannot begin to count the referrals I have gotten from those eager to help me because I have freely shared information with them.  So with all that being said, don’t stop sharing what you know…. freely!

Are you curious about this phenomenon called social media? Social Media is rapidly becoming a primary method of communication and information sharing. With Facebook reporting more than 200 million active users and Twitter boasting growth from 14 million users to more than 21 million users, social media is clearly here to stay.

With the growing popularity of social media, businesses are also beginning to understand that they can use this new communication tool to benefit them professionally: but how? At first glance social media appears complicated, time consuming, and almost pointless. After all, how can you generate business from posting random material about your life?

With all these questions many business professionals are ignoring the 800lb social media gorilla in the room. They know its there, they know its not going anywhere, but they don’t know what to do with it so they’d rather ignore it than deal with it.

That’s where we come in. At Guerrilla Social Media, we make sense of social media by educating our clients about social networking profiles, blogging and how they work in conjunction with your website to establish your online presence. You are not alone we are hear to guide you! Let the journey begin.