In the first half of this piece I shared a little about my history and journey as a Social Professional (If you would like to read part 1 click here). In this second instalment I am going to share a little more of my story as it relates to learning the hard lessons about what does and doesn’t work online and why most consultants in the Social Media field are leading professionals down dead end pathways, ones that I myself tried and abandoned a long time ago.
The first and biggest mistake is thinking that Social Media is about promotion, marketing or selling. Now I’m not saying we won’t achieve those things, however they should be an outcome rather than the driver of your efforts.
Back when I started experimenting with Search Engine Optimisation it was a lot easier than it is now to be ‘ranked’ highly in search for terms like ‘Financial Planning Brisbane’ or ‘How to make money investing’ etc.
Whilst you can indeed create ‘leads’ by perfecting a website designed to attract people searching for answers online, I believe it is a false economy. The people you tend to attract in this way are almost always searching because they want some ‘thing’ – information, instant answers or a specific service. Almost always they are NOT looking to initiate a relationship with you or those within your business.
This approach can be okay for selling a product but is ineffective for relationship based Professions, and if you think about it the truth of this should be obvious.
Yet this is usually the first thing you will be sold via concepts such as Search Engine Optimisation, Website Portals, Automated Content/Sales Sequences for email, websites, etc.
It seems compelling and you can pay someone else to do it, the problem is… it doesn’t really work.
Not only have I learned these lessons from personal experience but I have worked with many professional firms who have spent a lot of money and time only to give up in frustration.
The second problem is really an extension of the first, and that is that good Social Media is about content distribution. I hear the term content marketing all the time; frankly the idea makes me feel a little ill. Using myself as an example – the truth is I am writing this article because it is something that I care about, and the message is what I want to say in the way that I want to say it.
I am not trying to ‘construct it’ for you or create a message for my ‘audience’. Writing this is not work, it is expression. The reason that this article will result in new clients for The Social Adviser is not because of the content itself, but because it is connected to me and everything that the business I founded is about. I care deeply about the work that relationship professionals do and I hate seeing them waste time and money when they could be giving more value to more people. I can’t help but make that obvious in the things that I write about because it is part of who I am. If you put yourself into it, it will by default be interesting, and more importantly it will attract the right people to you.
So this leads me to the second most common ‘snake oil’ solution being sold to Professionals in relation to Social Media – the ‘done for you’ content service. Again this is very appealing on the surface, after all we are far too busy to add another task to our already overfull days.
Why not just hire the agency that will do everything for us and post it out everywhere on Social Media?
The truth is that on the surface you may look like you are doing a lot of the right things but just like Search Engine Optimisation your results will be at best mediocre and expensive. This isn’t about marketing via content, this is about creating connection and resonance and ultimately building relationships, and if you want that to happen it is impossible to outsource your content creation.
If you were invited to a networking event as a special guest with a room full of your ideal prospective clients/customers, you wouldn’t hire someone to go on your behalf, nor would you jump on the table and shout to everyone why you think they should be your clients.
*Note I am talking about attracting new prospects to work with. Educational material and information updates to existing clients often should be outsourced because in those cases it is the information that at times takes precedence over the resonance.
In years past I have tried many different variations from external content providers to hiring full time journalists and we have worked with many firms who have followed the same path, and again I have never seen any convincing argument to show that this isn’t wasted time and money.
See one of my previous articles about how I abandoned the traditional newsletter and in the process generated huge numbers of ideal client referrals. (How to get 26 referrals).
The third hard lesson for Advice Professionals online comes as they begin to expand their efforts into video, and again is an extension of the same misconceptions I have already outlined. My invention ‘the WHY video’ has in recent times, especially in Australian Advice circles, become a buzz concept being championed by consultants, agencies and corporations. Whilst it’s good to know that the message is ‘getting out there’, it is also frustrating to see it being sold to Relationship Professionals as something it is NOT.
A true WHY video has nothing to do with clients, it is not about why they should choose you or what you do differently or how you do it. WHY, applied in the right way, is only ever about the person themselves, it is a way for others to form a connection with that person and to leapfrog the process of building trust and a relationship with the people that resonate with who they are (and ultimately these always make the best clients).
I am quite often asked to look at a new feature video produced by firms without the right knowledge (which has cost a lot of money to produce) that is reportedly based on the concepts we have shared. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the ‘We are different because of our independence, process, research, technical ability, quality of product, software, investment mix, expertise, impartiality… *yawn*… *click away*.
The truth is the only thing that can ever differentiate a relationship professional is they themselves; it is a brand that can never be copied, is infinitely profitable and has exponential and almost unlimited leverage through Social Media. In just the same way, the only brand that matters to a professional firm is their people and the collective reflection of their culture.
If I am the original Social Adviser it is because I have been working hard to learn all of these lessons the hard way, so take my almost two decades worth of obsession and mistakes and avoid making them yourself.