By Keith Ferrazzi, Author of Never Eat Alone and Who’s Got Your Back and Tahl Raz
(excerpted from Success Secrets of The Social Media Marketing Superstars, Entrepreneur Press July 2010)
In today’s virtual world, you don’t need a Twitter strategy or a Facebook strategy or even a Google strategy. You need a Relationship Strategy that leverages all aspects of social media.
Relationships: they are the ultimate source of advantage, the new heavyweight champion of the marketing ring. Social media, however, is the champ’s head trainer. There’s never been a better tool for relationship building. Social media allows for two-way conversations with an entire market, a reality that would have made the innovative Madison Avenue ad men in the 1950s fall off their Eames sofas.
But you shouldn’t try approaching social media without a deep understanding of the relationship-centric reality of Web 2.0 – the reality of the ever-increasing importance of foundational mindsets like generosity, transparency, and candor. If you rush or go in without information, what you’ll get is an all-too-common experience nicely captured by Google’s Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik:
Social media [can be] like teen sex. Everyone wants to do it. Nobody knows how. When it’s finally done, there is surprise it’s not better.”
Luckily, through knowledge, practice and commitment, social media can be exciting, engaging, pleasurable and successful for any business. [Read more...]
