Earlier this week I had an interesting meeting with a partner (remember, we prefer partnering) who was being approached by a “web site and social media consultancy” about how he should be marketing his organization via social media. The client organization focuses on selling specialized services to a high end B2B market. The consultancy suggested to him that his organization needed a Facebook Page and a YouTube channel along with a Twitter strategy and blogging strategy. The client said to me “It did not feel right to me, but each time I asked a question they seemed to have an answer and response.”
I wish this was the first time I had heard of a partner being sold like this. There is no question – NOT EVERY SOLUTION WORKS FOR EVERY COMPANY. Moreover, trust your instincts as only YOU know your business. You know your clients. You know your prospective clients. You may not know or may be learning the world of social media and digital marketing, but this learning should not overshadow your knowledge and instincts.
For this partner, not only were these solutions the wrong solutions, but in fact a Facebook Page and a YouTube channel might have actually hurt the brand that was created. In the end, we agreed that he needed to position the organization as thought leaders and initiate a newsletter with them as curator (a newsletter that is an aggregation of interesting industry articles with commentary and observations from the organization) and ultimately look at creating a coinciding blog. Once the momentum from that has been created, a Twitter strategy would follow suit immediately and from there other social and digital marketing techniques could be implemented.
The point of this story – there is no magic bullet, no panacea. There are solutions and opportunities out there to do things differently, smartly, and intelligently using the latest tools and techniques. But, if you think it does not make sense – it probably does not. If you think it is interesting, it probably is. Open your mind. Listen to ideas. And then implement the solutions that will work.
