Social Media: If I Want It I’ll Buy It. Don’t Sell Me.

Image by websuccessdiva via Flickr

Truth be told.. I am getting immersed in Lisa Hoffman’s blog over at New Media Lisa. She has been KILLING it the past few weeks. She wrote a post recently called Social Media Isn’t About the Selling Cycle – It’s About the Buying Cycle. The post is about the concept of shifting the focus on an individual from a selling cycle to a buying cycle. From her post:

“More than ever before, people are expecting and demanding exactly what they want in every facet of their lives. What does this say about the typical hyper focus on the selling cycle? And what would happen if we turned the telescope around and considered the buying cycle instead?”

I don’t know about you but (as a sales generator) it is kind of nerve racking to shift from a selling cycle to a buying cycle. Does that mean I can’t actively sell? Good God… and no it doesn’t.

Don’t get me wrong…there is some romantic notion behind the thought of creating a meaningful relationship and allowing the buyer to find you in the process but how do you plan and measure for that? Don’t you need to balance between a selling and buying cycle when using social media marketing as part of your strategy?

There is only one problem between a relationship building sales approach when you are building a company: bringing sales in initially. There is a long and short tail approach to selling. Social media is the long tail.

It takes time to build up relationships and create the trust factor that allows people to come to you. That is the whole idea isn’t it? So work towards building the buying cycle to the point where you are the qualified destination for people searching for a solution. Work your butt off to create that special point where selling becomes secondary..

So the answer?

Building the Trust Factor: blogging, testimonials, social media, writing articles.. etc. etc. etc. communicating!

Building a Company: off-line networking, creating relationships in your community, traditional marketing

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SMS + WordPress = Connective Mobile Plugin

I always love it when a group of Indianapolis tech nerds create a innovative widget/application/plugin.

Introducing: Connective Mobile WordPress Plugin

The Breakdown: from Douglas Karr’s post: WordPress: SMS Integration Plugin

One of the projects I’ve been working on this week has been a WordPress Plugin that allows direct SMS integration with Connective Mobile. The plugin is quite robust, with both an administrative interface and an author interface. The admin interface allows you to manage the integration’s features. The author interface allows you to add subscribers and send out messages to your text club subscribers.

The Beautiful Thing: Sending a broadcast text message to your subscribers!

I love the idea of connecting the blogging platform with SMS integration. I would find it very valuable to be able to send out a mass text messaging to all of my SMS subscribers. My hope is that users don’t abuse the priveledge of sending out SMS messages to their subscribers.

I am not a tech minded person so if you want to know more about the administrative details check out Douglas Karr’s post.