If you are our ideal client (highly focused market niche small business owners and professional service firms), you are most likely at the beginning stages of your social media strategy.

• You may have a blog, but you don’t have a content production strategy.
• You have a Twitter and Facebook account, but you really don’t know how it can have a qualitative or quantitative ROI (Return on Investment) with your market niche business.

When getting started in social media (blogs, Twitter, Facebook) it’s logical to think you are going to sell a bunch of products and your particular services to those who “follow” you.

There is a problem… even if what you sell is what they need, they don’t want you to sell them stuff.

And you don’t want that either.

So we recommend you sell the click…

We will explain more, but first let’s take a quick summary.

The purpose of this post:

• Provide you with a way to view your social media approach.
• Discover how to sell more by sharing more and creating call-to-actions.
  

Many people have described social media as a virtual party. This metaphor should guide our social media strategy.

Imagine you are at a party. You walk into a physical structure and wander around looking for conversations of interest to you.

Now imagine you are by yourself at that same party and these guys in video below approach you.

It’s funny, but it happens all the time on social media.

How many times do you follow someone on Twitter or Facebook and they seem really interesting and cool. And then 17 seconds later you get an Automatic Direct Message from them trying to interest you in buying something.

You don’t even know them yet! You certainly don’t trust them yet, so why do they think you are going to buy something from them when you first meet them?

The simple rule of social media as a component of your marketing strategy:

• Never try to SELL anything using social media. You can, however, provide them with relevant information and if they would like to learn more they can take action by “mouse clicking” where they will be taken somewhere else to learn more if they are really interested.
  
• Share a variety of interesting, yet relevant topics. Imagine being at the party, it would be boring if all you did was talk about your specific business.
• Share other folks interesting and relevant topics with your folks.

So what can you do?

Your blog is like your home. Just like your friends, you would not invite them to your home unless you liked and trusted them. So, you build folks trust by sending them useful and relevant information. Then, over time, invite them to your blog where they can choose to click on selected links to learn more and maybe even take action to purchase something that is of interest to them.

Just like in a real setting, you would offer people a drink or maybe even something to eat. You would even engage in conversation. Right? And you would do this for FREE.

And just like when you have someone over at your house you would share with them what is helping you in different areas of your life.

For example, let’s say you found a great local Thai food restaurant. You offer to give them the phone number and even recommendation on what to order.

It’s up to them to take action and dial the phone number to your Thai food recommendation.

It’s the same in your online world.

• You look for interesting people to hang-out with.
• You like a variety of relevant information.
• You develop a know, like, trust relationship over time.
• You invite people to your home (blog-your virtual home). Your virtual home is clean and inviting and you give of yourself without expectation of anything in return.
• You share guidance and provide your friends with the opportunity to take action without feeling like they are being sold to. The action in our online world is a mouse click.

So stop selling stuff and sell the click…