Making a decision to leverage social media or not

Posted by Axel Schultze on April 23, 2010

0 comments | 1436 reads

In this post I’m not advocating social media – I’m advocating making a decision.

Here are 4 steps to be able to make a decision within 5 business days.

1) Find your customers (Monday)
Request your sales teams to find your existing customer in the major sites including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Slideshare, Youtube… Ask them to not only look for the “economic buyer” but also for users of your products or services (the main influencer). If they can’t find anybody, terminate the exercise and decide to do business as usual.

2) Listen and learn (Tuesday)
Understand what is on top of the customers mind by reading their status line, tweets, posts etc. If you can’t find anything. Again stop and do business as usual.

3) Visit your clients (Wednesday – Friday)
You found your customers, now visit them on their sites once a day for one week. If your customers don’t do anything, stop right here, go back to business as usual.

4) Engage (Wednesday – Friday)
If you are still on, allow your teams to be social and have the same conversations like they would have over the phone or face to face. As your team and your clients start a new bond you may now consider exploring the social web in a strategic way.

Now you can make an educated business decision! (over the weekend)

And if you decide to go forward, feel free to ask the team from the Social Media Academy for some advice.

Axel
http://xeesm.com/AxelS

Republished with author's permission from original post by Axel Schultze.

Axel Schultze

CEO of XeeMe, Chairman Social Media Academy, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, published author of Channel Excellence, frequent speaker at industry events, and winner of the 2008 SF Entrepreneur award. Former CEO of BlueRoads, Infinigate, Computer2000. My social presence: XeeMe.com/AxelS

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