There's no shortcut...suck it up and do what you need to do.

Let me be frank. I am concerned about what I’m seeing in business.

What I see is that increasingly organisations are realising the need to “do something with social” but because it hasn’t been on their radar they don’t know where to start…so they turn where they have always turned, with er to an “expert” or to “an app” or to their “agency.”

The expert might well offer them a 1/2 day masterclass. The expert might well be a great exponent of social themselves, and will download all of their expertise to the audience who leave feeling energised and excited…and do nothing.

The expert makes being active on social look so easy. Their relaxed manner in their videos and daily posts make it look like anyone can do it. In theory anyone can…but in practice few do. The difference between “simple” and “easy” is very apparent if you have ever tried to write a post, update your profile or “shoot a quick video.” You might even be thinking “I could write better bogs than this”…but the reality is that even though you could you don’t.

A friend of ours in Singapore has “knowing but not doing is folly” as his headline and it’s so true. The fact that you could do all of the things that you need to make you successful on social but don’t highlights that the challenge isn’t know what to do but in actually doing it in a programmatic way.

The upshot of this is that the one day workshop changes nothing. Ever.

The app is something we have all fallen into as a solution for our problems. We simply “connect it to our profiles and it does the rest. It doesn’t. Like the 1970s motorised “toning table” that exercised for you…it got nobody fit.?

If it was really as easy as simply connecting you profiles and a “constant stream of quality leads” coming out of the back-end wouldn’t everyone be doing this?

There is no app for this. There is no app that means you don’t need to eat healthily to lose weight. There is no app that means you don’t need to run to get fit. There is no app that means you don’t have to go on a first date…

An app is NOT the answer. Plus…as a bonus prize, an app very likely will get your profile deleted by LinkedIn!

Using an agency to do it for you is, like with the app, in direct contravention of LinkedIn’s T&Cs and even if it wasn’t it’s still not a good idea.

If you think of social media by analogy with a large show or event you’ll start to get what you need to do. When you go to a trade show you wouldn’t send your assistant in your stead saying “I’m sorry that Dave can’t make it, he’s too busy, but you can talk to me and if you’re interested then Dave will give you a call.” You see? That is really unattractive to the buyer.

The reason you go to events is to keep old relationship alive and to forge new ones. Some of the most valuable moment from events and the chance meetings in the bar or the coffee shop.

You have to be there for this magic to happen and social is the largest event in the world and it’s open 24/7.

So, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) there is no shortcut. A one day seminar, an app or an agency will not obviate the need for your team to get on social and get active. But this is the whole point. Social does not make the process of meeting new people and forging relationships with them any easier…it never did. What it does do though is make scaling that easier.

The biggest event has only 100,000 people and if 0.1% could be buyers that’s only 100 people. With social there are 100 million people who could be buyers…so that 0.1% scales to 100,000 people…and you can access all of them.

Where at physical events you might be able to have 10 meetings per day on social you can have 100 and where physical events finish at 6pm social never finishes.

Your team can all take the very best of themselves to a global audience and they can do it every hour of every day.

The fact that you didn’t know this is fine…you know it now. Don’t squander the opportunity by wasting time and money on doing things that are destined to fail. Put your best foot forward and be a star!

#socialselling #revenue #socialorganisation #digitalorganisation