Social Media Business Hour | Episode 1

Our First show…well, they said we would only get better from here…

Some excerpts from the show on 7-15-13:

Jordan: I have a question for you…And I’ve heard this from lots of business owners.

There’s a lot of fear out there about going around about social media. What to do and what not to do. The tenants if you will.

What would you say, to the people who are rather skeptical of this whole social media, “Fad”…I mean, It’s gotta be a fad.

Nile: It’s a fad like all the others. My question is, and I do believe by the way; that it is a fad. Where that fad is going, unfortunately we do not know? But it’s the fad that everybody’s going towards today. So the question, at least the way I feel is, when I look at the businesses that are fearful of social media. They are not only fearful because they don’t know it and or they don’t understand it. And that’s pretty common, we have a tendency to fear what we don’t know and or don’t understand. We hear the horror stories about what’s happened on social media.

Jordan: Yes, lots and lots of horror stories.

Nile: But you know, the same thing goes with horror stories we hear about anything online and Social Media for Business means, an online campaign. So, you know, I think, the only way to get over something like that is, you in fact have to jump in the pool and get wet. While there is a lot of things to learn, most of the time what I’ve learned and the most valuable lessons are sometimes learned the hard way. I’ve made mistakes and I’ve gotten bruised….And I’ve made mistakes doing what the “experts” told me to do. Yes, following the advice of experts.

Jordan: And you have learned these hard lessons through, finding things out with your own business. Have you not? This isn’t just something you just picked up because you like social media. You were looking to actually make some changes in your business to make more sales.

Nile: Absolutely. And it wasn’t just about making “cheaper sales”. Which I think, a lot of people think that’s what social media will do for them. It’s about making better sales. Not only making better sales, but growing and engaging with the customer more. Keep that customer longer. The way to keep a customer, the way I jumped into it was: I had sales challenges, customer challenges and a way of delivering the message that I want delivered to my customers. Sometimes when you get caught up in traditional media, you find is that the message ou’re trying to get across is not being delivered at all. It tends to get twisted a lot.

Jordan: How so? Some of our friends talk about how everybody should try advertising, you know, do some marketing. So for most people, that means doing a direct mail piece or a radio commercial.

Nile: Well, we’ve talked to a lot of business owners and we talk to a lot of people that went down that path. Like what we are talking about with social media. They don’t understand social media or don’t have the time and so what do they do? They hire somebody to come in and help them with their advertising campaigns/marketing campaign.

Jordon: You mean, they hire “The Experts”.

Nile: Yes, The Experts. And what happens so many times is when they’re “experts”. They have the same formulas and your business has to fit that same formula they use.

Jordan: And what if your business doesn’t fit their formula?

Nile: If you don’t, it is typically not a good fit and you both really don’t get the results you wanted. So the beauty of social media is that people like transparency, they like to see you and they like to see me for who we are. So, to that extent the more natural we could be, the more we let our likes and dislikes be known, the more we relate to a certain group of people.

People these days want to know like and trust before doing business with you. In fact you’ll hear that on this show a lot. We do business with people we know like and trust.
So, we allow people to get to know us, through our social media campaign and generally they get to like us or dislike us. The fact that they dislike us is okay too.

Jordan: Whoa, whoa, whoa. That doesn’t make any sense at all! How is it okay for us that people don’t like us? How does that help my business?

Nile: Because people do business with people they are similar to. Let’s say that I’m a cat lover, and you’re a dog lover. And you don’t even happen to like cats at all except when you see a dog chasing a cat.

Nile: So with that being the case, can I talk about my pet? And my favorite pet cat Farley?

He is a nice orange tabby. Would you be interested that Charlie and I have a close relationship? Sometimes my wife gets jealous of that relationship. The more I talk about my cat and my cat becomes involved in my social media campaign, certain people are going to like that. But some people may not like it at all. In fact, some dog people may get tired of hearing about the damn cat.

Jordan: So people who like cats may like you more, than the people who are dog people?

Nile: Yes, people do business with other people they can associate with. We tend to forget that. So, when people come in to do business with you, one of the things we are going to find is. They are the ones who are going to like you more, when they have similarities.

What kind of things do like? Do you go to the same restaurants? Do you listen to the same music? Do you like the same movies? The more they find that you have in common with them, the more you relate with them, the more you learn about them, the more they like you. They learn to trust you. And generally, that leads to more business.

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Social Media Business Hour