Google_ for Business_ How Google's Social Network Changes Everything - Chris Brogan [50]
Referrals are gold. There’s hardly a business that doesn’t count referrals from past customers as the #1 source of new and valuable leads. Yet most companies overlook the importance of building a network and instead place emphasis on traditional advertising methods, hard-sell outbound marketing (in email and direct mail), and sales-only interactions (versus relationship-based marketing).
You need to build an audience that matters to your organization (no matter the size). I won’t answer the question of who should be in your audience. You would know that better than me. Your audience should be composed of people related to a topic, region, wealth, or some other demographic that you know. It’s hard to segment people on Google+ in those ways. (Although the third-party site findpeopleonplus.com certainly gives it a try.) It’s up to you to put together and understand the dynamics of your audience.
You should also build an audience that’s useful to your business goals. More important, you need to turn your audience into a community. You need to express to your audience that sustainable, relationship-minded business is important to you. If you seek strictly transaction-based selling, you won’t get the results you expect.
Further, third-party applications do not help grow your audience on Google+. Agencies and other consulting groups might offer services to help with this kind of thing, but at this point, they are strictly manual, and the value of this type of service is suspect. Ask for a sense of the methodology used before choosing to accept anyone’s offer of this nature.
Sales are important to business, as is marketing, especially referrals. However, treat your community in a way that makes these seem secondary to your mission. Engage your community, and we’ll agree on the best way to treat your community.
What Interests Your Audience
If you treat your audience right, it will appreciate you and perhaps even become a community within which you participate before you ever ask for anything. That’s the best possible outcome. But before discussing this further, let’s talk about what I mean by “community.”
I use the term “community” gently because most people tend to think of a community as a static thing with boundaries and numbers. They look at how many people “like” their Facebook page and think that’s the number. They look at their email list and think that’s the number. They see how many followers they have on Twitter and how many people have circled them on Google+ and think that’s the number. However, community is a lot more fluid. It’s actually only the active and lurking (but attentive) people who count as your community.
Following are some of the reasons people give for following other people:
• I follow people who have filled out a profile and have a picture. If they don’t take the time to fill out a profile, why should I care about them?
• I follow people who get mentioned by other people I follow. If you’re mentioned in a post and I check you out and you’re interesting, I add you to a circle.
• I circle people if I’m interested in what they post.
• I look at people who leave interesting comments on other people’s posts. If they can hold up their end of the conversation, I circle them.
• I want value. If you’re not sharing something of value, I won’t circle you.
• I want personal takes, not just your business thoughts.
• I want interesting and original, not just reshared information.
These responses reflect what many people consistently say. In short, people want many different things, and everyone is of a different mind about the criteria for selecting who they put in which circle.
These