CAN YOUR BUSINESS MAKE MONEY WITH SOCIAL MEDIA?

Play this 2 minute podcast

Todd Snapp, the Digital Media Manager at TekSouth, could hardly contain his enthusiasm.  He was telling me & Phyllis Neill, my partner at WeMentor, how social media had caused his business to take off.

Of course Phyllis & I enjoyed hearing his story since the number one question we are asked is, “Can my business make money with social media?” or stated another way, “How do you get a return on investment with social media?”

Here are Todd’s comments in his own words:

“We have a web-based training system which for a few years had moderate success in a very competitive market.  But we found some niche markets & had some very loyal customers.  We never really could find consistent success even with sales and web marketing.  We did a LOT of cold-calling and a LOT of Google Adwords, but sales were inconsistent & the sales cycle was long.”

“Then one day, one of our clients, a large university, posted a response on a forum which serves educator and college administrators. All she said was that our product, ResultReady, had done well & was very reasonably priced.  We got emails & calls out of the woodwork & consequently closed some very valuable deals including a couple of the largest universities in the country.  It was a real turning point for our product & it made us a legitimate player in any size college or university.”

Social Media changes the model for business building.  The only model in the past was you pay money to some media company to tell prospective clients how great you are.  That model is not very effective.  Your audience knows you paid for that ad.

Social media, however, gives your customers the opportunity to tell the world how great you are.  Since they have first hand experience with you & have nothing to gain by their endorsement, their positive comments are much more powerful.

Of course it’s now mandatory you run an excellent company or you won’t have loyal advocates to brag about you.  This is David Sher, your WeMentor guy saying it’s now what you know, but whoo you know.