I had the honor of listening to Chris Brogan yesterday at the Detroit Chamber’s Marketing Mavericks event at the Detroit Zoo. I really like listening to people talk about social media, because it helps me come up with new ways to explain it to clients. One of the things Chris said was that selling is still about building relationships, social media is just a way to do that online.
It used to be that selling was about building local relationships, because you were only really selling to those in your town. Then there was the newspaper and you were able to advertising to nearby towns (or maybe you visited there). Then the phone allowed us to have conversations with people around the world. Now, we can not only have conversations around the world, but have many to many and one to many conversations much easier than ever before. But, no matter what technology is used, selling is still about building relationships.
You’re not going to buy something from someone you don’t know (unless it’s not that important to know the person for that particular purchase). So if you do use social media for your business (and you probably should), make sure you’re still using it to build relationships. At the end of the day, business is still about how many clients we have and how much money is coming in the door. Build your business by leveraging social media to build relationships online with potential customers.
What do you think? How do you use social media to build relationships?
(photo by Katie Tegtmeyer @ Flickr CC)
Liked this post? Consider subscribing to our RSS feed or our free email updates or following us on Twitter.
Technorati tags: social media, brand, social networks, business, marketing strategy, marketing