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Let your employees loose on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, says Tom Skotidas, a business-to-business (B2B) lead-generation expert.
What’s more, they shouldn’t try and hard sell, but focus on building “social capital”, and focus on their personal brand rather than pushing a corporate line.
Social networks are never about corporate-to-personal relationships,” said the Sydney-based consultant, who blogs at tomskotidas.com and is visiting Auckland for seminars mid-October .
“B2B should always be person to person; you don’t want to deal with Cisco, you want to deal with John Smith who works in business development for Cisco.”
Too fluffy
But it’s not all fun and games.
Many companies take too fluffy an approach to social media, Mr Skotidas said.
In building your personal brand, you should also be building your business’s brand by supplying your contacts with useful information, tips and links.
You should not be messing around, but seeking out decision makers.
And at the end of the day, you have to start translating your online interaction into real-life meetings.
Or as Mr Skotidas puts it, “You need to monetierise those conversations or you will get fired.”
Turn virtual introductions into real-life meetings
It’s only in face-to-face meetings where the “blood, guts and passion,” of business can take place, and where you can 'credentialise' yourself and your company.
Mr Skotidas advises trying to arrange a meeting with a social media contact after around a month, citing common business interests – and to only move into sales mode once you meet them face-to-face.
In his own case, he’s had a 50% success rate in translating social media chat into real-life meetings.
Unbelievable transparency
Mr Skotidas keeps up with all social media, including the new Google+ (although he shares your correspondent's frustration with its failure to support Google Apps pro users).
But the professional network LinkedIn is an especially fertile patch in area that, for many marketers used to prising information out of targets, is something of a wonderland.
"With social networks, people self-report. On LinkedIn, many of us will just vomit a whole bunch of infomation," said the consultant, who schools his clients on how to zero in on targets by using social techniques and focused tactics rather than trendy software tools.
"There's unbelievable trransparency for marketers."
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Monetise those tweets, or get fired
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