Social Media Marketing for Business

Guess what?

If you’re a consultant or sell B2B, your business name doesn’t matter much.

How unique and fashionable your website design is– doesn’t really matter.

What converts people is raving reviews from existing clients and the trust you engender from colleagues who speak well of you.

Our website is a twitter bootstrap wordpress theme you can buy for $10.

We wasted months on freelancers who wanted to create the pinnacle of design uniqueness— but it was a big distraction from our core of killer ads and analytics.

Are you wasting time on stuff that isn’t core to what you do?

A NOT SO FICTITIOUS EXAMPLE

Just imagine that you were choosing between two companies to perform services for you– AmazingCleverName Incorporated and CrazySpottedTurkey.

The former has a beautiful looking site, free of good content that would clutter the design. It’s hand-coded, going out of the way to make sure to use all the most impressive new technologies. You can’t actually buy anything on the site or conduct business, since those pieces are still being hand-coded.

The second site is from a company that you know and trust. The staff are well-respected industry veterans that you have met in person. They have a business-minded solution that fits your exact goals.

Sounds extreme, but is this happening in your business?

How many of us have spent money on a custom website for whatever reason, implemented an accounting software package, integrated a CRM program, built custom landing pages, tied in a project management system, or any number of systems?

How many systems do you have to manage in your company now with your customer data littered across them all? 5? 7? 10 systems?

THE WRONG REASONS

I was with one engineer who was insisting that Infusionsoft was a piece of doo-doo (he used another word), and that he would build his own shopping cart, “so live with it.” And another designer who said that what our company needed was yet another website redesign.

How about what our business wants– more revenue with less effort?

Are you focusing on what you’re truly awesome at (drilling teeth, selling cars, providing marketing strategy, selling widgets) or are you frustrated with building systems to try to keep your business operating?

Small businesses are struggling and they have no business creating custom software (unless you happen to be a software company). If you find yourself building custom software in 2013, then you need to see what else is out there.

We happen to be big fans of Infusionsoft and Marketo as marketing automation vendors– to have all your marketing and sales efforts automated. Same with WordPress, of which there are so many free and almost-free themes for you to have a website. Likewise with Heyo on Facebook apps– why build your own?

HOSTAGE CRISIS AVERTED

Don’t let the propeller heads dictate what you “must” build. Focus on your business needs, not on what is technically gratifying to them. The mechanic will recommend you do all kinds of stuff you don’t need.

Customers buy from you because you have a great product or service that others rave about, not because your landing page is built with the latest HTML5 responsive elements or uses Stripe for back-end billing integration.

And the truth is that by the time someone comes to your site, they’ve already done their homework and are likely looking to hire you. So focus not on your name, but on the business value you create.

Readers, where are you focusing your efforts?

Meet Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is the Chief Technology Officer of BlitzMetrics, a digital marketing company which partners with schools to train young adults.

Dennis’s program centers around mentorship, helping students grow their expertise to manage social campaigns for enterprise clients like the Golden State Warriors, Nike, and Rosetta Stone.

He’s an internationally recognized lecturer in Facebook Marketing and has spoken in 17 countries, spanning 5 continents, including keynotes at L2E, Gultaggen, and Marketo Summit.

Dennis has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, CBS Evening News and is co-author of Facebook Nation – a textbook taught in over 700 colleges and universities.

He’s a regular contributor for Adweek’s SocialTimes column and has published in Social Media Examiner, Social Media Club, Tweak Your Biz, B2C, Social Fresh, and Heyo.

He held leadership positions at Yahoo! and American Airlines and studied Finance and Economics at Southern Methodist University as well as London School of Economics. He ran collegiate cross-country at SMU and has competed in over 20 marathons including a 70 mile ultramarathon.

Besides being a Facebook data and ad geek, you can find him eating chicken wings or playing Ultimate Frisbee in a city near you.

You can contact him at dennis@blitzmetrics.com, his blog, or on Facebook.