Social Media and the Industrial Market? Ahhhh…now I get it.

The SEO Team here has been involved in using social media in juncture with SEO for almost 2 years. Everyone in the SEO team, that is, except for me. I’ve been the one hold out. Don’t get me wrong, I love social networks. In my free time I’ve spent countless hours on YouTube and in various forums of personal interest. I’ve just never understood how it could benefit our industrial clients. But today I was reading a newsletter at Bruce Clay called The Seven Deadly Sins of Social Media and it clicked. I recommend reading the whole article, but this is the part that really stuck with me -

Leave the sales pitches at the door. They don’t belong in social media. That’s not why you’re there. You want to develop a presence in social media in order to listen. You want to hear customer concerns, to learn about them, to find out what gets them excited, what they like about your product, what they still want, etc. You’re not there to pitch and sell and mass email and spam and become a full-fledge bane on their existence. That’s how social media campaigns backfire and how companies inadvertently end up annoying and alienating their life blood. Be a good social media citizen and listen before you speak and offer before you take. Otherwise, you’re going to be written off as yet another company that doesn’t know how to use social media and who is only interested in promoting themselves. You have add value to the communities you’re participating in – value for your customers, not yourself.

So now I get it. The benefit of social media has nothing to do with selling a product or service directly.  It’s not about short term gain, it’s about long term commitment to you clients. It’s about building a relationship online, the same way you do with customers face to face.  It’s an opportunity for you to learn from your customers and improve the way you do business through their feedback. And my guess is, if you do it right, you may just find a few new customers along the way:)

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