Owning my own business, I struggle with “selling” my online seminars too hard and “not selling them hard enough”. Do I send direct emails to potential clients? Do I post in Linkedin groups and add content? When do people buy? How hard do I push in my monthly newsletters to career practitioners?
In A World Gone Social, Ted and Mark do a convincing job of explaining their mantra, “Social First – Sell Second“. They make the argument that we live in a different world these days where one disgruntled employee or customer can post negative comments on a variety of social media sites and really hurt the company. AND happy employees and customers can also post, and that is where we should be focused.
I love their acronym, OPEN = Ordinary People, Extra-ordinary Network. Help others, offer content and advice freely and the sales will come. Encourage all your employees to be on social media and offering assistance (rather than berate them for being on talking about your business because they have not gone their your marketing dept to determine the best words to use). They advocate for a “flatter” organization where all employees are more equal and have a say in the company as well as a commitment to it.
There are lots of take-a-ways in this book for me convincing me that I have been on the right path of giving as much of my expertise as I can in LinkedIn groups, sharing articles, writing articles, my monthly newsletters, and simply offering to help people…for free. They have also given me much food for thought about what I might do better as I move forward.
If you own your own business or are a manager in a company and want to know how to move your company to our current century, read this book and take notes.
Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.
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