Top 10 tips for using social media in your ADR marketing

The following article was just published in the spring newsletter of ACR’s New England Chapter, NE-ACR. I’m delighted to have shared newsletter space with fellow authors Diane Levin (Web-Savvy Advice for ADR Professionals), Blair Trippe, David Gardner, Al Canali, Mindy Milberg, and Jim McGuire. Special thanks to Louisa Williams, editor, for all the hard work she puts into producing each issue.

Using Social Media in ADR Marketing: Top 10 Tips

“You should blog.”

“Get on Facebook – yesterday.”

“If you’re not on Twitter, you’re missing out on a big marketing opportunity.”

“I have 703 connections on LinkedIn. You?”

If only successful conflict resolution businesses proliferated as quickly as places to hang out online and other people’s opinions about how you should spend your marketing time.

Because putting time into marketing you must. If you’re like most conflict resolution professionals building practices today, you will not find business success until you master your craft, whether it’s mediation, conflict coaching, collaborative law, arbitration or one of many other processes for addressing conflict; identify the conflict-related services your market doesn’t just need but wants; and conduct effective regular marketing online and off.

That last challenge is difficult for many conflict resolution professionals who don’t think of marketing as part of their practice, don’t know how to tap online platforms for marketing, consider social media a colossal waste of time, are simply overwhelmed by all the options out there, or all of the above.

Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, blogging, podcasting, and the like are all social media, an umbrella term used to describe the online intersection of information creation, human interaction and networking, and the diffusion of ideas.

They’re also the latest bandwagons. But bandwagons, seductive as they are, can be dangerous wastes of precious time. Going along for the ride can lead you to destinations you never wanted to visit and away from the ones that would make the journey worth your while. So don’t just jump on the bandwagon. Learn how to steer and make these tools work for you.

This article offers best practices for leveraging social media and figuring out how to get the biggest return on the investment of your time. While it won’t help you decide whether to blog, podcast, or tweet to build your practice, it will help you understand what’s involved in doing this right and, in the process, help you assess the value of using social media as part of your marketing mix.

The 10 tips that follow have a common thread: They’re all informed by three related habits of mind. Adopt these mindsets when you’re using social media, and they’ll guide you well every time.

Mindset 1: Relationship. It’s not called social media by accident. At its foundation, social media is more about relationship development than anything else. Relationship marketing, conversation marketing, dialogue marketing, and word-of-mouth marketing are today’s buzzwords, and they all assume that effective marketers know to put relationship first. Remember that you’re in a relationship business, so use online platforms to demonstrate your best communication and social skills. When participating online, think, “build connection.”

Mindset 2: Conversation. Today’s effective marketers don’t build relationships so they can talk at other people. They build them to start and participate in two-way conversations online, just as you would in any in-person relationship. When participating online, think “conversation” instead of “bullhorn.”

Mindset 3: Authenticity. Twitter has more than 20 million users in the United States alone and grew by 50% monthly in 2009. Facebook boasts 400 million active users. There are more than 130 million blogs and approximately 1 million blog posts daily around the globe. All this means lots of noise and too few signals. When participating online, be a signal in all that noise – figure out what sets you apart, what differentiates yourself from your competition, and use it. Vanilla just isn’t a good flavor online.

Top 10 Tips

1. Get clarity on your goals. Too many people start participating in social media as an experiment. That’s not a bad way to start, but what’s crucial to leveraging social networking effectively is defining and refining your goals. When you get clear on exactly what’re you’re hoping to accomplish and how you can achieve your goals, you’ll know how much time you should devote to social media, whom you should follow, and what you should be talking about online.
2. Find your tribe. Marketing genius Seth Godin, author of best-selling books such as “Purple Cow,” defines a tribe as “a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea.” Social media isn’t about gathering as many followers, readers, and listeners as you can – it’s about finding and connecting with the right people, those who are interested in what you offer, your big idea, or what you represent. Focus on tribe, not numbers.
3. Don’t be that guy. We all know someone like him, that guy who can’t stop talking about himself and holds the floor as if he’s in a one-man show. We all know how we respond to these egomaniacs, so leave the pulpit at home. When you make friends on Twitter, don’t make your first message to them a promotion for your business. When you link up on LinkedIn, find out about your new friend before telling them how much you can help them. It’s fine to mention what you offer and share your writings, videocasts, or audio recordings. But overt self-promotion shouldn’t be the bulk of what you’re doing. Remember the three mindsets.
4. Make a commitment. It’s estimated that 50% of blogs go inactive within 90 days, meaning the creator stops adding new content. You can find many online marketing salespeople who promise massive results quickly, but they’re lying. The old-world maxim is true in the online world, too: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Blogging, tweeting, linking up, and chatting on Facebook are approaches that require regular care and feeding, just like your offline relationships. Opting in and dropping out is no better than never doing it at all.
5. Give before you get. Your momma was right. When you log in to your favorite social networking site or start typing your latest blog post, don’t work from the question “How can I convince people to buy my services?” Think instead, “How can I be helpful and remarkable to them today?” For instance, answer questions posted on Twitter by people in your target market – even if it’s not a conflict-related question (“Anyone have spare tickets for tonight’s Sox game?” Maybe you don’t, but perhaps you do know a good source you’re willing to share). Your goal is to be helpful, be seen as a resource, and stay present in your market’s mind.
6. Loosen up…but don’t get sloppy. People want to hang out with people who are interesting. That’s true at cocktail parties, and it’s true online. One-note Sally, who can talk only about conflict and resolution and negotiation and peacemaking and mediating and conflict coaching… gets tiring. When participating online, be the well-rounded person you are in the rest of your life. Connect with people who care about the same hobbies and causes you care about (Remember Mindset #3: Authenticity). That said, keep in mind that you don’t want to confuse your market. If you love to play blood-splattering video games, for example, perhaps that’s a hobby not to discuss in the same forums in which you’re marketing your conflict resolution services.
7. Join other people’s conversations. Think of social media as an online water cooler – sometimes you start the conversation, sometimes you join others’ conversations. On social networking sites, this means logging in and spending a little time reading what others in your social circle are talking about before responding to the discussions that interest you most. On blogs and other content sites, it means leaving comments in the comment boxes at the foot of the articles (if you receive bloggers’ posts via email, click through to the blogsite to leave your comment). Remember Mindset #2: Conversation.
8. Remember that social networking is local, too. Local and social search are part of the web’s future. People local to you will search for and follow you because it makes the web feel more neighborly. Friends rely on what other friends recommend because they trust their judgment and consider it more honest. Gone are the days when your local market probably wasn’t hanging out online (reread the stats in Mindset #3, and you’ll see your neighbor’s somewhere online now, too). For example, meetups, in-person gatherings organized by people in online social circles, are commonplace now, with many websites devoted to making them happen (see, for instance, Meetup.com). Find a meetup in your area and join in – or start one of your own.
9. Use automation sparingly. Most social media tools now include mechanisms for automatically adding certain kinds of content. For instance, on Twitter, you can arrange for anyone who follows you (chooses to be notified of all content you add) to receive a brief automated message from you. You can also set up your Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts so that your social circles on those sites are notified automatically of your latest blog posts. Easy, yes, but not necessarily effective. Social circles don’t want to talk to your computer; they want to talk to you. If you use automation, be sure it’s only a small part of your participation.
10. Be willing to evolve. Today it’s Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, FriendFeed, Foursquare, and dozens of others. In five years, maybe sooner, most of them will be replaced by something else as technology and people’s interests evolve. When participating online, don’t wed yourself to a tool – wed yourself to being in relationship, building connection, and serving as a helpful resource. Those never go out of style, online or off.

© 2010 by Tammy Lenski and NE-ACR.