Social can mean many things to many people. It is unique to you. That is what makes it valuable.
For me it is about finding people to talk and share stuff with.
In recent years this has changed with the advent of social media. Ever evolving tools to enhance and enable us to connect and share better and quicker. But the great thing is that content and context still remain King, (and Queen if we are going to be politically correct and be one big happy family).
Poor content, bad context do not make good social. In fact it isn’t just bad, it’s worse. It’s anti-social.
I have pretty strong views on social media. I neither claim to be right nor wrong. I just call it as I see it and stand (or fall) by what I say.
Like most tools, anyone can use them. The skill is using them well. My way of using them could be completely different to someone else.
I use social tools a lot because my job and ‘product’ dovetail into them so well. I am targeting a fixed market, law firms. I have a fixed product, DirectLaw, that many of those law firms are interested in. Plus B2B is a much easier environment to utilise social media tools than B2C.
But I have a problem too.
There are about 10,000 law firms in England and Wales and only one of me. It is therefore totally unrealistic for me to go and knock on all of their doors. How can I sort the “ready to talk” firms from the “don’t call us, we’ll call you?”
I utilise social media tools.
One of these social tools, this blog, was inspired by a colleague of mine who explained that firms like Microsoft and Adobe encouraged blog posts by staff to give people on ‘the outside’ an insight into what they were doing.
That got me thinking. I thought it would be valuable to share with my potential market my ideas, how I see the market develop and rather than ‘push sell’ let the market decide if it was interested. I could bring genuinely interested people right up next to the production line, (no state secrets though). I could let them know how I see what we are developing fit in.
If you like what I say then I am happy to develop things at your pace. You get informed. You get valuable content. You get context and you can switch off ‘the noise’ at any time. Plus if you don’t like what I say then that is fine too.
This means that those in the market who connect with what I am saying can also connect with me socially whether that be via Twitter, RSS, Linkedin etc (you can find links to these tools you can find on most of my pages so you can decide which one you prefer). They would then always be bang up to date.
For me it meant that I could refine those who want to connect and maybe develop things further much more efficiently. I get to the “ready to talk” firms quicker.
You get to me quicker, I get to you quicker. We start sharing and exchanging value. Simple. We share and we all win.
