I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like trying to figure out the secrets to social media success is as elusive as trying to figure out the secret of life. It reminds me of Billy Crystal who played Mitch in the movie City Slickers. Mitch is a confused middle age city guy who heads out to a dude ranch to find the secret of life. A continuous theme in the movie is Mitch asking Curly (a wise old cowboy played by Jack Palance) “What’s the secret to life?” Most of the exchanges sound like this:
Curly: You know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.
Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?
Curly: That’s what you’ve got to figure out.
With all the hype around social media, it seems that trying to find the secret to social media success is as elusive as finding the secret to life. Exchange the word life with the words social media and that same conversation personifies the confusion.
Curly: You know what the secret of social media is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don’t mean shit.
Mitch: That’s great, but what’s the one thing?
Curly: That’s what you’ve got to figure out.
Just as Mitch finally found his answer, I finally found the answer! Instead of going to a dude ranch, I turned to my Google reader. I reviewed all of the articles on social media from the last couple of months. (I subscribe to over 100 blogs, magazines and news sites…so this was quite a task!) A common thread began to emerge within the articles and through the experience of reading all of this stuff.
And here it is…just one thing:
What are you saying or doing that makes your prospects, customers, buyers etc smarter about your area of expertise?
Yep there it is. For most of eternity our businesses have been set up to sell products and services thru traditional selling techniques that are often referred to as interruption marketing. But the social web has turned all of that on it’s ear, putting the buyer in control.
It may come as a surprise, but people are not stopping by your website, or following you on Twitter or becoming a Fan on Facebook etc. etc…. to increase YOUR bottom line! NOPE, they have stopped by to figure out how to build THEIR bottom line or solve THEIR problem!
They could really care less about you, until you demonstrate that you care about them and can help them solve their problem!
Which brings us back to that one thing. The secret to social media begins and ends with this simple question…
Are you sharing what you know to make your customers and prospects smarter about your area of expertise or your product? Or are you interrupting them and boring them to click…to another site?
What do you think?