A few drops of the hard stuff

Posted in Entrepreneurship, Marketing vs Sales, Sales, Web design & strategy on June 26th, 2009

As I have been thinking through social media and its impact on our business and our clients’ businesses, it strikes me that there is a useful metaphor that captures the real benefits of using social media tools. Think of all of our marketing and sales efforts as a rushing river where we are constantly flooding the market with activity. Outbound activity like banners, email blasts, cold-calling, event marketing, sales competitions, etc. etc. If our clients – the targets for this activity – have one problem, it’s that they are already SATURATED with information.

Social media tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs, Digg, and Facebook cause us to coalesce around issues of importance to our business and to trade insights and affinities. In essence, social media filters all of the information flowing through the market and allows us to DISTILL all of the activity in the market into a few precious drops of the hard stuff that pack some punch. What are those precious drops? They are the ‘real story’ of a product or service, an insight into a company’s culture, a sense of the ‘how’ not just the ‘what.’ Social media help us distill information down to something that makes sense to us..for us. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather have a few drops of the hard stuff than drown in a river of watered-down swill.