Billboards? – Or, Build Relationships?

Are social media sites just another place for you to put up a billboard about your upcoming webinar, workshop or boot camp?  From the way most speakers, trainers, coaches and consultants are using Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, you’d sure think so.

You have to wonder who is teaching them this anti-social behavior. The answer is simple. It’s not any of the true social media experts; it’s the social media salesmen.

 

Let’s take Terri Langhans’ upcoming workshop as an example of what’s going on. On December 9th, Terri will be holding a live marketing workshop (remember those?) in Seal Beach, California.

What to do?

Terri could “tweet” links to her workshop over and over on Twitter. Lots of speakers do. She could hang out on Facebook and tell all her “friends” about it. She could create a fake “Discussion” on all of the LinkedIn Groups she belongs to (everyone seems to be doing that these days).

But, here’s the problem. Her online friends won’t tell her that those kinds of social media sales approaches are boorish, oafish and offensive. Why? Because they’re her friends, after all – and, besides, they’re hoping the same nonsense will work for them!

Only Connect

The thing is, there actually are great ways to “connect” and “network” using social networking sites – and the ability to search Twitter is one of the coolest. In fact, the ability to search Twitter within a radius of a particular Zip Code might just be one of Terri’s most effective networking approaches.

It will require her to invest some time, but as the true networking experts will tell you – they call it net-WORK-ing for a reason.

Searching the Twitter comments near her location will connect her to people who might want to attend, might be interested in partnering, or might have the kind of connections that could boost her attendance.

This is, remember, a live event – and Terri would be well advised to look for people who won’t have to buy an airplane ticket in order to show up.

Location, Location, Location

Search.Twitter.com will allow Terri to “listen in” on every person who is saying certain words or phrases within a particular radius – in this case we’ve chosen 50 miles. Is this a great Internet, or what?!

As shown in the screen shots here, she’ll want to use the Advanced Search section of Search.Twitter.com. Clearly, one of Terri’s first challenges will be to pick the right word and phrase combinations.

She might want to keep out the folks who are pitching their own online marketing seminars:

Or, on second thought, she might want to connect with those folks. They could be possible partners, local types who could help drive attendees to her workshop, in return for her assistance for their next event:

As we said, choosing the right words and phrases is her challenge. But, the results are amazing and could well help her connect to more important people than all the social media “billboarding” in the world.

Your Turn

It’s time now for you to participate. This is a teaching blog, after all, so try out some words and phrases yourself. Try it for Terri; or try it for your own purposes. Then, in our next post, we’ll show you a few of the connections she turned up. And, you can tell us about the people you’ve found.

One important note: You can’t do an advanced Zip Code radius search from the Twitter site itself. You have to go to Search.Twitter.com – and then click on the “Advanced Search” tab. Happy hunting.