Ok, not really one to sound like a California girl stereotype or anything but this whole social media game is cooking my brain. I set out this week to write a simple blog about social media as a sales prospecting tool and before the week was over became thoroughly engaged in the twittersphere, committed to better blog manners, planned facebook and myspace interactions, which I am not even close to getting to, and committed to writing a white paper on controlling the sales process utilizing social media.
The good news is my twitter influence has risen, and my followers are increasing. Yeah.
The whole point is to simply understand the value of a campaign. I am convinced social media is an important tool in the world of sales and marketing. I know it is helping companies find prospects and generate revenue. What I am learning, or working hard to discover though is how to control that process. It ain't easy.
I am not saying social media is a raging bull though it really kind of is. I am saying that in the world of sales management it is critical to understand what kind of activity generates what level of interest from what demographic resulting in how much revenue. No campaign in the world should be engaged in without testing those things first. In the world of social media, it seems no one has tackled the issue well.
It also seems that it can be accomplished which will be the resulting white paper. The essence is to clearly understand how many eyeballs connect with your material and of those eyeballs, how many convert to cash.
The variables here include what social media you are using and there are tons to consider. It looks like the basics will rule the roost. Certain standards like twitter and blogging must be utilized. Then it is a matter of determining which campaigns where cause reactions of interest. When that is measured the dollars/time ratio to revenue will be determinable and a legitimate campaign plan can be created.
Why is this important? Simply this. If I am responsible for revenue development I have a certain amount of time to achieve it and a finite amount of revenue. I must be able to develop a plan that tells me what the best use of those resources are to generate the revenue I am assigned to bring home.. If social media is soon to be the norm rather than the sphere of pocket protecting, humanphobes, than I better be able to include it in the plan and define the results to be expected.
Social media is the norm these days though many haven't realized it yet, corporate sales protocols still require budgets of time and money and all of them have expectations of revenue. Consequently, defining the sales behavior of social media is an important role in the development of revenue.
Please pass the aspirin.
Respectfully submitted,
Michael D. Goodman
Twitter GoodmanSales
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