Social Media Lies

Yesterday afternoon I spent some time on the social media business site, focus.com.  I had just finished working on a private letter ruling request for the IRS.  Working on a PLR is somewhat less exciting than watching mold grow.  I was bored and needed some entertainment.  Focus.com has two types of members: people looking to establish their expertise so they can find paying clients and people looking for free advice who don't want to be paying clients.  These two groups come together on the site for the purpose of frustrating each other.  Social media makes for strange bedfellows.

One of the most recent questions on the site came from a person who wanted to know how to promote a psychological counseling service.  Every expert answer dealt with using social media to promote the business.  I weighed in with the opinion that she should consider good old fashioned networking with potential referral sources such as family practice attorneys and physicians.  Shortly after I posted my answer, another person opined that most of the social media promotion suggestions violated professional ethics for counseling anyway.  The experts were suggesting testimonials.  Here is how I see a sample testimonial.

“I used to be stark raving mad until I met Dr. Feelgood.  Now my wife can ignore the screams and the children sleep well at night.”  Signed Jerry Sandusky, Inmate Pedophile

The surprising part of the exchange was the number of postings that assumed social media marketing was  the only solution.

The world is now infected with social media marketing experts.  Yesterday, a woman ran over my foot with her grocery cart.  She apologized and then asked me to like her Facebook page. Our cleaning crew is coming to clean our house tomorrow morning.  I'm certain they're just moonlighting as cleaners until their social media consulting business takes off.

The problem with the vast overwhelming majority of this horde is that they really need to be marketing experts, and they are not.  Social media, despite all the hype, follows all the rules of old fashioned marketing.  The only difference is the medium.  Not understanding that last sentence means you will waste a whole lot of time and money chasing impossible results.

The first mistake that the experts on focus.com made was assuming social media was the best marketing solution.  They didn't even consider anything else.  They skipped marketing 101, step one, which is finding out where your potential customers hang out.  For a lot of businesses, like the counseling business, social media marketing is like fishing in your bathtub.  There ain't no fish there.  Even if you think a lot of potential counseling patients are on Facebook, how do you reach them?

Social media is largely opt in.  So unless you have a connection with someone, you are unlikely to reach him.  I'm reading an e-book on social media marketing.  To build a social media audience, the author suggests hiring a publicist, an internet marketing consultant, and an intellectual property attorney.  My guess is that if your business has the money to spend on a social media marketing team, you have already figured out how to make money, and it probably didn't involve an expensive social media marketing team.

Social media marketing may have a place in your overall marketing plan.  It can work very well in developing deeper connections with existing customers.  Restaurants are a great example.  Social media savvy restaurants give us a good reason to like their Facebook pages.  They give us something of value in exchange, coupons.

Social media is not very good, however, in prospecting for new clients.  Counseling practices, and CPA firms for that matter, get business primarily through referrals.  For professional service businesses, prospecting means networking, not advertising, social media or other media.  Recently, I read a blog entry from a female CPA firm partner who wrote that she was giving up in person networking for social media networking.  She was tired of bad chamber of commerce dinners. What she was really telling her readers is that she isn't comfortable meeting people out in the real world.  I won't make a crack about her picture on the blog, but I guess I just did.  I'm not surprised she isn't comfortable meeting new people.  She believes she will join the tax sections of sites like LinkedIn.com, answer a bunch of questions, and new clients will flock to her genius.  She'll be filthy rich by midnight.  I suspect maybe just filthy.

I've spent some time in the tax sections on these sites.  They are full of people seeking free advice.  Over the past year, I have seen a decline in the responses to tax questions on social media sites.  Maybe CPA's do learn after all.  Free advice starts out free and forever stays that way.

Social media, even for businesses like restaurants well suited for the medium, can at best be a part of a marketing plan.  It is not a marketing plan by itself.

I have a favor to ask of readers.  I am working with an agent on a proposal for the book based on this blog.  I am looking for testimonials I can use in the proposal.  If you have a few kind (or even unkind) words I can use, I will be forever (or at least until I'm famous) in your debt.  After I'm famous, I'm buying a whole new bunch of friends.  Please send your comments to fstitely2@gmail.com.

Thanks for reading!  I hope you like the new layout.  As always for real accounting and tax advice, please visit the main S&K web site at www.skcpas.com.