Find Me, Follow Me, Transact With Me.

The ultimate goal of your business is to exchange something in return for the money in your customers pocket – it’s called a transaction. In this transaction you can exchange anything – a service, a product, a piece of information, an experience, or simply an emotion. Let’s focus on how we can use social media to improve the number of transactions you make.

Let’s meet Nicola – her business is running exercise classes in local parks. The transaction occurs when people exchange their money for Nicola’s energy and time. Look wider – that’s what they’re getting, but is that what they are trying to buy? No.

Nicola’s customers are actually indirectly buying their perceived fitness, relative to their friends. This is the problem that Nicola needs to crack.

She realises that an extremely effective way to advertise her classes is by providing people who want to get fit with free information. To distribute this information she would walk around the park and talk to strangers, and photocopy a newsletter and leave it in gyms. Explaining her business to me, I show her how social media could help her increase transactions.

Social media is an ideal tool for this task – and we help Nicola create a Facebook Page “Get Fit With Nicola”. She begins to create a network around her, first with her friends, then with her customers. Nicola begins to seed interactions into the network, “Your challenge today is 10 minute jog lifting your heels 6 inches from ground…” and she adds in some education, “…this will tone your legs better than normal”.

Suddenly Nicola has empowered her followers with information they can share with their friends, and you can guess what the next conversation on the treadmills will be, “lift those heels, my friend Nicola says that…”! Her clients are getting what they’re buying – perceived fitness among their peers. This is the “Always-On” information power of Social Media – it is available to them outside of classes and something to feel part of.

Let’s move this up a notch using more power of social media “Everything Is Connected”. Nicola’s customers regularly give feedback on the Facebook Page. A client, Sara, writes “Great session on Monday – you really worked us hard Nicola. Thanks.”. As everything is connected, Sara’s friend Sally see’s,

“Sara posted: ‘You really worked us hard’ on ‘Get Fit With Nicola’ 7 minutes ago”.

You can guess what happens – human nature takes over and her friends can’t help but find out what fitness Sara is doing. Sally see’s all these juicy bits of fitness information posted by Nicola – and she presses “Become A Fan” too.

Going forward another step with the power of “Ability To Trust” in social media, Nicola continues posting – and as this absorption of information grows amongst her fans – a karma builds. They learn to read her fitness tips and trust her. Nicola now has reached the point of “Permission Marketing”, where her fans are glad to read her marketing as it’s highly relevant and trusted. Nicola begins to talk a little bit more about what they did at that weeks class and weave’s a story – it’s genuinely interesting content, and her Fans are empowered by the information she is giving.

Six months pass, and Sally makes a new years resolution to get fit – who do you think she goes to for fitness classes? Although it took a long time to come, the transaction happens, but using social media it’s a very solid one. The beauty of all this? Remember the rule that “Everything Is Connected”, well that transaction you were working towards was connected too. It starts all over again,

“Sally posted: ‘You really worked us hard’ on ‘Get Fit With Nicola’ 1 minutes ago”.

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An article by guest author Robin Blandford (also see Part I – Never Forget Where You’re Going To). In this part, Robin discusses how businesses can use the 3 powers of  Social Media – “Always-On”, “Everything Is Connected”, and “Ability To Trust” with the Find Me, Follow Me, Transact With Me method of online engagement.