Sheila's Guide To The Good Stuff

I’m often asked by tourism professionals what I would recommend as a good first step in learning how to communicate with social media.

More and more these days, I immediately mention a Facebook Page.

By that I mean a Facebook “Fan” or “Business” Page for your tourism-related organization, not a personal page (although you must have a personal account/page in order to start a Fan/Business Page.)

Why do it?

• Social networking dominance – over 300 million worldwide Facebook users as of this writing.  Go where the people are, because….

• Your prospective visitors are probably there already. Facebook is no longer a “young person’s thing” – the fastest-growing demographic is aged 35 and older (with a big spike from women over 55….women outnumber men on Facebook.)

• It’s free. Whose destination marketing budget doesn’t love that?

• It’s a flexible platform to post not only written news and updates, but also the all-important photos and video. More importantly, your Facebook fans can also share their thoughts/photos/videos about your destination or attraction, so it’s great for building a sense of community (one that has worldwide exposure.)

• It allows information and content to spread rapidly. For example, if I do something as simple as “Like” or “Comment” on a Wall post on the American Indian Cultural Center Museum Facebook Page, that will show up in the Home page news feed of everyone who follows me on Facebook, and it also shows up on the Wall of my personal page.  If I do that while signed in as Tourism Currents (we have a TC Facebook Fan Page) it does the same thing.

• It’s hooked right into the explosive growth of mobile and smartphones. This is a no-brainer, folks.  Worldwide Facebook mobile usage is up 300%….combine that with the sense that we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of mobile/smartphone growth across the board.  You need to be in this space. Like, yesterday.

Now, I know this sets your hair on fire and you’re ready to go sign up for a Page right now, but the next step is to make sure that this fits into your organization’s communications and destination marketing strategy.

This isn’t play (although it IS fun!) – this is professional communicating.  It needs to be integrated into your overall marketing plan along with the press releases or brochures or billboard buys, but remember, the social Web is different.

It is two-way, social communications with human beings; if you just pour stuff out into a broadcast pipe like you may be used to doing, your Page will fail. Your fans want to interact with you, not read your regurgitated press releases, so get some responsive personality in there.

Think of your Facebook business page as a “digital storefront” extension of your “home base” website.  Try not to clutter it up too much, show up regularly to say hello and interact, and make sure that your fans and customers can find the page.  Put prominent links to it on your home page, in your email signatures, mention the Page occasionally on Twitter and blog about it.

Need some kick-off ideas for your posts?  Here are 30 content ideas for your organization’s Facebook Fan Page.

Now, go knock ‘em dead (and leave a comment below if you have any questions or further suggestions – thanks!)

I attended an excellent Network in Austin “Netstorming” session this week (my first one since joining the paid membership community) and I listened carefully to our table facilitator, Amy Hardin of acSELLerate, to learn more about sales.

Do I know diddly about sales?  Nope, not much, which is precisely why I chose to sit at that table.

There is a language to learn – “funnel,” “conversion,” “revenue recognition,” “added value propositions,” “price sensitive,” etc.  Bonus….now I am better armed for playing Marketing Bingo.

There is a standard sales process – prospecting for clients, “qualifying” them as good targets,  demonstrating the value of your product and proposing it to them, closing the deal and setting up for repeat business.

When you are speaking to a large group of your target market, and you do a good job of presenting yourself and your expertise, your audience is a bunch of “ripe bananas” in terms of being open to a discussion with you about your product or service,  but you have to move fast to catch them at that ripeness point (within 24-48 hours, even faster if you can do it) to get wallets to open.

A lot of this seemed very rote, mechanistic and manipulative, and it left me feeling somewhat uncomfortable.

So, as I usually do with such a visceral reaction, I’ve sat around for a couple of days mentally poking at those feelings of discomfort.

Here’s what I think, and this of course assumes (duh) that you have an outstanding product, service or feature that you back to the hilt and believe in:

You Do Need A Sales Process

One of Amy’s “money quotes” from our discussion was that you….

“….must have a sales process, a plan. Just saying ‘I’ll do some networking and depend on word-of-mouth’ is NOT a sales process.”

Break down each of the steps.

Lay out very specifically how you want to go from finding clients to closing a sale with them.  As Amy says, “Get incredibly granular.”

How will you prospect for clients? Networking might be fine as a part of the Prospecting phase, but where are you networking, how are you networking and what do you do with the business cards or interaction that may result?

How do you follow up with prospects? How will you know when you find likely customers;  i.e., how will you qualify them as appropriate candidates to buy your product or service?  What are your customers’ pain points and how can your product or service solve their problems?

Newsflash – your ideas or service or product are great, but if you want to make money with that passion, you have to sell it to someone. You know, for money.

You Don’t Have To Bruise Your Bananas To Sell To Them

Closing a sale means that you have convinced someone that what you can do for them will solve their problems.  That’s a nice feeling.  It’s better than mechanistic banana-harvesting in my mind, but the fact is that it is easier to sell when you catch people at the right moment.

Me, for example.

I stood in CVS Pharmacy the other day looking at a Olay moisturizer that is, ahem, targeted to my 40+ age group.  I have other products in their line and I like them. The price was reasonable, but even better was a shelf coupon on the moisturizer that halved the price.

I was a ripe banana right then, honey. I bought that “hope in a jar” and was happy to do so. In sales parlance, it “met my value proposition” even though I’m very “price sensitive.”

If you’re like me, you’d prefer to see people as humans rather than ripe bananas, so inject humanity into your sales process.

Certainly you should have a plan – a mechanism – that helps you stay on track and know where you’re going, but never lose sight of your customers as people.  They are not simply fruit in your sales funnel, no matter how desperate you may be to sell stuff and make money and pay the light bill.

The best ripe banana customer is one who doesn’t mind being picked, because you’ve done a thorough and honest job of convincing them that you’re worth cracking open that wallet.

Does that help take some of the possible “ick” out of sales for you?