Social Media have become huge in the last few years. There are new Social Media that pop up every day. I have been personally involved with social media for about ten years and have found them to be helpful to our freight consulting business. Here are few thoughts on how to make effective us of them in your company.

Social Media are an integral part of a company’s Sales and Marketing Strategy

The first point to consider is that Social Media should not be looked at independently from a company’s Sales and Marketing Strategy. They should be an integral component and should be used to accomplish a company’s key marketing objectives. The selection, of which media to use, how and when they should be used, should be developed as part of a company’s Business Plan. The Social Media strategy should correlate directly with the company’s marketing goals, target markets and revenue targets.

Many of us receive information from multiple news sources on a daily basis. You may start your day with the morning newspaper in hard copy or on your iPad or Surface. If you are in the transportation industry, you are likely receiving trade magazines in hard copy and/or digital form, news feeds and white papers from various sources, updates from your LinkedIn groups, Twitter feeds, Facebook updates and of course dozens or even hundreds of e mails and text messages throughout the day.

Of course many of us have interests beyond freight transportation that may include Business, Investing, Sports, Technology and/or a range of other topics. Trying to stay abreast of the news in these areas can often result in another set of publications and news feeds. The management of information can be quite a challenge.

Using software developed by paper.li, Dan’s Transportation Newspaper tries to make life easier for transportation professionals. Published daily, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year, the primary focus of the paper is Freight Transportation. Stories on truck, rail, air and ocean shipping are included as are stories on supply chain, trucking, warehousing, technology, data and energy management. Since many of us are keen students of Business, Economics, Social Media and Sports, the scope of the newspaper includes important stories in these areas.

The freight sections include articles from the Journal of Commerce, Transport Topics, American Shipper, Inbound Logistics, Truck News, Today’s Trucking, Logistics Management and other American and Canadian sources. The Business section contains features from the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, The Economist and other leading publications. There are 25 major news feeds that supply articles to the newspaper on a daily basis.

Social media has become one of the hottest marketing tools over the past five years. LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and a host of new sites are now a major part of our daily lives. Since I began blogging in 2005, I have become an active participant in this new world. I have learned a great deal and continue to learn every day. Here are a few observations from my travels down the social media trail.

The first thing I learned is that you need to be very focused on what you are seeking to achieve from using social media, particularly from a business perspective. On Twitter you can follow virtually every path of interest, whether it is music, tennis, sailing, cooking or politics. There are thousands of people who share your interests on just about any topic. The question is how will you and your business prosper by participating in one or more social media or discussion groups? The first step on the journey is to set some clear goals, whether it is finding new prospects, recruiting new talent or demonstrating expertise.

Second, don't overlook the obvious. A good website is one of the best instruments for telling your story. However for a website to be truly effective, it has to be optimized. Search engine optimization is the process of identifying the key words about you and your company. If you develop a good website but don't perform SEO, it will likely be ineffective.

A third lesson is the value of consistent communication. In our case, I write a weekly blog that deals with topics of interest to our customers. It takes time, some writing skills, knowledge and persistence to prepare an interesting blog every week. My blog appears in several locations on the internet and is now read by thousands of people a week. After writing hundreds of blogs, they provide another source of traffic as individuals perform searches over time. Both the new and old blogs produce a steady flow of activity.

Fourth, select the social media sites and groups that are most relevant to what you do. Since my company offers freight transportation consulting services, we try to participate in those sites (e.g. LinkedIn transportation groups) where we will likely interact with prospective clients and vendors in our target industries. To raise our profile, we created a LinkedIn group (Freight Transportation Best Practices) and a daily newspaper (e.g. Dan's Transportation Newspaper) that most closely align with the mission of our company.

Despite being the incumbent President, Barrack Obama and his re-election team were faced with a tall challenge in trying to secure enough votes to keep him in office.  After the Great Recession of the mid 2000s, a major stimulus effort and low interest rates were not able to revive the American economy.  Entering the election, President Obama faced an economy with 7.9 percent unemployment and 23 million Americans out of work.  He also faced a Republican candidate with a highly successful career in the private sector, something President Obama has not had. 

Governor Romney did not help himself by staking out some policy positions to meet certain extremist elements of his party and by making some widely publicized verbal gaffes.  Nevertheless, the economic headwinds faced by President Obama made this a tight race that could have gone either way.  President Obama was able to gain re-election by 4 million votes.  While some people will point to the gaffes and policy positions of the Republican Party, one of key reasons for Obama’s victory was the team of computer wizards who helped mastermind the victory.

“If you look at the numbers, we raised more money online this time than last time, had more donors, more volunteers, registered more people to vote online, and did all kinds of revolutionary stuff through Facebook and Twitter,” stated Teddy Goff, digital director for Obama for America in a recent article in Businessweek. Based on my understanding of the work they did, the Obama team was able to outperform the Romney team in three areas:

1. Data Mining

2. Marketing, particularly social media marketing

A well-developed sales pipeline is a key component of any well managed sales management system.  When properly utilized, the tool is an invaluable resource in measuring the number of quality leads in the system, the true number and dollar value of prospects versus suspects, the number of proposals submitted, the number of verbal commitments and the number and dollar value of signed deals. It is extremely useful in evaluating the effectiveness of individual sales reps and of the sales team as a whole.

As the utility of social media becomes well understood, skilled practitioners of sales management systems are beginning to take advantage of its value.  Social media can play a key role in every facet of sales pipeline management.

Lead Generation

Individuals and companies that are active social media participants are likely to generate leads, some anonymous, from individuals who visit your web site, participate in a LinkedIn group,  respond to a question on LinkedIn or who follow your tweets.  The key is to set a plan in motion to provide quality thought leadership on a consistent basis, to make useful white papers and other material available “free of charge” and to create a process of generating and identifying quality sales leads. 

Turning Suspects into Prospects