Some Numbers to Ponder
As of this morning, the average number of followers on Twitter is 208.
The average number of friends on Facebook is 338.
About 50% of all those on Linkedin have fewer than 500 connections.
According to Jonah Berger’s research (the author of Invisible Influence and Contagious, who spoke at one of my events last year) word-of-mouth is by far still THE most important marketing dynamic, and only 7% of it is virtually viral. You read that correctly: All of the rest is personal and conversational in “real” life, not virtual.
My own work shows clearly that if you meet, in person, with two buyers weekly (present or new buyers) you will close new business at the rate of about a million dollars a year (depending on your average project fee or average retainer for advisory work—I’m using $70,000 for my example here).
Think about all of this for 2018 and how you invest your time. There’s nothing wrong with social media marketing so long as A) you don’t invest a disproportionate amount given the true potential, and B) you have an expert do it for you so what you do is not time-consuming and is maximally effective.
This is a relationship business. I ignore everyone trying to sell me something on the internet, no less than I ignore cold call pitches on the phone. But I listen carefully when someone I trust says to me, “Talk to this person, they’ve done excellent work for me and they will vastly improve your business” (or comfort, or safety, or health, etc.).
What are you doing to get on the radar screens of people making recommendations every day to colleagues and friends? You don’t do that in your house staring at a computer screen between comments on Facebook about politics or how to deal with a snowstorm.
Stop hiding behind a keyboard and get out on the streets to meet with buyers. You don’t build relationships with a “return” key. You build them with a handshake.
