Why I Don’t Fear Giving Away My Strategies

The Gift Economy

A lot of people won’t understand this post. In fact, I am not sure I do either. As I continue to make my rounds of the New York City hospitality industry, I am continually asked why I am giving away my strategies.

The primary reason I am giving away my strategies is because I want more people, brands and businesses to adopt them. For me, social media is a positive experience, an additive one, which means that the more people get on board, the more power social media eventually has. A rising tide lifts all boats!

So by speaking with as many businesses as possible, I am getting them interested and focused on the things I think they should be doing in order to beef up their social media engagement. I’d like to put a lot of businesses on the path to becoming social media leaders in their field. Part of this is selfish: the more brands that adopt social media marketing as an important part of their marketing and messaging, the more demand I can create for my own services. Because social media never stops, its not static. One doesn’t open open a twitter account and declare themselves a social business. You have to know what and what not to do with that Twitter account.

• Are you going to use twitter to converse with other restaurants or customers?
• As a marketing tool to alert people to specials and events?
• Build your influence as an information curator?
• Just have fun?

All of these are legitimate uses, but with the limited time and energy that restaurants have, if they try to do it all, they will fail. Amateurs will do a better job of any or all of these things than you can, and you’ll fail, eventually realize it, and pull out altogether. The wrong lesson will be learned: we tried social media and it didn’t work, so we can go back to what we’re comfortable with.

By gifting my strategies out to the world, I can create a positive feedback loop in several ways. First of all I am getting my name out in a world notoriously tough to infiltrate. As more people learn about me and my services, the more calls I will get, and am getting, to come in and talk to others. The restaurant industry is incredibly under served when it comes to social media, and I’ve argued that its one of the industries likely to see the greatest benefit to social media engagement.

I hope to position myself as someone who can be trusted to come in and help. By giving away my ideas, I am building that trust.

Social Media Strategies Exist In The Ether

But why else, aside from purely selfish interests, would I be actively giving away a set of strategies? Because theys are known. They are in the ether. Everything I am offering are things I have learned from reading, watching, listening and engaging with other social media users. I’ve said before that I am not an expert and I am not a guru.

What I have been able to do is to codify a series of steps that help businesses build their influence, generate leads and turn their natural constituency into brand evangelists. But that’s really it.

The other important reason that I personally do not fear giving away my strategies is because knowing what the strategies are is only the first step. I can tell you what I would do if I was in charge. And you can go ahead and do it without me. Fine, no biggie, I wish you luck and will be watching to see just how much you are able to do. I’ll be watching to see how successful the campaign is.

Can Businesses Do It On Their Own?

But the reality is that without a social media consultant, businesses are going to adopt the strategies that are the easiest, quickest and cheapest to institute. If you take someone’s strategies and implement them without help, you aren’t going to get them right and you could end up hurting your brand in the meantime. Why won’t you get them right?

Because those strategies aren’t yours, which means that you don’t fully understand them. You may see the various steps or tools, but you won’t grasp the underlying philosophy that gives those tools meaning. I can tell you to start a Twitter account, but This is why I have no fear. Spend a few months on your own seeing if you can work things out on your own and then measure the results. I am confident that most people will realize they aren’t getting the most out of their engagement and call me back in. I’ll be here, with an open ear, willing to come in and figure out what’s working, what’s not and where to spend that precious time and energy.

I’ve seen several firms I’ve spoken with adopt general social media strategies without me. There have been some successes I am happy to say. But they are a long way from a coherent framework that utilize the full width and breadth of social media marketing, and which will prevent them from seeing the results they seek.