by Adam Gray | @AGSocialMedia | LinkedIn
Do you think that it’s okay for your personal trainer to be overweight and out of shape? Do you think that your personal “success coach” should arrive at your office in a rusty old car? Do you think that your vegan chief should indulge in the occasional sneaky beef burger?
No, of course you don’t.
Why not? Because if someone is going to be handing you advice on what YOU should do…surely they themselves should be able to live by the same regime.
Today I was sent a connection request on Linkedin by a guy working for a “social agency” so seeing as I had a little bit of time on my hands I thought I would check them out…and this is what I found.
There were 15 people who seemed to operate under this banner:
- 2 of the 15 had personalised their Linkedin URL (13 hadn’t)
- all of them had just one or two lines against each of the entries in the employment history
- none of them had understood the difference between “summary” and “employment history” sections of their profile
- those that had bothered to change their background image had the same generic branded image
- none of them had any experience in either sales or marketing
- none of them regularly published articles or posts, and most of them didn’t interact with their network at all
- many of them said things like “I am currently working at…” (presumably they think they will be leaving soon?)
- none of them had a single testimonial from a client
- none of them had more than 10 endorsements for a single skill
- several of the profiles said “ Please feel free to check out the video below…” there was no video
My point is?
My point is that social media in business, social selling, social media marketing, employee advocacy and all of the other branches of social media are a very “fashionable” place to be and there are many companies that are set up to capitalise on this but it creates an environment where the byword should be “caveat emptor” (buyer beware) because for you to commission an organisation to help you with your social media it will take budget, and this budget will often have to be carved-out of other things so you MUST spend it wisely.
So what should you do?
Look at every person in the organisation’s LinkedIn profile and check the following things:
- have they personalised their URL (does it say “…/in/adamgray” or does it say …/in/adam-gray-b56t7g8”)
- are they active? How much value can you expect to get from your network if you never talk to it? In the top 1/3 of their profile there should be a “recent activity” box which (when you click it) should show you how many articles they have written, how often they post and much they interact with their network. You can also see how many “followers” they have
- Have they understood the difference between summary (who they are) and history (what they do/did)?
- have they got a writing style which doesn’t simply list what they’ve done but actually tells a story?
- have they got some recommendations? (they should have 20+ probably – of they have 500 they are probably simply asking everyone they meet to recommend them (so they may not mean anything!)
If they haven’t achieved at least this then perhaps you should be thinking long and hard whether this is the right company to be helping you with your social media…it probably isn’t!
People who read this article also read these:
https://www.social-experts.net/can-fitness-instructors-only-be-thin/
https://www.social-experts.net/why-habit-change-is-the-thing-you-need-to-unlock-within-your-organisation/
