Recent articles have suggested that social media is not a primary driving force of getting people to engage in e-commerce. IBM says that only one percent of e-commerce this past Black Friday originated directly from a social network (For example, a connection to a website marketer made directly from Facebook). This paucity of interest comes despite ample opportunities being presented by Facebook and other social media sites to make such connections (I see far too many “suggested sites” on Facebook for my liking).
And if that is true for online retailers, how much more removed might your business, or mine (a lawyer) be in terms of the ability to derive business directly from social media activity? Someone idly traveling through Pinterest might be convinced to jump sites to buy a pair of shoes, but idly browsing on a social network and then suddenly jumping to a legal website to hire a lawyer seems a little less likely. Yet an intense amount of interest and effort has been focused on the assumption that such opportunities abound. I have managed to join over 20 Groups while on LinkedIn, ten of which relate to franchising. When would I have the time to follow these twenty groups, much less actively participate in them? As far as I can tell, the same small group of people are recurrently active on each one, all hoping to catch that live one.
So what do we do? We go back to the drawing board. We imagine we are who we want to meet. How would that person start looking for us? For me, for instance? If I was looking for an experienced real estate/franchise lawyer, to help me with my franchise development idea, where would I go? Pinterest? Tumblr? I don’t think so. LinkedIn? Maybe. Or perhaps I would go to Google and type in “franchise lawyer – New York.” And there I am. But is that enough? What is going to get me to click on me? We need to think about that.