Everyone wants to be more successful selling their cause marketing programs. But how? Try social media. It’s been a key part of my success, and I bet social media can help you too. I’ll talk about how to use social media to sell cause marketing in another post. But let’s first confirm why you should use social media for cause marketing in the first place.
Social media makes the selling process easier. Selling is hard enough, that’s why you need a non-sales sales tool. In steps social media. Social media isn’t good for selling, and, not surprisingly, people don’t like to be pitched on social media. But they do want to be engaged. Engagement is key as persuasion occurs through identification. People buy you from you when they can identify with your attitudes, values, interests, background, beliefs, etc. You don’t use social media for selling. You use it to engage stakeholders and to build identification.
Social media keeps you top of mind. Samuel Johnson famously said that people need to be reminded more than they need to be informed. Social media tools–if you’re active on them (no, they don’t work if you just sign up for them and then abandon them)–have an ever-present quality to them. Social media puts you just a tweet, a wall post or a comment away from connecting with your prospect.
Social media allows you to be useful. Don’t just be good. Be good for something. I always try to be useful to my followers. I share case studies, introduce them to people, congratulate them when they succeed and encourage them when they fail. Social media is a great way to be and stay helpful.
Social media allows you to be your wonderful self. Social media is conversational, interesting and fun. It lets your personality shine through! You can use acronyms, contractions, abbreviations. You can speculate, debate and be light-hearted. In short, it encourages you to communicate authentically and sincerely. People don’t buy from causes or companies, they buy from people. Social media allows you to be the man or woman that people want to buy from.
Social media keeps it real. Long letters nobody reads. Emails with attachments. Stupid, wasteful meetings. Meet and greets with lots of gladhhanding. You won’t find these on social media. But if you find even a semblance of them, you can move on quickly. Social media in general is direct, brief, informal, highly engaging and solution-oriented. Isn’t that just the kind of communication you want with a prospect?
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