In this podcast episode, I share several ways in which you can use social media for your security business.

Business Relationship Building

Business relationship building, more commonly known as networking, is one of the dominating uses of social media. Facebook and LinkedIn are the most common social media networks used for networking. Join groups that focus on your industry and business goals. Connect with like-minded individuals. Now is the time not to be a lurker. Share your knowledge and your history, and learn from others.

Brand building – determine and find your target audience. Conduct searches using Google or Bing and see where your audience hangs their virtual hats. Establish your brand on those social networks and engage your audience. Share your knowledge, skill, and expertise and provide meaningful, valuable content to your audience. The content can be informational, analytical, or help solve a problem. No one wants to see and read promotional posts after promotional posts. You will immediately turn off your audience, so giving more is always better than receiving. Use the 80/20 rule: 20 percent self-promotion, 80 percent providing helpful information. Be conversational and relatable. Your audience will start to understand who you are, what you do, and who you do it for.

Chatting with like-minded individuals

This is probably a given, but it is listed as a business use. Informally, casually chat about a particular problem or news story, help solve a problem, and share your opinions. This helps build your brand and may lead to other networking opportunities.

Pro tip: Find and join Twitter chats called Tweet chats. These are conducted at scheduled times, usually with a host, sometimes with a guest, and have a specific hashtag to follow the conversation.

Customer Support

Several brands use social media for customer service. Nike, Dell, and Blackberry, to name a few, are listening to customers’ issues and rants and trying to help solve their problems. My two experiences were with Comcast and GoDaddy, and both were on Twitter. In the Comcast instance, I was complaining about moving back to Boston and having to deal with Comcast, within minutes, Comcast responded and asked if I had a specific problem with the service, I said no thank you, but you’ll be hearing from me after I move. The GoDaddy instance was more recently when I encountered a problem with my website, and a representative jumped in to help resolve the issue.

Marketing

You often read and hear me speak about marketing on social media because it is very effective if done wisely. Marketing your security business and brand on social media is necessary to control your brand, build trust, solve problems, and share the value of your services. Social media marketing is likened to word-of-mouth marketing on steroids because of the virality of the reach. With one tweet, you can reach hundreds of people who could be potential customers. One Facebook post about the quality of your security services can be shared exponentially by shares and likes.

Learning/Sharing Knowledge

Educators can teach students. Online webinars and live videos on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are all ways to interact with others visually, “face to face,” to share and gain knowledge.

Research

Social media is awash with statistics. Visit places like Pinterest and look for infographics on particular subjects. Slideshare has tens of thousands of PowerPoint presentations on various subjects. If you are still stuck, go to Twitter and pose a question.

Intelligence/Monitoring

You should monitor what people think of you and say about your security business and competitors. There are many tools to monitor various subjects like your brand, company, keywords, or phrases that keep you updated on news and events in your niche or industry. You can’t just have one, but Mention at a decent price is my top choice. Free tools like Google Alerts and individual social media network searches also work.

Links Mentioned

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook on Amazon

Security Marketing Solutions YouTube Channel

The post How to Use Social Media for Your Security Business appeared first on Strategic Marketing Solutions.

Do those likes and comments translate to new business? If so, how much business? Enough to live on or support your family? If not? Why not?

When was the last time you took a hard look at your efforts on social media and assessed what is and is not working to help grow your security business?

A hard look means looking past vanity metrics such as likes and start looking at reach, engagement, and shares with tools that are freely available.

Facebook Page Insights

Take a look at the Insight Metrics Facebook provides for your business page. View the page summary, which is a quick snapshot of the week. Pay attention to page views, reach, engagement of your post, and clickthroughs to your website. From the left side of the menu, click Posts. Here you can see what day and what time of the day your fans are online. Click People from the left menu. You are now looking at a complete demographic breakdown of your fans, the people you have reached, and the people who have engaged with your posts.

Facebook Group Analytics

Despite several attempts by admins of Facebook groups to plead the case for Facebook to supply the same Insights for groups, it has yet to be. So in order to measure how well your group is doing, you must go outside of Facebook. Two that I know of and have tested are Grytics and Sociograph,  Not as much detail as Facebook insights, but very good metrics nonetheless, and certainly enough data to inform you how well your group is performing.

For a detailed look at Grytics and Sociograph, please watch my review of both in this video.

Google Analytics for your website metrics

Perhaps the most important metric of all is how well your website is performing in comparison to your business goals. Google Analytics is a free tool that analyzes visitor behavior as they peruse your website. Metrics like most popular pages, articles, Google search terms that led a visitor to your website, what Country, state, and city your visitors are from, mobile vs. desktop, and even down to what type of phone and who is the carrier. Basically, an infinite amount of information about your visitors for free.

These three performance metric tools are an excellent start in measuring the effectiveness of your social media efforts.

Connect with me on Facebook and LinkedIn

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One, Social Media success begins with knowing who you are, what you do, and who you do it for. Three simple questions that are probably the toughest to answer for many businesses. Don’t skip answering these questions. They are the basis of your business and answer honestly.

Second, define your business goals, which are often included in a business plan. What is it you want your business to achieve? What value do you bring to your customers and clients? Be as specific as possible. Although “Make Money” is a goal, you must define how you will make that money, what amount of money, and in what time frame.

Suggested reading –Whether EP Provider or Trainer, You Are a Business

Third, develop a social media marketing strategy based on your business goals. What is it that you’re going to share, and to whom? Social media is a very powerful tool for your business when used effectively. Without a strategy that includes the goals and objectives that you want to achieve on social media, you would have no means of measuring success. And success is measured by your return on investment or ROI.

Fourth, establish your business on those social media networks that best meet your social media strategy. It might be LinkedIn and Facebook, or perhaps Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram.

Fifth – Know, Like, and Trust. Before your market can trust your services and products, they must know who you are and what you’re all about. You do that by sharing information that is valuable and useful to your market. The information may come in various formats – posts, articles, videos, or images. Once your market has begun to know you, they must like you. Like you for who you are, what you stand for, what your business does and does not, and your associations and affiliations. Your market is sharing your content and purchasing your services and products. The final stage is trust. A trusted market or community that shares and advocates your services and products without question.

Suggested listening – Be Smart When Using Social Media for Your Security Business

Although the steps laid out appear simplistic, this process does not happen overnight. Social media success is a marathon, not a sprint. During this process, you are constantly monitoring statistics and metrics to ensure you are achieving your goals and objectives.

You would be very surprised how many businesses simply get on social media networks to just simply be there. No strategy, goals, or objectives, thinking something magical will happen. Instant customers, clients, and fortune will come if they just copy and paste their services and products everywhere on social media.  Just waiting for the phone calls to ring and the emails to ping.

My hope is that you take your social media efforts seriously and use social media as a powerful marketing tool for your business.

I welcome any feedback or questions you may have. You can contact me at lawrence.snow@gmail.com or Twitter at @lawrenceasnow.

The post Social Media Success for Your Security Business appeared first on Strategic Marketing Solutions.

In this podcast, I talk off the cuff about how security service providers  (EP, Bodyguards, event security, etc.)  should be smart when using social media for their business.

I spend a lot of my time on Google to observe how well or not security service providers use their online digital assets. These assets consist of a website and social media profiles and accounts.

I happened upon one security professional on Instagram whose bio was missing a lot of details, and his link (the only link you can have on Instagram) was his Twitter account. Clicking on the Twitter account link brought you to his Twitter profile with a link to his website. Puzzling, to say the least.

With all of these thoughts in my mind, I felt the best way to communicate how to do social media right for your security business was a podcast. There were no notes, just me sharing my observations and knowledge to help security professionals understand how to use social media more effectively.

Social Media is a Conversation

My premise is that social media is a conversation that takes place on these networks. It’s a conversation — it’s hello, how are you, and how can I help you, and how can the other person help you or your business? Then you’ll have a nice little conversation, you discuss things, you might get referrals, you might get a word of mouth option, you might get some sales for your business, you might get some leads, you might get some clients, and you might sell some products. All great stuff, and social media is a wonderful tool to accomplish that effort and those goals.

But there is kind of like a right way to do that and a wrong way to do that. I guess maybe that’s how I’ll say it, a right and a wrong way. Now, granted, those with other experiences and knowledge different than mine might have a different opinion of this. But based on my experience, there are quite a few security providers and security businesses that are marketing on social media in an incorrect way.

Links mentioned in the podcast

Copy Paste, and Hope is Not Marketing

The post BoS Podcast – Be Smart When Using Social Media for Your Security Business appeared first on Strategic Marketing Solutions.

In this episode I’ll answer an email from a podcast listener, we’re I’m heading to this week and why, and share my thoughts on exceeding expectations.

First up the email a received last week from Chris Kirkland:

If you have any questions about marketing, social media, website design or comments about the podcast please send me an email at lawrence.snow@gmail.com or call the podcast phone line at area code 781-369 -5185.

Where am I going to this week?

So where the heck I’m I going next week and why? Well I’ll be heading to Las Vegas for the International Executive Protection & Secure Transportation Conference. The conference is jointly hosted by EPI and ESI held yearly and focuses on the critical issues that are confronting security professionals worldwide.

I’m attending because this year’s conference has lined up a few great can’t miss speakers like Joe Autera, President and CEO of Vehicle Dynamics Institute,Filippo Marino, Director, Executive Protection & Intelligence McDonald’s Corporation and Richard Woods, Microsoft Global Security Department to name a few. I’m also attending to network, and to really talk about the issues from the guys and gals that do, not from those that pretend to do. I’ll have a full wrap up podcast in the next couple of weeks.  The conference dates are Dec 5 – 7.

The main topic for this podcast is Exceeding Expectations.

Here is a question I want you to honestly ask yourself: Are you Needs Improvement, Proficient, Outstanding or Exceeding Expectations in your personal and professional life? Are you exceeding expectations in all that you do?

There is a poignant poem that I mention in my Branding and Marketing eBook that is a must read. It’s called the Man in the Glass by Peter Dale Wimbrow Sr.

When you get what you want in your struggle for self
And the world makes you king for a day

Just go to the mirror and look at yourself
And see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your father, or mother, or wife
Whose judgment upon you must pass

The fellow whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.

He’s the fellow to please – never mind all the rest
For he’s with you, clear to the end

And you’ve passed your most difficult, dangerous test
If the man in the glass is your friend.

You may fool the whole world down the pathway of years
And get pats on the back as you pass

But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

I want to thank you all for listening. If you are attending the EPIC conference this week give me a shout out on twitter at @lawrenceasnow and let’s meet up at the conference. I’ll see in the next episode.

The post Business of Security Podcast – Exceeding Expectations appeared first on Strategic Marketing Solutions.

On to the main topic of Twitter tips and tools. It’s still amazing to me that I can connect and engage with folks I don’t know from Adam, and chat about subjects that I am passionate about. Like social media, internet marketing and the security industry. 

If you are on Twitter I hope you are using it to its fullest potential.

If you are not on Twitter here are a few reasons why I think you should be:

• Sharing your own business and industry news;
• sharing your story of who you are, what you do, and who you do it for,
• sharing of valuable information,
• engaging and networking with like minded individuals in the industry.
• Branding opportunities – cover art profile photo, sharing of images, and videos of what your business is and does.
• Monitor your brand and your competitors. Who is talking about your company and what are they saying. Do they wish harm on my principal, where are they tweeting from? These are just a few of the reasons why you should be on Twitter.

Managing all that can be very time consuming. Fortunately there are several tools to help. One such product is Hootsuite – free and for pay (about $9 a month). I recommend the paid version. HootSuite provides a nice dashboard interface (recently redone). On one page, you can view different “panes” for your Twitter feed, Facebook feed, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc. It also lets you schedule your Tweets, which is very helpful, so you’re not tweeting throughout the day.

However, despite the automation and scheduling of tweets I recommend that whenever someone shares what you have posted, mentions you, or comments on something you do, follow up with them personally. Don’t ignore them.  Otherwise you are wasting your time using social media.

Managing your followers is another time consuming task. How do you know when someone unfollows you, what if all a follower is tweeting is spam? What if a follower stops tweeting altogether?

There are few great tools out there that can help you manage your followers and following. Manageflitter is probably the best Twitter cleaner – most of the functions are for free and it is the one I use exclusively. One click of a button and Manageflitter analyzes your followers and who you are following. Runner up to Manageflitter is Friendorfollow https://friendorfollow.com/.

Twitter Tools mentioned in this Podcast

• Lists
• Saved searches
• Twitter widgets
• Analytics

What I  share in this podcast is just the tip of what there is to know about Twitter.  My goal is to help protective services companies succeed in establishing and strengthening their brands on social media platforms. I am here as your guide to make that happen.

That’s a wrap for this week. If you have any questions or comments please reach out and contact me at lsnow@isdacenter.org or call the podcast phone line at 1781-369-5185 and leave a question or a comment.

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