My Social Strategy Year In Review - What a long strange trip it's been

Sometimes I feel like I’ve spent the last several years living in a yellow submarine. I surface, identify targets, dive, fire off a few torpedoes, hope that I hit something, dodge depth charges, and then repeat the whole process again. Occasionally you have to dive so deep that you lose track of where you are, where you have been, and where you are going. This pretty much sums up my social strategy year in review. To quote The Grateful Dead from their 1970 song, Truckin’ … “Lately it occurs to me: What a long, strange trip it’s been”.

Looking back now, it becomes glaringly obvious that … I had little to no strategy. Rather, the direction of my sub has been largely based on wherever the prevailing currents chose to carry me.

I started the year with a new business name. Sales Results continues to be my legal entity but, I’ve never liked that moniker and have always felt that it was far too restrictive. My plans included expanding my services beyond those that were limited to sales alone therefore, my operating name became Adaptive Business Services and the process of re-branding was begun. Even before my re-branding was complete …

I found myself navigating in a circle

After setting myself up for services diversification, I have come back full circle to sales. It is what I know and what I am confident with. Not that I don’t stretch my comfort limits. I do that all of the time and will continue to do so. It really became a question of … do you want to be known as a jack of all trades or as a master of one?

Being a jack of all trades isn’t easy. It’s also confusing for both me and for my customers. When people would ask me what I do, I’d generally answer … consultant. Now, doesn’t that inspire confidence in others. They’re probably thinking that “consultant” is code for “unemployed”.

This point was really made apparent to me when I completed a free brand assessment from Tywlah. The service asks you what you want to be known for, your expertise, and then analyzes what you tweet about. Is your brand in line with your message? You will get a report card that covers five or six areas and I think I got one “D” and the rest were all “F”. Dohhhh!

That report card was a dramatic wake-up call. I started to read articles on the topic and they all told me the same thing … people want to work with people who are the experts in their given (one) field. I shared all of this with my wife and her comment was “I could have told you that”. Now, she has never spent one day in either sales or marketing and this whole concept is that apparent to her yet it washes over my head? I’m worse at this than I had first perceived. Up periscope, take bearing, correct course. The good news is …

No amount of planning replaces pure dumb luck

My instincts were not all bad …

I’ve suspended holding (at least for now) open workshops and webinars. Too much work and too little return. If a company wants these services, that is quite a different story.
I was considering representing multiple software products and product lines (affiliate and otherwise), and killed off that idea. It just takes much too much time to research the products themselves, then learn them, and then to market them effectively. I am focused on one only … Nimble Social CRM.
I received several very attractive, and unsolicited, offers last year including partnering in a new web service, a VP of Sales position, and partnering in a local business services firm. I turned them all down. My gut told me “no” and I’m learning to listen to it. While all of these had excellent revenue potential, I’m a bit of a lone wolf and I prefer to pilot my own sub.

My biggest surprise? I’ve become a writer and am now in the process of writing a book. What is even more amazing to me is that I am being paid to do both. Never saw that one coming.

My biggest disappointment? I spent several thousand dollars and a lot of time and energy on becoming certified on another service that I just have not had the time to fully develop. That’s my fault and I hope to make another course correction, in that direction, this coming year.

The smartest decision that I made? Without question, focusing on social sales centered services has paid me amazing dividends! In fact, almost all of my revenue increases have come following my change in focus. This continues to be a work in progress. It always will be. However, come 2014, this old dog needs to …

Eat more of my own dog food

Do as I say, not as I do. I need to cut way back on those things that, while they may be fun and they may even be gratifying, are either not productive enough or are maybe even counterproductive to my goals. Mostly, I need to learn to slow down and concentrate on quality over quantity. It does not help that this sub only has two speeds … full ahead and all stop. We can break this down into two areas.

Things I need to do better:

Emphasize the quality of updates instead of the quantity
More, and more meaningful, engagement
Get better at targeting connections
Improve, and accelerate, my use of images and videos

Things that I really need to learn more about:

Analytics – I’m a statistical mess
SEO – I’m improving but, have a long way to go!
Learn basic HTML so that I can edit and create web pages
Marketing and marketing automation including landing pages and calls-to-action
Newsletters – drip and segmenting
Learn more about social media advertising opportunities – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
Social sales tools primarily for lead generation

Where I’m going:

They say that “luck happens when preparation meets opportunity” and, I believe that! I like the path that I’m on and by keeping my eye on the horizon, and making course corrections when necessary, we will see where my sub takes me. I will definitely have to prepare for the launch of my book in the spring and will be very curious to see what effect, if any, that will have on my plans.

As for setting long-term goals, time may be my enemy as I am getting pretty close to full retirement age so … It’s going to be decision making time. That being said, I might just launch a torpedo at that bad boy and keep on truckin’. Still …

I might not be (quite) as stupid as I look

Close but, my gross revenues are up 45% over last year and my net revenues will reflect an even higher percentage increase. Probably 90% of these increases have come as a direct result of my social networking efforts. I’ve been doing this for about 4 years now, full time, and I just may be starting to figure this out or … maybe this is more reflective of the fact that a certain percentage of cooked spaghetti will always stick to a wall 🙂

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!