I was reading a book this weekend that had a reference to the old business adage "You have to spend money to make money" and knew all too well what that marketing advice was referring to. We could all do a lot with a million dollar lottery prize. I would probably spend it on advertising online and take my solopreneurial efforts up about a thousand notches. Yeah, with a million bucks I could go get a nice sailboat (which would be pretty cool) but I would want to spend my prizemoney more wisely than that. If you aren't into sailing, how about something equally tantalizing to ponder like a timeshare in the Bahamas? Dreaming is good, right? Where am I going with this blog post? Maybe nowhere fast but I am hoping not. Anyway, the idea popped in my head to think about what other commonly used (and old-school) business adages were getting applied by me to the whole subject of online selling in 2013.
The logical tie-in to chestnuts in my title is a bit difficult to understand I know. "That old chestnut" is a tongue-in-cheek reference to a joke that is old and well known. Go look at the origins of the phrase if you want. I found this explanation online: "The origin here goes back to a near forgotten melodrama by William Diamond. The play, first produced in 1816, has one of the characters forever repeating the same joke, albeit with minor changes. The joke concerns a cork tree. On one occasion another character, Pablo, fed up with the same joke says "A Chestnut. I have heard you tell the joke 27 times and I'm sure it was a Chestnut!"
The point of this blog post is don't get stuck telling the same old, same old cork-type-adages to yourself when you try and make money as a seller in social commerce. I just don't think much of that wisdom applies. Online selling, especially for small sellers with limited resources, is about choosing where and how to spend our money on advertising and the best way to target our buyers. The pick-the-best-strategy-and-stick-with-it plan pretty much universally holds true no-matter-who-you-are I think. Small sellers like me probably use this generic plan everytime we sit down at the computer and log in to the various social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Why use social media? Well pretty much mostly because it is free and you can interact with your buyers pretty easily.
Cherry picking is where I am at now. The tricky part in social commerce is when we use social media to try and sell stuff there are a lot of numbers that get used as metrics and I think it is common to forget what these metrics are referring to. The numbers I can think of right off the top of my head are the numbers of RSS subscribers, Twitter followers, Facebook friends (and fans if you do a fanpage) and LinkedIn connections.
I am pretty sure I can categorize my targeted buyers and the people I know in several different columns. For example, a Facebook friend that is also one of my Twitter followers. Here I am going with this analysis now. My good friend Kim (Cheyenne2u) bought something from me a couple of years ago and we struck up a friendship out of that transaction. She sent me an email saying thank you, I emailed her back my you're welcome and became an instant fan of hers when I checked out what she was selling and how she was doing it. Of course Kim left me positive feedback she was pleased with her purchase and really glad it arrived in one piece. I visited Kim's listings dozens of times after that and kept finding things that I liked. A few months back, Kim made a recommendation to me that I check out Addoway and I trusted Kim so I decided to research the venue. When I set up my storefront I decided I was happy and knew I had Kim to thank (hence the blatant Addo-plug for Kim here). Long story short, Kim is one of those friends of mine that just doesn't fit in just one column. No way.
I don't think it wrong to say that the social media metrics above, like the number of Facebook friends, are important but I think it is wrong to bluntly figure that these single column numbers are the only metrics to focus on. Me personally, I want to sell to my online friends and friends of friends that I can trust. These are the multiple column folks that I want to target and spend my time and energy focused on. Am I cherry picking? Sure I am. Did I bite off more than I can chew with this blog post and the "social commerce" selling advice I am giving out? I hope not.