My dog eats lots of stuff. Everything in fact. If it is left within his reach, he will eat it. Outside he will eat the branches and pine cones from the trees. He eats the doggy pillows we give him to lay on. Anything that drops on the kitchen floor is gone too, if he finds it. One day we discovered something in the back yard… little multi-colored piles of dog poop. All over the place. Little round doggy poops in yellow, pink, and green. Strange indeed. After some investigation we discovered that he had eaten one of the kid’s underwear in its entirety.
So why is this important? Well, every time my dog does something interesting like this I talk about it on my social media channels. And every time those posts are the most engaged and talked about posts. I have strangers who come up to me at speaking events who ask me about the latest capers of my dog and what their dog has been doing because they saw that picture I posted. People connect with that sort of thing, because of course, there are alot of dog lovers out here.
Getting personal in social media is one of the best ways to connect with customers and start a conversation. Yet I get push back from business owners when I tell that they need to get personal. For example, I suggested last year to one of my clients that she needed to post more pictures of kittens and children with funny captions. She scoffed. ‘My business has nothing to do with kittens and children, why would I post that?’ I asked her who her customers were. She paused, the wheels obviously spinning in her head. ‘I see your point’. She started posting what I told her and her Facebook likes quadrupled.
Another client of mine owns a men’s store and he wanted to know how to get more activity on his Facebook page and increase his likes. I told him that he needed to post pictures of what he was grilling on the weekends and tips about preparing your grill for winter. He was confused. ‘Steve, I don’t sell grills. I sell suits and ties and shoes.’ I asked him who his customers were. ‘Men’. And what do men like to do? ‘I get it’ he says.
Social media is a two way conversation folks. It’s a give and take. It’s building relationships with people without the expectation that they are going to buy anything from you. Just talk to them like a real person. Show them what’s going on in your life. They will respond. And if you have a dog like mine, you just might luck out and have little colorful piles of poop in the backyard that you can share.
