Think Social Media will transform your business? You shouldn’t!

As we continue to help schools improve their social media presence, we have encountered some interesting conversations with some frequent misconceptions about what Social Media will do for a school, and while we were thankful to have cleared these up during those conversations, we became fearful that others may still not understand exactly how social media works. Since it would take several books to explain how it does work, we figured we take a moment to discuss how social media DOES NOT WORK.

If your school already has a poor image – social media will not change this:
Social Media will only broaden the audience that will see you. This means if your school’s image is poor, more people will see it once you start to participate on social sites, and beyond that, more people will talk about it too. What will change your image? You – that’s about it.

A poorly done ad is still going to be a poorly done ad:
So you had 10,000 door hangers or flyers printed, sent them out, and received very little response. It must be because direct mail in general is dead right? So if you simply upload the same flyer to your social pages and circulate it, the response will improve from using it with social media right? – Wrong and Wrong!!! Let’s get this straight – if your ad has a pixilated 1980’s image with some outdated bubble letter font with a cliché on- liner like “Change your life today for only $69”, it’s not going to do you any good no matter where you place it. If anything you have a better chance digging up old ads and uploading them with a comical tone like “can you believe we used to use these” and invite others to comment on how times have changed.

Social Media will not make your classes seem more exciting!
If every day you update your status with something like “join us for an exciting beginner’s class tonight at 6pm” and then provide your google maps link to your school, this will not change the perception people have about your classes. If your classes are not exciting, you are simply drawing more attention to this. Here’s an example of how the facebook chat will look like between a student and their friend:

Student’s friend: “hey that martial arts school you go to keeps putting up invites to their beginner’s class, kinda annoying me but I’m curious to know what they are like?”
Student: “they are boring, been learning the same dumb form for the last three months, beginning to think the instructor has run out of stuff to teach so they’re just dragging it out or something…”
Student’s friend: “hmmm, well I heard from Rick that <> is really good, have you tried them?”
Student: “No but when my contract is up here I probably will, let me know if you go and check them out ok!”

What’s funny about this conversation above, is it could easily be had between two people between ages 13-40, it already has.

If you have customer service strategy in place – social media will not improve your retention:
Having your school on Facebook will not make your students or their parents say “Wow! <> must really care more about us now that they are on facebook, they must have done this so there is an easy way for us to express our concerns and have them addressed in a transparent and professional matter!” – Never going to happen. There are some dangerous articles out there that boast how simply establishing a social media presence will increase customer retention without indicating that there is an art to doing this. If you are not aware of the best ways to use social media as a student services tool, start learning now! ChampionsWay can certainly help you.

Social Media will not automatically create more referrals for your school! (This is the big one you don’t want to skim over so read it line by line ☺)
“So if I get this social media stuff going, how many referrals can I expect each month?” This question kills us every time. There is no mathematical algorithm that will calculate or predict what kind of results you will see, if someone tells you differently, our guess is they are trying to sell something. Our next guess is that same someone won’t be around to answer your call after you’ve bought it either.

Social Media is a tool that will enhance your ability to create referrals utilizing a combination of offering actual value, entertainment, or insight (via your posts) along with the positive feedback from your existing student base (they either share your content or comment on it). The goal is to create a conversation and keep it going. If you cannot do that, you won’t be visible on the channels, no one will ask your students about you, and your students will have no one to give their recommendation to. The referrals don’t happen the same way they used to where your students actively go out and hunt for who will be the next person they give a VIP pass to try and get another point for your referral drive prize – you probably already know this. They way it happens now is really the reverse – these days people want to read the reviews of a product or service before they buy it. So remember these facts about the consumers of today:

1) If they don’t know about the product or service, they won’t research it. Meaning – if you are not visible on the social sites, the bulk of your potential customers won’t know you exist.

2) If they do know you exist, they no longer care how much your program director raves about how you build the leaders of tomorrow or how you are changing the world one black belt at a time. What they do care about is how many people have already purchased your service (how many fans does your fan page have), and when they ask these people, what do they say? Put it this way: When was the last time you bought something after being told that it sucks by someone who has it already?

3) If they receive a positive response, they’ll still probably need to see you around a few more times before they finally decide to contact you (so keep your social pages ACTIVE!)

4) If you don’t truly enjoy creating awareness about what you teach, it will show (posting half-baked content will only earn you comparisons to others that put effort into their content).

Ok so now that we’ve listed how social media won’t help you, let’s see if you take the most important step and learn how it will help you, we are offering a FREE on line course on the Basics of Social Media.

Click here to Register for the the ChampionsWay Social Media Basics...

Jon Malach

www.championsway.com