10 Industry Types that ‘SHOULD’ be using Social Media and why…
This post will cover ten industries or business specific cases that could easily leverage social media. We will show real world examples of how sharing, engaging, and content creation can prove vital to a businesses bottom line. At the same time we will give examples of the flow from social spaces to real income. More and more businesses are getting involved in the social media space. It is up to us, the social media explorers and professionals to help prove it’s worth and create reliable reporting practices. Some of these might sound like no brainers while others might have you thinking creatively. I’ll list the industry and share tools that might be helpful in that particular case. Below that we will list a representative flow or pipeline in where that industry could show measurement as well as bottom line results.
1. Music Industry – This industry has been criticized over the past few years in that it has failed to adopt it’s business models to the changing times. However, savvy independents have been leveraging social media successfully by not only releasing bits of their music free, but more powerfully engaging and interacting with their fan base. Creative types like Geoff Smith are forging new paths in this industry with creative means of monetization. Geoff has used his musical abilities to create everything from Geek Pop to Ringtones. He leverages the power of RSS by offering his subscription based ringtone feeder and doing live concerts via the web on Ustream.
Optimum Tools: Blogs, Live-streaming, Podcasting, Twitter, MySpace, Facebook
Success Measures: Engagement+Community+Sharing Creative Process = Sales of Music and Subscriptions
2. Local Niche Retailers – Small retailers have the ability to leverage Social Media in very powerful ways. Recently I went to lunch with my friend Nicholas and he told me that he was setting up a blog for his relatives that have a Vacuum shop in a town near my home. After a bit of digging on Google he found that no one was really listed locally for vacuum parts and service! By simply setting up a blog with keywords and an occasional update they will own the local search. Being a do-it-yourselfer I know that I am always frustrated by my online search to find parts locally. I will link to the site when it is up. Please check back.
Optimum Tools: Blog, Forums, Twitter, Facebook (Local)
Success Measures: Presence+Information+Answers=Local Search Traffic+Landing Page w/ Coupon = Increased Business
3. Consultants – Consultants are a huge industry, but the key here is that their business is predicated on relationships. Having the ability to demonstrate your working knowledge of a subject through a blog or interactive forum can be key in generating clients and business. Oliver Blanchard demonstrates his understanding of social media and it’s relationships to traditional business daily on his blog. At the same time he is very clear about what services he offers to clients and potential clients landing him everything from consulting to speaking roles on his topic of focus.
Optimum Tools: Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed (Relationship Centric Tools)
Success Measures: Valued Content+Relationships+Word of mouth (Valuable Recommendations/Leads) = Converted Paying Clients
4. Authors: The book publishing industry is facing many of the same dilemmas as the music publishing industry. However, as in the music industry; independent authors are figuring out more an more ways to bridge the old with the new. Take JC Hutchins author of the 7th Son Trilogy as well as his newly published hardcover book titled Personal Effects Dark Art. Hutchins had a dilemma as he was marketing 7th son in 2006 to publishers and literary agents. His book was quite long and feedback he received was to cut the book up into separate segments. Hutchins took the recommendations but he continued to receive letters of denial. After much deliberation Hutchins decided to Podcast his trilogy of novels and shot up in the ranks on iTunes as well as building an RSS subscriber base of over 30,000! It did not take long for him to be noticed by St. Martins Press and land a book deal. His first mainstream published novel Personal Effects Dark Art is a trans-media experience that utilizes the internet, telephone and traditional print to deliver an amazing tale of intrigue and suspense.
Optimum Tools: Blog, Live-streaming, Podcasting, Twitter, Facebook, Video
Success Measures: Content+Community+Creativity = Built in Audience & Adoring fans = Book Deal, Exposure, and Sales.
5. Craftsmen: My first foray into new media was sharing of my creative process while producing woodturned art. I started a blog, a twitter page and a flickr site where I would share photos of my work, the creative process documenting steps and live streaming how-to and entertainment based videos. As I shared more and more of my process and work I became more and more in demand to produce custom works for people that were engaging with me through twitter and my blog. There are huge opportunities for craftsmen of all kind to engage a community through social media by simply sharing knowledge, information and process. One of the best in this field is John T Unger. He creates amazing sculptural works from metal that you can find here at his blog!
Optimum Tools: Blog, Live-streaming, Podcasting, Twitter, Facebook, Video
Success Measures: Sharing Creative content+Exposure+Story Telling = interested buyers and word of mouth = Many a long night in your shop filling orders.
6. Design Professionals – Again, this industry can cover a wide range from graphic designers, to architects, and web developers. Social media in this sense can almost act as a vetting tool. Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot of people putting everything from logos to business cards on their blog, flickr and twitter to get feedback and reaction from the community. Understanding that this can’t always be done it will bring you a built in test group as well as some publicity to your talents. Jay Ehret shows how he used a social media site called crowdspring to generate a logo for a customer. Also, Todd Defren over at PR Squared talks about how he also used crowdspring to generate his logo. Crowdsping as a tool for putting designers on spec has been widely debated, but many use it to help get there name and work out in the wild.
Optimum Tools: Twitter, CrowdSpring, Flickr, Facebook
Success Measures: Posting Artwork & Design + Community Involvement = Increased exposure to talent = Paying Customers
7. Gadget Companies – The social media community is FULL of geeky gadget hounds. Gadget companies like Apple, Dell, and others have a built in community. It makes sense for them to be utilizing social media tools as there community already exists there. By enabling the community to share ideas and recommendations they have built in pipelines to sales. By engaging in twitter, facebook, blogs and forums they show that they have a vested interest in their most important consumers. The team at Dell has done this beautifully in recent years. You can engage with them in numerous places. Here is the blog of @RicharatDell Richard Binhammer.
Optimum Tools: Blog, Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, Forums
Success Measures: Strong Community Presence + Valued content & Customer service = Loyal Customers and Relationships = Sales
8. Job Recruiters - In this day and age of layoffs, companies cutting back and short staffing Recruitment officers are having a tougher time than ever! After talking to my friend Mike Dwyer (Professional Recruiter), he told me that companies are just inundated with letters, emails, and phone calls from recruiters looking for possible job openings to fill. This area will get a blog post in itself at a later date, but put yourself in the position of someone in HR at a company like Microsoft. How will you differentiate from one recruiter to another? Thats right ~ Relationships. Social media tools are great for building synchronous and asynchronous relationships. In fact in this article Mike Dwyer tells us how he was able to leverage the Power of his linked in network to create a poll that landed himself and a client in the Chicago Tribune and how those relationships led to business. It’s no longer about spamming with your presence. You have to add massive value. Difficult ~ Yes , Impossible ~ No.
Optimum Tools: Blog, Twitter, Linked in, Facebook Groups, Online Polling Tools
Success Measures: Creating Valued Resources and content + Community Efforts = Synchronous and Asynchronous Relationships = Press Opportunities & New Clients.
(Note: Study your successes and you can duplicate your efforts)
9. Educators – Dave Brodbeck, Psychology teacher at Algoma University has been using podcasting and blogging for many years now in his personal and professional life. Dave has been successfully using podcasting to add another toolset to his teaching repertoire. By Podcasting his lectures he has not only significantly helped increase the grades of his students by over 6 points but has also effected others that might not be able to afford school or folks outside of North America. Dave’s passion for new media has touched the lives of many people and it may not have led back to profits in money but I’m sure if you ask him he will tell you that it has made his and his students lives much richer.
Optimum Tools: Blog, Podcasting
Success Measures: Using new media skills in podcasting and blogging = More Engaged Students = Better Grades = Happy Professor
10. Scientists – Scientists? Yep, social media has provided some of the most powerful tools for collaboration known to man. In fact one of the biggest social media success stories was told by Don Tapscott author of Wikinomics. Mining firm GoldCorp reached out in the social media and web community for help in outsourcing their search for rare metals by using a wiki and sharing ALL of their geological data! GoldCorp was rendered back to profitable and the wisdom of the crowds proved to be exactly what they needed. You can read more about the GoldCorp story here.
Optimum Tools: Blog,Wiki, Social Outreach, Google Toolset for Collaboration
Success Measures: Publish Geological Data Publicly + Wiki + Interested Parties & Rewards = Low Cost community based research = Huge bottom line profits.
10. Instructional Institutes – instructional Institutes like martial arts training centers, computer skills training, or adult education facilities can benefit through the use of social tools as well. Much of their deployment will be like the Niche Local Busnesses. By utilizing a blog along with content produced during classes they will have an edge on their local competitors. Ability to be found in local searches along with proving their competence ahead of time with valued content can be all they need to keep classes full for years. Can you say goodbye to expensive newspaper advertising? Beyond this they have the ability to sell premium content that could be distributed web wide expanding their reach. I don’t have a good example here, but I would be willing to add one by suggestion.
Optimum Tools: Blogs, Video, Forums, Twitter, Friendfeed
Success Measures: Easily searched highly valued content + Relationships and presence = increased conversion, better client retention and lower advertising costs.
Take-Aways?
I hope you found these real world stories of help to you in your business. If you have a story or know someone who has been able to ethically utilize social media tools for the greater good of their business and others please drop me a comment. I’d love to hear from you!
Keith Burtis is a social media and digital marketing professional. If you or your company are looking to REV THE ENGINE on your digital efforts contact Keith today! Specialties include: Blog design/Integration, Custom Facebook Pages, Social, Digital and Interactive Content strategies.
Comments
charles Weber Great post! I would say that one industry (at least in my area) that is not doing it right is real estate. Seems they just post to Twitter when they have new houses for sale and don’t really add the value that the customers want. If people are looking for a house they will find someone they know and trust, and if that Real Estate agent has provided them with valuable content in the past they will have them in their mind when they are in search of that dream home.
A really interesting article. It got me thinking about non-profits, and how slow some seem to be in using social media to promote their causes. Especially to the younger generation. My good friend works at a local non-profit and recently established that the youngest member of their paid, and volunteer, staff was 52! Organizations like that need to learn how to embrace social media in order to reach out to younger people so they can introduce some fresh blood and new ideas into their midst
Ken ~ I completely agree that the wine industry is well entrenched in social Media. Also that those that are positioning themselves well will come away better off in the future.
Charles ~ I thought about putting Real Estate in their and this is worth exploring. However, i really think there are a few ninja tactics that would have to take place to pull it off correctly. Feel free to ping me anytime if you need more ideas.
Sue ~ Great Comment, Yes non-profits can utilize social media if done creatively. Remember the rule “Never approach a network or individual with a one sided agenda” It’s not enough to be doing good things, but rather I believe there needs to be something in it for the person donating. Charitable organizations are businesses to and by adding content that reaches out without sounding spammy can be huge!
Thanks for the tweets and comments folks! You Rock!
Awesome post. Made me think a lot about a couple of those industries and may write a couple follow up posts (=.
I’ve been saying for a while how much I think musicians and artists have to gain from SM. Music inherently has a passionate and engaged community. Musicians also aren’t competitors, so promoting someone else’s work won’t hurt you at all…it can only help.
Authors have a lot to gain too…but it’s harder as there’s only one of them and a consultancy can’t do it for them at all.
David
@Scribnia
David ~ if you choose to do some follow blogging on the subject please come back and share the link here in the comments as well. Your perspective is always welcome!
Keith,
Some traditional media organizations are using Social Networking in a decent capacity as well, but not all.
Mike Dwyer is a great guy, I worked with him when I was in Chicago.
Hi Keith-
Thanks for the great article. It was refreshing to see real world examples of all the strategy and skills social media folks chatter about all the time. I also thought it very important that you added “ethical use” of social media. I worry as I start working with social media with my brother John Meyer, who you know, that we will cross start filling the social media space with junk. We want to make content the driving force behind community so people want to join instead of being asked or duped into joining with adds and keywords.
Thanks for the food for thought. A great complement to my breakfast 
@bigtwig16
Another industry that’s a personal one for Sheryl and I is winemakers and restaurants. We’ve have some friends who are winemakers and at a wine tasting dinner a restaurateur asked us about social media. We’ve done some advising (not paid consulting) with folks in that sector and there’s really high value for them. Wine lovers and fine food lovers at a very social group who engage actively in conversation. They’re a prefect fit for social media. Little touches like a Facebook page and Twitter comments go a long way to engaging loyal customers.