“How did it go? I said. “Well only about a third of the folks
that signed up showed up.”

“Remember, this is Oregon,” Kate pointed out. “It was
sunny and warm that day and you can’t expect folks that have been given a hall
pass to actually show up at a workshop once they are outside and dry.”

Gail asked, “You did your usual full tilt presentation
though, right?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “I did the full two hours including the
planned 15 minutes of Q and A”.

Most of the attendees were amazed by the numbers I presented and glad to hear
an expert’s opinion about the whole social media elephant in the room.”

“Numbers?” Chris asked.

“I pointed out that even though smart phone and tablet
sales are going through the roof that a good 20% more of the US Population own laptops
and netbooks and that even more importantly laptops and desktops in terms of
use beat
smartphones 5 to 1 and tablets 6 to 1.

Then I showed them the differences between men and women
in how they use the internet for inspiration and evaluation in shopping.
Surprisingly, men are heavier users for both purposes.

Rob drawled, “Scuse me ol’ son, could we go back to the
elephant?

“Okay,” I agreed. “What I asked them to do was a simple
exercise. You can do it on a napkin. Write down the top five social media sites
you are aware of. The group had a list of about seven or eight. The most common
were: Facebook, Twitter, Linked in, Pinterest and Google Plus. Then I told them
to write down next to each the amount of time you feel you would have to spend
on it each day to get some results in your business. There was a lot of
complaining at that point but I asked them to guess. The average was 24 minutes
for each or just about 2 hours a day. Then I asked what else they might do in their
business with that two hours a day and what that could be worth to them. It got
very quiet in that room.

They all began to say that it was obvious that there was
no value to Social media.

The pendulum had swung too far. So I showed them some
more statistics…how you can get more attention and better SEO with the right
kinds of posts and how to decide whether you should use one or another and once
that selection was made how to optimize the use for your company. By simply cutting
the activities to one or two social media sites the savings in time are
immense. Becoming more knowledgeable in one option allows you to increase your
efficiency even more.

Suddenly, the elephant was less like a stampede and more
like a stuffed toy. Get the picture?”

That was just the first third of the presentation. I also
included:

• 15
  Web Site lead generation tips

• 3
  Rules to change Contacts into Contracts

• 7
  ways to generate Nonstop Referrals

• How to
  put it all together with Contact Relationship Magic

• 2 “AutoMagic”
  Marketing Campaigns— Consultants and Cupcakes

Rob said, “Sounds like it was grits and all. Was there
any dessert?”

‘I told them I would sit down for an hour at no charge to review their marketing plans with any one that asked. I’ll make the same
offer in Marketing Rain.”

Stick around. Jerry has been asked to do some webinars so
he is going to take a look at how to maximize outcomes in that approach with
advice from the Lunch bunch and an expert special guest.

www.JerryFletcher.com
is Jerry’s consulting web site. Take a look on a smart phone, a tablet, a
laptop or a desktop. It works on them all.

www.NetworkingNinja.com
is where you can find information on Jerry’s speaking programs plus video of
some of his best known signature stories.