As we know, social media marketing is about social first and marketing second. Same for Sun Tzu Art of War: it is about art first and war later.
'Art' in Sun Tzu Art of War refers to how we do things, while 'War' here refers to winning in the business battlefield. Social media marketing is about how we do and not what we do. For example, it is not about how nice your photo is on FaceBook but how you post your photo: do you post it with a positive or negative angle?
On the surface, Social Media is a 201x thing, while Art of War belongs to 2,500 years ago. Yet they both share a common origin: the Yi Jing (or Book of Changes) written 5,000 years ago: life is about evolution. Social media is always evolving, while Sun Tzu Art of War is too evolving with the times as Sun Tzu advocates flexibility as the key winning strategy.
Today I shall look at the 5 Elements of Sun Tzu Art of War and they can be applied in our Social Media Marketing.
- Know Yourself Know Your Opponent, a Hundred Battles will be without Peril. In social media marketing, we need to know ourselves and how we want others to know us. That's why we don't post everything about ourselves but only things that we know well and how we want others to know us. For example, I post pictures about Chinatown because I know I am familiar with Chinatown. 'Know others' in social media marketing refers to knowing what netizens are concerned with at this time. If I post videos about what people are concerned with now, like the Lee Kuan Yew death in March 2015, I will get more shares and reads
- Timing is Everything: Sun Tzu said in war, a shorter but better-timed war is better than a longer and poorer timed war. In social media, shorter but more frequent posts are more read and shared than longer and infrequent posts. Also, the timing of your post is important: you should post when people are more free to read, like after 10 pm on weekdays and after 11 pm on Saturdays. Never post anything after 1 am, unless you want to capture the late owls eyeballs.
- Start from a High Position: In war, if you start from a higher terrain, you can see your enemy clearly and victory is assured than if you start from a ground. Same as social media. Start from a high position, which is never the low position like complaints, pessimistic and hatred. A high position in social media is about three things: love, care and concern
- War is about Deception: Sun Tzu advocates using deception, which is simply changing the perception, as tactics in our war. In social media marketing, we use tactics like branding, positioning, and edification to elevate the perception of how the public view us
- Dao is Everything: Sun Tzu emphasized the importance of having the right Dao or purpose for your war. If you have a good and strong purpose, people will follow you. Like the USA won the Iraq War in 1991 because the purpose was strong and righteous, and lost the Iraq War in 2013-2010 because of dubious reasons. In social media, our purpose is always one and only thing: connecting people. If your messages on social media are connecting people, people will follow you and do what you say.
By Andy Ng, Chief Trainer Coach at www.asiatrainers.com. Follow Andy at www.fb.com/AndyTheCoach and WeChat him at 65-8201-4347 now
SOCIAL SELLING EXPLAINED
What is Social Selling? It is definitely beyond social media selling and is beyond selling. Together with Heart Selling, Consultative Selling, Key Account Selling and Attraction Selling, Social Selling is considered more effective. It is definitely way above Hard Selling and better than Problem Solving Selling. Social Selling has 8 key elements:
- You Sell without Selling, because you are never selling and only Socialising. Make friends, not make sales.
- Share, not Sell. You share matters that people are most concerned with, and people will be connected with you. When people are connected with you, they will buy without you selling.
- Making friends take priority over making money. So you would rather lose the sale than lose a friend
- You have to put making a sale or presenting out of the back of your mind. In other words, you simply make friend and that's it. You don't make friend because you want to present your friend with something, right?
- Group is more important than individual. Social means the society, thus social selling is about benefiting the society moer than benefiting the individual
- No Rejections or Objections, only Referrals. In social selling, because you don't sell at all but only share, you have no objections or rejections. If you face objection or rejection, you're not doing social selling but only selling. For in social selling, you don't propose at all. You just simply make friends. And if people don't accept your friendship, there is no rejection, only a friend in the making!
- Ultimately Social Selling will lead to a sale, that's why it is called social selling and not social gathering. But the sale only comes after the connection is built. There is no selling at all because your friend will simply buy from you without you asking, for they treat you like a friend and want to support you.
- With Social Selling, continuous selling is unnecessary. This is because people are so connected with you that they will just keep on purchasing without you asking. Just look at the yearly or once-in-two-years upgrade of iPhones and you'll know what I am talking about. People feel so connected with iPhone that they will become life-long customers. That must be the goal of social selling, isn't it?
By Andy Ng, Sales Trainer Coach with www.AsiaTrainers.com and producer of 91 training videos at www.youtube.com/AndyNgCoach
PRODUCTIVITY AND INNOVATION WITH SUN TZU ART OF WAR
Everyone knows today’s economy is very different from 2015 or even January 2016. Not only are the costs rising, selling prices continue their downward spiral. These factors, coupled with labour shortage and Brexit factor, make many businessmen wonder: where is the future?
As we know, every crisis produces winners. We need to ensure that we are the winner and not the loser. To do that, we must adapt fast and evolve with the rapidly changing markets. This means that we need to move to higher gear: innovate fast and ramp up productivity.
As we know, innovation is about strategies and tactics and productivity is about people. We can learn from people who have done it before: people who have won numerous battles for thousands of years using a proven formula: Sun Tzu Art of War.
Background information and Why Sun Tzu is powerful:
Sun Tzu (or Sūn Zǐ in pinyin) was a 500 BC Chinese general and military strategist. He led his country won numerous battles against its stronger and bigger neighbours. Past and present Generals, Kings and Emperors studied Sun Tzu’s military classic “Art of War” or 孙子兵法 in depth. Even the USA Army used the Art of War strategy and won the Iraq War in 1991. Today, many top-notch companies including Apple, FaceBook and Samsung use Sun Tzu ideas and became world business leaders. Definitely Sun Tzu’s strategies are worth billions of dollars.
Now you can learn all the important strategies of Sun Tzu Art of War in a very easy-to-understand and affordable way. Asia Trainers and its Chief Trainer Andy Ng have been conducting Sun Tzu Art of War training for leaders, managers and salespeople since 2009. Our Sun Tzu courses have travelled to outside Singapore including China, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Cambodia and Thailand. We have been featured numerous times in the media including Lianhe Wan Bao, Sin Ming Daily News, My Paper and The Straits Times. For example, on 1 September 2016, Andy will be addressing over 120 officials from Singapore's Workforce Development Agency (WDA) and over 100 entrepreneurs from Singapore Enterprise Association on 10 December 2016.
If you too want to learn Sun Tzu’s secrets of Art of War and apply to your business in Innovation and Productivity, now is the time. Enrol for this course today!
For Who to Attend: Bosses and Businesspeople and People in sales, human resource and operations
Topics covered in this power-packed 3-hour training include:
1. What is Innovation and how most people are just creative and not innovating
2. Success stories of innovation: Oppo
3. Sun Tzu’s Philosophy on Winning as applied to Innovation and Productivity
4. Ever More with Ever Less: Art of War’s mindset in Productivity and Innovation
5. Sun Zi’s 5 Elements of Purpose, Climate, Leader, Ground and Methods
6. The 6 Key Strategies of Art of War: Win without Fighting, Inner Knowledge, Occupy the Right Ground, Right Timing, Being Efficient and Right Use of Deception
7. The adjusting of Perception in Sun Tzu’s ‘Deception’ tactics
8. The 4 Steps in Innovation per Sun Tzu Art of War
9. Getting your people to be more productive with Sun Tzu’s ‘Attack what is weak’ strategy
10. The Ultimate in Innovation and Productivity: Sun Zi’s ‘Take the Entire Nation’ concept by Sun Tzu
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