I’d like to add some new thinking to the ever-creative field of social media marketing. While social has developed quickly to make inspired use of connection vehicles like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn; uses technology to follow and discover buyers, assign meaning, and push content; and design wondrous ways to promote brands, for me there is still one piece missing.

At the moment, nothing we do actively enters the buy path to enable the human, political, relational and cultural decisions that must occur for an action (a purchase) to take place and are largely outside our purview. Instead of waiting and hoping, we can use social to facilitate decisions and internal politics and be actively involved each step of the way.

For almost 30 years I’ve written about, developed, trained, and invented decision facilitation models and new forms of questions that make it possible to help buyers traverse each step and stage and decision point (most of which are non-solution-related), most of which fall outside the vendor- or product-choice stage. I’ve developed some content that will handle this, and am very happy to partner with folks to develop more.

One more thing to add to the pot. Recently, much of my time has been spent writing a book on how to hear others without bias or misinterpretation. As I come up for air, I’ve noticed that much of social marketing fails to listen, and biases the connections to focus on the seller’s solution. By facilitating the buy path, we can interact and collaborate uniquely, really listen, be a true ‘Relationship Manager’, and serve the needs and idiosyncrasies along each stage of the decision, ensuring we enter each buyer’s decision process early, form a unique, trusted relationship, differentiate from the competition, and close more.

Let’s listen to our customers rather than making assumptions from demographics and guesses. Let’s facilitate every step of the way – not just with brilliant content, or a lovely personal connection – but with specific actions that enable change and truly serve our client base. I know it’s a bit out of the box and will require some new thinking, but seems to me we might give it a try.

To reach me directly, sharondrew@sharondrewmorgen.om

To read my articles with ideas on buying facilitation and social media, go to: www.buyingfacilitation.com