Why Fortnum & Mason spends so much on window displays

The other day I was presenting for the day with Alex Low, the head of our UK social selling practice. It was really interesting to see him present the content that I’ve presented many times…and watched Tim present many times too. Although we were up on our feet for 8 hours in front of the delegates and I guess Alex spoke for most of that, there was one thing that he said which really resonated with me…and clearly with the others in the room too.

We were all having a debate about the importance of making sure you put as much content on your social profiles as you possibly can and Alex said “imagine you’re walking down a busy shopping street and you come upon a shop with empty window displays…you’ll just keep on walking because there’s nothing to look at”. I thought this was a fantastic way or articulating why your profile must be complete and engaging and full of content. 

Of course, this is not rocket science. Everyone knows that they need to fill-out their profiles as thoroughly as they possibly can because it is a showcase for one’s talents to a truly global market…however, it is amazing how few people do this thoroughly. Perhaps they have a great LinkedIn summary (doubtful!) and perhaps they have some content for a couple of their past jobs…but usually it’s like they’ve run out of steam when they’re working on their profile. They fill out a couple of jobs…but then they don’t bother after that, or they don’t put as much detail in their Twitter profile as they could…or perhaps they aren't posting content as often as they might.

Be under no illusions, social selling is hard work. It requires you to expend a lot of effort getting your profiles right. It requires you to write a little bit and engage and post every single day. It requires you to write “blogs” or articles like this from time to time. It requires you to possibly step out of your comfort zone.

But in 2018 it is the only game in town. If you are in sales or marketing you will know that the difficulty of reaching people by phone, the competition to be on the RFP list, falling reposing rates of traditional campaigns and the increasingly onerous legislation about how you handle customer data makes social selling (and social marketing) the only place you can go to get an ROI. And given that each of the networks you’re likely to be using has hundreds of millions of active users the argument for embracing this totally is already there.

But it starts with you. It starts with YOUR profile.

This is one of the most fundamental tenets of social selling - your profile (particularly on LinkedIn) must be as good, as full and as engaging as it is possible to be.

So, my question to you is have you done every thing you should/could have done to make your profile as attractive and engaging as possible.

Or are you that empty shop window?

Fortnum & Mason the luxury provisions (and other things now) provider on London's Piccadilly spend more on each window display than any other shop in the world (or always used to) and they do this for a good reason.

Digital Leadership Associates: We are Global Social Media Management Consultancy. We do three things: Social Media Strategy, Social Selling and Social Media Management. Drop us an email or call one of us and let’s talk about how we can make an impact on your organisation.