Episode #375: Content Marketing Is Great For Japan Sales But Can Be Fraught

Access to social media has really democratised salespeople’s ability to sell themselves to a broader audience. Once upon a time, we were reliant on the efforts of the marketing team to get the message out and, in rare cases, the PR team to promote us. Neither group saw it as their job to help us as a salesperson, and they were more concentrated on the brand. Today we have the world at our beck and call through social media.

We can promote ourselves through our intellectual property. We can post blogs on areas of our expertise. We can do video and upload that to YouTube, one of the biggest and most powerful search engines. There are so many paths to the mountaintop, and they are all free. Of course, the platforms are looking for money and so they shaft us and only show our stuff to a minute section of our followers, but the price is right.

I was making this point in a recent speech to the American Chamber here in Tokyo, which you can see on YouTube. One question following my recommendation to salespeople to get out there and promote their expertise and experience, was “what about the haters?”. It is a good point and if you are delicate and sensitive, then social media could be a bruising encounter for you and your content. Or like me, you can just ignore it and work on the basis that people who get it know you are an expert, because they consume your content and they will ignore the haters as well.

Let me provide a real life case study for you. I was recently involved in a thread on LinkedIn responding to a post by the author about promoting your credentials when speaking in Japan, otherwise the audience won’t trust what you say. I didn’t agree with the way this was characterised by the author and so added my “expert” comment. Most people just ignored what I was saying, because they had what they wanted to say as their main interest and fair enough. One person though said, “master trainer and executive coach coming in to bash an entire 125 million people country as non-professional in a single comment and blatantly disregard any suggestion on how to customize the message to appeal to a specific audience. Excellent communication strategy! 笑”.

So what would you do with this type of criticism?

We can ignore it, as I suggested during my AmCham speech, or we can choose to expose it. On this occasion, I decided to expose it. This was my reply, “tell us your experience and share your insights. I am relating mine based on my experience here since 1979 and over 550 public speeches in Japan. Your comment doesn’t match with what I am suggesting from what I can see. What do you suggest that is diametrically opposed to what I am saying? I have published 373 blogs on LinkedIn on presenting in Japan and the same number of recordings for my podcast The Japan Presentations Series and published my book Japan Presentations Mastery as well as teaching the High Impact Presentations course. How about you - tell us what you have done?”.

As you see, I am heaping on my own credibility in my reply and asking the critic to pony up and tell us their credentials. I chose this route for a simple reason. I have a very high profile here because I have published 7 books, including three best sellers, and release six audio podcasts and three video podcasts a week. I also pump out four additional videos a day through LinkedIn, Facebook, TikTok and Instagram and Threads. You may not have this type of onslaught happening and can simply ignore the irritation. I didn’t plan it this way, but I also drown out any critics, because of the constant flow of content I keep posting every day. Their previous negative posting gets pushed down the fold in the screen and just disappears. It remains high in their postings on their page, but is crushed by my new posts on my page and is soon forgotten.
In my reply, I made a special point of not criticising the person making the negative comment, but challenged them to put up and tell us what they would recommend. This reply comes across as reasonable and not getting bogged down in the mud and the blood of personal recriminations. Never go there, because this is our public profile and we have to maintain our professional decorum.
Will I keep going in my responses, if they keep adding criticisms? Probably not. They have been challenged to show what they know. If they go the personal attack route, it is better to stand above the riffraff and ignore their salvos. People reading the thread will see they have got no experience or expertise and will discount what they say as mere opinion.
As salespeople, we should use social media etc., to get our expertise out there for potential buyers to find us and to assure potential buyers we meet, that we are the real deal. Today, buyers will search us out before they meet us to better understand who they are dealing with.
Now, if they searched on you, what will they find? In my case, everything is business. I chose to not to mix business with personal on social media. I want to present myself as an expert in leadership, sales, communications and presentations because as a training company, that is what we provide to our clients. It is always congruent. I don’t stray from those areas because I am conscious I have a limit to my time and my expertise. I try to control what the potential buyer sees from me. In this way, I can control my personal and professional brand.