“ISYOT” is a concept I learned from a fantastic online social media guy – Paul Colligan.
“ISYOT” = “I’ve Seen You Out There”
It’s the response you want people to have when they meet you in person for the first time. It should help you decide where to focus your social media marketing. If you want people to say they’ve seen you “out there”, where will you be? Wherever they are looking. If your ideal customer is on facebook, be on facebook. If they’re also on twitter and youtube, but not linkedin, you should have a strong presence on twitter & youtube, but not worry so much about linkedin. You get the idea.
ISYOT as a marketing philosophy is about building trust with your prospective customers over a long period. It’s the complete opposite of the long, direct sales letter. It’s about many light brushes, rather than trying to deliver a knockout blow with only one hit (not that I’m advocating hitting your customers, or anyone lol. It’s a metaphor people! Sheesh 
).
In my opinion ISYOT perfectly embodies social media marketing or any other form of relationship marketing. It’s just common sense that people will buy from people they know and trust, over someone they’ve never heard of, particularly in today’s world of increasingly sophisticated scams.
A further investigation of ISYOT as a marketer suggests that you should pursue ISYOT without trying to sell. At all. For starters, it just won’t work if you’re all sell, sell, sell. Also, it requires you to build relationships that you may help some time down the road, even if that opportunity didn’t exist when you started the journey with them.
A fantastic book I read recently is by Lesley Dewar on networking. Though it doesn’t use the term ISYOT, it is firmly built around the principle of ISYOT and hey, it’s free (signup to Lesley’s email list required)! Click here to get the ebook Networking To A Plan – you’ll have to scroll down to where it says “Click here to request your copy of Networking To A Plan“.
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