The purpose of the post is to give you a better understanding of what social media is, how you can use it for the benefit of your executive protection business, and really go through a first-stage self-assessment guide to answer the right questions to better prepare you to use social media effectively and communicate out who you are, what do you do, and what qualifies you to do it. Before I start sharing about how you can use it effectively, we first have to define what social media is. Now, according to Wikipedia, their definition is

Social media are computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks.” 

My shorthand version is a conversation between two or more people that take place on a network.

Another question that you may have is why is social media important for your executive protection business?

Now, there are probably some that you’re familiar with, such as networking and word of mouth. Networking, of course, is reciprocity in which a person asks for something, and the other person may deliver on the other end. This usually comes about on jobs, advice, and ideas, some exchange of information, a virtual shaking of hands, if you will. That’s the networking component, which is amplified very well on social media. Word of mouth is also a considerable amplification. Word of mouth on social media is akin to word of mouth on steroids because of the enormous virality and how quickly your messaging and brand get out. Word of mouth can have a positive or negative effect. 

One of the essential social media uses for your business is that you can monitor your business and brand and, of course, establish your business and brand on various networks. You can also market your business and use it for customer support. Those are some of the top uses for social media and why it’s crucial for your business to use social media.

Executive Protection Self-Assessment Guide

Before you even start thinking about yourself as a business, thinking about yourself as a brand, and before you even get on social media, you have to go through what I call the self-assessment stage. You have to go through a self-assessment awareness guide to define who you are as a person and who you are as a brand. Get that information available succinctly up out on social media.

What do you do
Who do you do it for?
What qualifies you to do it?

The first three questions, and this is primarily for people who are already in the industry and have already been working for some time, are what do you do, who do you do it for, and what qualifies you to do it. Those are three critical questions that should be out on your website, social media, and every profile you have on social media. What do you do, who do you do it for, and what qualifies you to do it? These are the three most important questions you need to communicate on social media.

What do you want to do?

If you’re not already established in the EP industry/profession, and you’re looking to get into it, the first question you have to ask yourself is, what do you want to do? For those who are looking to get into the industry and don’t know exactly what they want to do, a great place to start is reading through the Five Slices of the EP Industry, a blog post that was written by Chuck Randolph a few years ago. He went through the slices and actually came up with a definition of each one. That might be a good way to get a better understanding of what you think you’d like to do in the executive protection field and focus on maybe a specific niche in each of those five slices. Those five slices are entertainment, high net-worth, protective security detail, executive/corporate protection, law enforcement/ government.

Defining your brand

The next few questions in this self-assessment are more toward defining who you are as a person, who you are as a business, and who you are as a brand and actually establishing what you can offer your potential market.

Why do you do what you do?
 What is your value proposition?
What makes you unique?
What are your values and beliefs?

Now, you’re going to have to spend some time actually curating answers to these. These aren’t just something that you’re going to get tomorrow. You’re going to have to spend some quality time separated from any distractions and figure out who you are as a business, what are you going to be offering to your potential customers in your particular niche, and what is making you unique from all the other people who are exactly like you who went to a seven-day, 10-day, 28-day training, have some experience,  or have a lot of experience, have some skill, or a lot of skill. Whatever it is that you have set up as what do you do, who you do it for, and what qualifies you to do it.

I did a Google search the other day. If you put executive protection in quotes, you get over 1.3 million results. That is part of your competition, so that’s something that you have to take into account and when you’re trying to figure out what is your value proposition and what makes you unique. What are your values and beliefs? What do you believe in? What makes you, you? These self-assessment answers will go toward developing your own brand. All the answers to these questions need to be put out on your website and social media.

You must have a website

To be successful in social media, you have to have a website and the reasons are many. The first reason why you have to have a website is social media networks are constantly changing and some even disappear. I don’t suggest that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Instagram are going to disappear, but they are constantly changing and you can’t depend on them to be your sole communicator. You have to have a place that you call home or as I call it, your hub. I like to think of your website as your hub and social media as your spokes. You want people to be drawn in from social media to your website where you can communicate your message and all those answers to those questions that you just went through. 

You have a global reach with your website. With social media, some of these are enclosed walls, particularly Facebook. If you want to look at something on Facebook and you’re not logged in, you can’t see it, and neither can search engines, so you have a global reach with your website. It’s open 24/7, 365. As long as you keep paying your hosting account and your domain name, your website is yours. No one can take it from you, unlike Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, and all the rest. Of course, with all of your self-assessment answers, you add credibility, define your brand, and control the message, so all of that is a must, and all of that needs to be on a website.

Your website is an extension of your business. When people hear your name, they’re going to go to Google; they’re going to search. If they don’t find your website, they’re going to become suspicious of why this person does not have a website because the expectation is that you have to have a website. The other big thing with your website is you can be sharing what you know through blog posts, videos, and white papers. Whatever it is that you know, you should be communicating that out to potential clients when they visit your website.

Along with having a website as a must, you also must have analytics for your website. You must be monitoring the traffic to your website. You don’t know anything about the people (visitors, potential clients, etc.) coming to your website without analytics. I recommend Google Analytics. Google Analytics monitors what people are most interested in when they visit your website. Analytics will tell you what people are looking at the most, how often are they looking at it, are new visitors, repeat visitors, where are they coming from in the world, what country, what city, what state, what times of the day are they coming to your website, are they on desktop, are they on mobile, and what ISPs are they coming from. You can get into the weeds if you’d like, but at the very least, you have to know what they’re interested in and why they’re coming to your website.

In future blog posts, I will be continuing this series on using social media effectively for your executive protection business.