You’re a chicken. Let me correct that. You’re a dumb chicken. You’re out in the middle of the road, pecking for scraps of food, and an 18-wheeler is about to run you over.

Because a very small percentage of salespeople and business people in the country are taking total advantage of business social media, I’m assuming you fall into the chicken category.

Here are the elements that may be holding you back:

1. You’re technologically challenged. You may feel overwhelmed at the thought of creating your own business Facebook page, your own LinkedIn account, your own Twitter account and certainly your own YouTube channel. RELAX: Each one of these social media programs has easy-to-follow tutorials that will help you get started.

2. You don’t know where to begin. Call your top 25 customers to find out what they consider valuable in their marketplace and in their business, and inform them you’re about to create a value-based business social media presence and you’ll be sending them an email asking them to join you.

3. You don’t know which program to start with. Start with a Facebook “business” page. Facebook has interconnected more than 600 million people; many are your customers and your prospects.

4. You don’t know what to say. When you call your customers and find out what they want to hear, what they want to read and what they want to learn about, you’ll know exactly what to say.

5. You don’t understand how it applies to business. Business social media provides an open forum where customers can connect with you and share their feelings, and you have an opportunity to respond back.

6. You’re afraid your customers will post something bad. Just because you don’t give customers an opportunity to post bad news doesn’t mean they’re not going to post it. If you give them an opportunity, it will give you an opportunity to respond and fix the problem.

7. You’re afraid the boss will fire you. If you post positive comments about customer interactions and customers post about how much they love you, your fears might turn into a raise.

8. You’re afraid you will break the rules arbitrarily set by your corporate attorneys. The easiest way to ensure that you stay away from rules is to stay away from your company name. Your business Facebook page should be about the product or the service, not the company.

9. You’re afraid no one will follow you. If you set up a page and use the “Field of Dreams” strategy – “If you build it, they will come” – you are correct; no one will follow you. If you create a game plan as outlined above, post valuable information and invite your customers to follow you, you’ll have more followers than you can say grace over.

10. You’re afraid to make the personal commitment. List the hours of a day that you’re awake and allocate them to the projects you consider most important, saving at least two hours for business social media. One hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. If your boss is stupid enough to forbid Facebook at work, start the morning at Starbucks. Make 25 connections, post five great events and cruise into work an hour late. After a week, the boss will ask what you’re up to. Show the results, and you might be able to get a rule changed.

10.5. Your bosses and lawyers are not afraid just of social media. They’re afraid of everything.

The simple answer to achieving business social media success is: Seek professional help. I did. One Social Media (www.onesocialmedia.com) advises me how to cross-link, keyword and other Googleable actions. It’s working.

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by email at salesman@gitomer.com. © 2011 Jeffrey H. Gitomer