Social Media: Adapt Your Instincts
Posted by Dave McCue on May 13th, 2009
In the mind of an online marketer, the knowledge that millions of potential customers are logging onto social media sites every day elicits an almost Pavlovian response. The marketer pictures so many pairs of eyes, and one great big opportunity to stick a message in front of them. Oh, the possibilities…
Those potential customers, meanwhile, might just want to throw sheep at each other on Facebook, reconnect with business associates on LinkedIn and update their Twitter status a dozen or so times a day. Simply put, they aren’t in the market to be marketed to—so why are so many people touting the merits of social media as an effective marketing tool?
It comes down to being able to periodically ignore the robotic voice inside their heads that keeps saying “must….promote…” If a business launches a social media profile, and the only thing it’s used for is promotion, then it’s just another advertisement—people receive advertising through plenty of other mediums.
What makes social media unique—and what often gets lost in the rush to use it as if it were a traditional marketing vehicle—is the opportunity for a personal conversation to take place between an organization and its target audience. I can think of several instances where I had already become a recurring customer of an online business before ever having contact with an actual representative of the company. In those cases, the first time any sort of personal communication took place is when I had to reach out to the company due to a problem with an order or something of that nature. With social media, a relationship outside of the purchase engine could have been established well in advance, strengthening my connection to the company and likely making for a less-contentious situation when issues arose.
Note to email spammers: You’re so 2008.
