This is the fourth part of my five part series of posts on the 5 Rules of Social Media Marketing.
Promote
Online promotion might seem an obvious application of social media but it never ceases to amaze me how many people get this fundamental component wrong, and Twitter is the main culprit for this.
Every minute of every day on the home page of Twitter, you will see people doing shameless self-promotion of their business or service while offering nothing in return. Now this is fine if the product or service you offer is 100% unique and really compelling, but if you work in an overly-crowded market like I do, this is a sure way to put you on the wrong side of Tweeters.
If you follow me on Twitter, you will know that I occasionally have tweets go out about a particular sale or special offer – something that could be considered self-promoting. If you are a follower of mine, you will also know that the great majority of stuff that I promote on Twitter is actually other peoples’ stuff or information and articles that are pertinent to my business markets rather than my own products and services.
Regardless of the social networking platform, it is important that you are a good online citizen. It’s important that people see that you are generous and supportive of other members’ content and interests, not just someone who goes the hard sell at every opportunity.
Having said that, social media marketing can be a very effective tool for promotion of your business or yourself, but there are several things you have to keep in mind when using the medium for promotion.
People want to feel engaged. They want to know that their investment of time in these platforms isn’t all for nothing. They have to feel that some value has been added to their online experience, not just that they were bored or just being sold to the whole time. As I mentioned before, it’s easy to engage people initially in these conversations but a lot more difficult to retain them for the long haul.
People want to feel important. The growth of blogging and social networking has been due in large part to people wanting to have their voice heard. Blogging was once the ultimate medium for crazy people to have a rant about their conspiracy theories or people to tell you about the secret life of their cats, but these days it has a lot more credibility and more and more legitimately interesting blogs are emerging. If you help someone promote their own content, it makes them feel good, it makes them much more interested in your own content, and it also has the bonus product of making you a better online citizen.
People want to be listened to. If someone has told you already that they are not interested in a particular product or service that you offer, don’t keep promoting it to them. It sounds so simple and yet so many people do it, including a lot of the bigger players.
A telecommunications company sends me information almost every week about deals on international phone calls. Not only am I not a customer of theirs anyway, but I have told them on three separate occasions that I am very happy with the service of my current provider, and anyway I use Skype for most international calls. Three times I have told them this and they keep sending me their spiel.
They couldn’t have made me less interested in ever engaging their services if they tried.
If you would like to see how I can help your business’ social engagement strategy through any of these means, call me TODAY on 02 4324 2594.
This article appears in full in my book, The Business of Being David – How to use social media to make your small business big. To read the sample chapters and to purchase your own copy, click here.
