It’s a dificult thing to accept the need for social media like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more.
It seems like just yesterday that we were being told by the experts that we had to have a website. We then had two choices. Pay lots of money and get one of those experts to design us a site or do it ourselves. I’ve always been a DIY kinda guy and so over the years I’ve learned enough HTML to get by.
Now with the advent of FREE things like WordPress or Joomla anyone that can read can get a good website setup in minutes. But here is the Rub. It is no longer good enough to just have a website. Now these same experts and many new ones are telling us all about the importance of “social networking”.
We used to live in small communities and connect with friends and collegues. However, it seems the more that technology makes our lives “better” the less time we have to connect with friends.
Enter the world of Twitter, Facebook, and more. We can now keep up with what our friends are doing in seconds. There are even programs like TweetDeck that let you view the information from multiple platforms right from the desktop. The search engines also love these technologies. For Example, I joined Twitter and within a week my profile is the second result that appears when people search for “Kurt Feigel”.
There are 2 main mistakes people make when getting involved with these marketing avenues.
- They join them strictly for business
- they try to sell from these platforms
People are on Facebook and Twitter primarily to connect with friends, family, and collegues or to keep up on current events. They join for a variety of reasons. Most of which does not include being sold stuff. If we show up and start randomly pitching our products we are “crashing the party” as Perry Belcher would say.
If your going to get involved in Social Media and only a fool wouldn’t, then you need to use it in the manner that it was intended. If you want to sell people stuff then get them to subscribe to your newsletter or point them to your blog. But never, ever, ever, do it from your Twitter feed or Facebook Status. You’ll loose followers and crediblility.
